After suffering a surprise defeat against Borussia Dortmund the previous season, Juventus became the first club in Champions League history to lose successive finals following a 1-0 reverse to Real Madrid.
“This is what European Cup finals should be all about,” was the assessment of the late great Alfredo Di Stefano ahead of the 1998 Champions League final between Real Madrid and Juventus.
The two clubs had amassed 24 previous final appearances between them in all European competitions, but met for the first time in a ‘dream final’ at a recently redeveloped Amsterdam Arena on May 20.
After winning the first five European Cups from 1956 to 1960, Real Madrid had gone 32 years without the trophy since their sixth success in 1966 when they beat Partizan Belgrade 2-1 in Brussels.
Juventus on the other hand were amidst another ‘cycle’ of accumulating domestic and continental honours as they appeared in a European final for the fourth successive season under coach Marcello Lippi.
Regarded as the best team in Europe at the time, the Old Lady left it late to take her place amongst the European elite in March by squeezing into the quarter-finals as one of the two group runners-up with the best records.
Doubters had feared the forward partnership between Filippo Inzaghi and Alessandro Del Piero would be too lightweight at the beginning of the campaign, but both players were decisive in the latter stages of the competition.
Inzaghi first scored a hat-trick on a cold, sub-zero night that silenced not only 100,000 Dynamo Kiev supporters in the quarter-finals, but also the critics in Italy who had been on his back following his arrival from Atalanta.
Then Del Piero became the top scorer in the Champions League over the six seasons since it began with a set-piece hat-trick in the semi-final first leg before setting up Zinedine Zidane as Juventus recorded a 4-1 victory over Monaco.
Together they had set a club record 59 goals from a striking duo in all competitions, but both were left to take much of the blame for the final defeat with the side simply failing to perform when it mattered most.
The Bianconeri began strongly against Los Blancos with Zidane shooting wide in the first clear chance of the match after a Del Piero free-kick had deflected off the defensive wall.
Real however would gradually go on to take control of the final and had the best opportunity in the first-half as Predrag Mijatovic tricked Moreno Torricelli on the left and crossed for Raul who stabbed the ball outside the near post from close range.
Juventus tried to take control after the break with Alessio Tacchinardi replacing Angelo Di Livio in a bid to give the midfield more balance before Torricelli immediately went desparately close from a Zidane free-kick.
Inzaghi then spurned the Bianconeri’s two best chances, before Juve were eventually punished for their profligacy in front of goal as Real Madrid scored the only goal of the game on 66 minutes.
A cross on the right from the dreadlocked Clarence Seedorf was cleared only as far as Roberto Carlos and his blocked shot off Mark Iuliano fell to Mijatovic unmarked six yards out.
The former Yugoslavia international danced around Angelo Peruzzi before clipping a shot in from a tight angle as Juventus appealed for offside.
Juventus had chances to equalise through Inzaghi again and Edgar Davids, but the supporters that had travelled from Turin were left lamenting a lack of physical presence in attack after the departures of Christian Vieri and Alen Boksic the previous summer.
This sense of disappointment was evident in the national newspapers the following morning with “Juventus, Where Were You,” the front-page headline in Corriere Dello Sport and La Repubblica wrote “Juvenuts, What a Disappointment.”
On the same night as the final in Amsterdam, the art world was shaken by the theft of three major paintings by Impressionist masters, Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cezanne, from the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome.
La Gazzetta dello Sport combined the sense of shock from both events in their colourful recollection of events that bemoaned a fourth defeat out of their six previous European Cup finals.
“We suffered another awful trauma in the football gallery of Amsterdam,” read the post-match analysis in the pink newspaper.
“The splendid, combative, unbeatable Juventus to which we have become accustomed has gone missing.
“Nor have we any information as to the whereabouts of its best and most famous star of the season, a certain Alessandro Del Piero.”
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3QRo9a70Cs[/youtube]
