Real hold no fear for Juventus boss
“I’m not worried by Real Madrid,” said the coach of the team nicknamed ‘The Old Lady of Turin.’
“No real champion loses 5-1 at home to a middle-of-the-table side. It tells me there is something wrong there because it’s difficult to think of any way that we could end up losing 5-1 at home” commented Lippi, reflecting on Real’s 5-1 loss at home to Real Mallorca on Saturday.
“But we are under no illusion that it will be a different game and that Real will be doing their best to forget that last game,” added Lippi.
Real’s worst league loss for four years will not have done much for morale in the Madrid dressing room.
By contrast, Juventus hold an eight point lead over Inter with three games to go and can expect to open the bubbly in celebration of their 27th Serie A title next weekend after Saturday’s 0-0 draw at Lazio.
Italian international defender Paolo Montero and Juve’s non-stop Dutch midfielder Edgar Davids are both suspended and their places are likely to be taken respectively by Mark Iuliano and Igor Tudor. Midfielder Alessio Tacchinardi is also serving a one match ban .
Real coach Vicente Del Bosque has nearly his full contingent available and is expected to be able to name the same side that started in their 4-3 loss at Manchester United two weeks ago, and that also took to the field on Saturday.
Del Bosque is only without Raul Gonzalez, who only trained with the ball at his feet for the first time in two weeks on Sunday, following his recent appendix operation.
Despite the inevitable calls from the media for him to make changes, mainly advocating throwing the prodigious young striker Javier Portillo into the fray, Del Bosque is unlikely to tinker with his team in the wake of the Mallorca debacle.
He made it clear that he was not going to panic and make wholesale changes on Sunday, even on the back of a result as poor as that on Saturday.
The Italians are also still smarting from their last meeting with Madrid, nearly five years ago in the final of the 1998 Champions League, when Real won 1-0, and a few survivors of that encounter are looking for revenge.
“I still remember that game very clearly. To lose in such a fashion was very painful. I have won one Champions League in 1996 but after our two most recent campaigns, when we failed to live up to our own expectations, I’m eager for more success,” said Juventus striker Alessandro Del Piero.
For his part, Zinedine Zidane says Real Madrid's worst home defeat in four years could not have come at a better time.
“It was a good wake-up call. Luckily we go straight into the big game without having too much time to mope about it," he said yesterday.
Zidane said the whole team was to blame for the Mallorca debacle.
"My own defensive work was not up to scratch, for a start," he said.
"But we have had a good team talk to thrash out the problem. We know we can't allow a side like Juventus the space we gave away on Saturday. Juventus can close a game down and snatch the chances that come their way."
Inter face AC Milan in the first leg of the other semi-final tomorrow night.
The two Italian clubs have never played each other in Europe before but have met 142 times in the Italian league.
UEFA Cup finalists Porto won their 19th Portuguese league title on Sunday and sealed their berth in the Champions League by crushing lowly Santa Clara 5-0 at home.
With four games left in the championship, Porto have 79 points and an unassailable 14-point lead over second-placed Benfica, whose faint title hopes vanished as they went down 2-1 at home to local rivals Sporting on Saturday.
Porto remain on course for a treble as they face Celtic in the UEFA Cup final in Seville on May 21, and play Uniao Leiria in the Portuguese Cup final at the National Stadium on June 15.
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