On this day in 2012, Juventus won one of the strangest trophies in recent club history – and did it without the manager who’d just won them the Scudetto.
The backdrop: Juve had beaten Napoli to the title in 2011-12, but Napoli got their revenge in the Coppa Italia final that May, winning 2-0 to deny Juve the double. The two sides met again in August for the Supercoppa Italiana, this time in Beijing of all places — 75,000 fans packed into the Bird’s Nest for a curtain-raiser nobody in Turin expected
to be this dramatic.
Then, the day before the match, Antonio Conte was hit with a 10-month ban over failure to report suspected match-fixing from his Siena days. His assistant, Massimo Carrera, was suddenly thrown into his first game in charge with basically zero preparation time. Not exactly the ideal buildup.
And for a while, it looked like the chaos might cost them. Napoli came out sharp. Cavani scored in the 27th minute, Asamoah equalized for Juve in the 37th, then Pandev put Napoli back ahead right before halftime. Juve were down 2-1 at the break in a match their interim coach had zero time to prepare for.
But Vidal converted a penalty in the 73rd to force extra time, and that’s when things fell apart for Napoli – they finished the match with nine men after Pandev saw red in the 85th and Zúñiga picked up a second yellow in stoppage time (Napoli coach Mazzarri got sent off too). Christian Maggio’s own goal in the 97th and a Vučinić finish in the 101st sealed it, 4-2.
I think it’s a fun one to remember mostly because of how little business it looked like Juve had winning it – new coach, short bench, down a goal at the half — and they found a way anyway.
