Tickets for Juventus’s Champions League quarterfinal against Arsenal went on sale in Italy last Friday, and they were hardly flying out of the box office. Well, they never are nowadays. Juventus might be the defending Serie A champions, the runaway league leaders and the self-styled most popular club in Italy backed by an estimated 11-million fans, but their crowds are an absolute abomination.
It is the great paradox of Juventus: prestigious club, pathetic live support. Yet more proof was in evidence this month as they hosted two huge games in a week. They gave away 26 000 tickets for the Werder Bremen must-win Champions League match, but were still almost 30 000 short of a sell-out. Then they entertained AC Milan in one of the biggest Serie A matches of the season, and the crowd was even lower.
It is a perennial embarrassment that the backdrop for televised games at their unloved home, the Stadio Delle Alpi, reveals banks of empty grey seats, and what noise is generated (with megaphones) echoes sadly around the cavernous spaces inside. Despite on-field excellence, the turnout has been in steady decline for the past few years. The average is a little over a third of the capacity.
Not so long ago Juventus registered their all-time low crowd for a Coppa Italia match against Sampdoria — 237 anoraks rattling around inside a stadium that holds 67 000. Live TV coverage, limited interest in the Italian Cup and cold weather were given as official excuses.
Cold weather? More than 237 would click through the turnstiles at Old Trafford even if there were an outbreak of bubonic plague — so the question must be asked: Just what is Juventus’s problem?
It’s a question the club’s directors have asked themselves with sufficient soul-searching to seek a solution. They are about to become the only major European football club to redevelop their ground because they need to make it smaller.
At the end of this season Juventus will move out as construction workers turn the Delle Alpi into a more compact, and hopefully atmospheric, 42 000-seat stadium. The hated athletics track will disappear.
So will the corners, with new rectangular stands built inside the oval shell. These modifications are designed to make the Delle Alpi more like an English ground, more intimate, more of a bums-on-seats attraction.
The stadium was originally built for the 1990 World Cup, but became one of the biggest scandals of the tournament. At vast expense, Turin produced an arena locals feared would be unsustainable. Juventus left their ancestral home, the Stadio Comunale that used regularly to attract 70 000 fans, for a place nobody has ever liked.
The main complaints are that it is a nightmare to get to and from, the sightlines are rubbish, and for what you get it is overpriced. The fact that they are getting millions of pounds’ worth of talent managed by a very clever coach is obviously not recompense enough.
The quirk in all of this is that statistics prove Juventus are the best ”supported” team in Italy. They have the largest number of TV season-ticket subscribers on Sky, well-packed visitors’ sections when they play away, and legions of fans all over the country.
Their diaspora is the most well-worn defence for their paltry gates, along with blanket television coverage of matches and new laws that require supporters’ IDs to be printed on their tickets. Fans frequently used to share season tickets among friends, but that routine is now out the window.
Over the past few years Juve’s board even considered leaving Turin to set up camp elsewhere. That’s not as illogical as it sounds, considering what happened when the Old Lady played a handful of ”home” matches outside the region. In 1994/95, they hosted Borussia Dortmund and Parma at Milan’s San Siro. Both were 85 000 sell-outs. They put on a match in Palermo. Sold out. Another in Bologna. Sold out.
Contrast this with the figures for the most recent Turin derby in 2002/03: the Delle Alpi was, pitifully, almost three-quarters empty.
While redevelopment takes place, Juve will return downtown to share with Torino at the Comunale, which was rebuilt for the Winter Olympics and should provide Juventus with perfect facilities. It’s in town, it’s cosy, and it holds 28 000.
They may be able to cancel their special-offer â,¬1 tickets for women and children and still get enough bodies through the turnstiles to look presentable. — Â