🇮🇹 Is Juventus' decade of dominance finally at an end? | OneFootball

It has been a long time since a club not named Juventus lifted the Scudetto.

May of 2011, in fact. At that time, football’s newest hotshot Erling Haaland was just 10 years old and a little TV show called Game of Thrones had only just begun its run.

A lot has changed since then. Although not necessarily at Juventus, where the likes of Gianluigi Buffon and Leo Bonucci (despite some brief detours elsewhere) remain and Giorgio Chiellini is as true to the cause as ever.

In 2011/12, Antonio Conte led them to the first of nine consecutive Serie A titles (an all-time record) by virtue of an incredible undefeated season no less.

Almost 10 years later, it looks like he will be the man to end what he started and bring the curtain down on his former employers’ dominance from behind enemy lines with Inter.

That move alone already hurt the Bianconeri faithful, with petitions for his star to be removed from the club’s Walk of Fame and more recently ugly public spats with Andrea Agnelli and the Juve hierarchy.

But they’ll be incensed even further by the fact that it is Conte, the traitor in their eyes, who is going to be celebrating at the end of the season as they come to terms with the unusual reality that this won’t be their year. The Champ10ns t-shirts will go unworn and unused.

Because it is becoming extremely difficult to see a way back now for the defending champions after their latest slip-up in Verona on Saturday night.

They weren’t at their best throughout but it looked like a clinical Cristiano Ronaldo strike would be enough for an important yet narrow win, until Antonín Barák popped up with a late header for a point that is a dagger through the heart of Juve’s title prospects.

Although they still have 15 games to play (even their game in hand is a tough tie against a Napoli side who have previously beaten them this season), they now trail table-toppers Inter by 10 points and that isn’t a gap they look like making up – or that the Nerazzurri look like giving up either.

Conte admitted his side have an extra bit of fire in their bellies after their European elimination too and are determined to show that finishing bottom of their Champions League group was a fluke.

By contrast, the pressure remains on Juventus to win the Champions League for as long as their Cristiano Ronaldo window is open, and their fixture calendar will soon start to pile up.

Andrea Pirlo is already bemoaning that the one thing he hadn’t expected to be so difficult about his coaching career was dealing with a multitude of injuries – and Juve have certainly had their fair share of those this season.

It just seems those fitness issues, the calendar forcing them to fight on multiple fronts, Inter’s incredible form and the fact they essentially have no margin for error anymore means that, even as early as March, it is time to acknowledge that there will be a new name on the trophy this year.

And elsewhere …

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