The Sunday Times:
How much will Arsenal supporters miss Patrick Vieira? If his absence already seems too much to bear, they may be interested in a deal to go and watch him in Turin every fortnight for 65p a match. Not all of them, mind. The offer is open only to women or children under 13, to whom Juventus are selling nearly 15,000 season tickets for €19 (£12.87), or not much more than the cost of a programme, a burger with fries and a large Coke at the new Wembley.
Juve’s €1-a-game Serie A pass — Dad can sit with them for about £140 for the season — is the latest initiative by Italy’s most decorated club to turn their unloved, albeit architecturally striking, 67,000-seat Stadio delle Alpi home into something resembling an appropriate theatre for the champions of the country’s favourite sport.
If it sounds desperate, it is because crowds are falling across Italian football and Juventus’s relationship with the people of Turin has always been indifferent. Fewer than 19,000 paid to watch Juve meet Bayern Munich in the Champions League last autumn and, eight days before the new league kicks off, not all the Alpi’s cheap seats are taken.
Then again, most fans would be reluctant to buy a season ticket for a league when you don’t know quite who is going to be competing in it. The Serie A fixtures only came out last Thursday because of disputes over the identity of the participants, notably Genoa and Torino, who thought they would come up from Serie B.
Pity the early buyer of a season ticket to Turin’s other club, Torino, anticipating a return to what they regard as their natural habitat, and the prospect of fierce derbies against Juve. No chance. Once the Italian federation put the messy accounts of Torino and other clubs under overdue scrutiny, they expelled them from the top flight.
That was last month. Genoa were promoted from Serie B in June, but barring some extraordinary legal footwork they will not be in Serie A either after senior directors were found to have paid Venezia officials to fix the result of their final match. Evidence against them included a Venezia employee leaving the business headquarters of the Genoa president with €250,000 in cash in a holdall, and police recordings of frantic conversations between bosses of both club s after Venezia levelled the scores in that tainted encounter. So Genoa start the new season in Serie C, with a three-point deficit before a ball is kicked. Their fans have already rioted in the port’s streets and disrupted an Italian Cup tie.
For the full article: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,2767-1743351,00.html