With Juventus in first place and a 3-1 Derby d’Italia victory over Inter fresh in our memories, all seems well at Vinovo. Well, unless your name is Fabio Quagliarella.
The Italian striker was recently frozen out of training with the rest of the first side, at least for a few days. This came after he was dropped from the Europa League squad – though, considering that Sebastian Giovinco is a home grown player this was a move that was sort of necessary on Juve’s part – and it’s now assumed that Quagliarella will be moving on at the end of this season.
After the Mirko Vucinic-Fredy Guarin saga one would have thought that Vucinic would be the odd striker out. Or perhaps Giovinco as he is arguably the least talented striker on the squad. Though again his home grown status makes him useful for European competitions. So that leaves us with Fabio Quagliarella. He was dropped from the Europa League squad and his agent quickly took to the press stating that he deserved more respect. While I don’t agree with the methods, I agree with the statement.
Quagliarella has been with Juventus for four seasons at this point. He only played for the first half of his debut year at Juve, as he blew his knee out in the first match of the second half of the season. Prior to his injury, he had nine goals in 16 appearances. He was, more or less, the reason Juventus were even competing in Serie A for the first half of that season. Remember, this was with Luigi Delneri and not under Antonio Conte.
The next season saw Conte slowly integrate Quagliarella back into the squad after his injury. He had a few notable performances, but his goalscoring was not the same as he recovered from a serious knee injury.
Then he returned to being one of Juve’s top scorers last season, and even notched four goals in seven Champions League appearances. This season he has seen a drastic reduction in playing time, but he still scored two goals in Champions League this season whereas starting striker Carlos Tevez scored zero, and the other starter Fernando Llorente also scored two.
Quagliarella hasn’t been Juve’s main striker since he got hurt in January of 2011. But he has remained an incredibly impactful striker for the club, and one can argue that he has done more in Champions League for Juve than any player aside from Arturo Vidal.
Both of his goals this year in Champions League had an impact on the outcome of the match, he tied the game versus Copenhagen – the game finished 1-1 – and scored what was at the time a go ahead goal at Juventus Stadium versus Galatasaray – finished 2-2. Last year’s campaign was a similar story, and Quagliarella’s tying goal versus Chelsea in Juve’s first Champions League match in years will remain a huge fanboy moment for me.
But while Quagliarella’s Juve career dials down, Pablo Osvaldo’s begins. It’s been reported that Conte is looking to play Vucinic and Osvaldo together in Europa League, and for all we know Osvaldo can take the role of impact goal-scorer that Quagliarella so dutifully filled.
In fact, Osvaldo was a consistent scorer with Roma over the past few years. The best case scenario would be that Osvaldo fills the hole left behind by Quagliarella’s practical absence. The worst case scenario is that Juventus alienated a dedicated servant for a striker who fails to impress during his six month loan. I am not so sure this will be the case, but it gives us something else to watch for during the rest of Juve’s season.
