The end of the road for Zanchetta…

By tdf, March 13, 2014

Earlier this week, several days after our primavera suffered yet another loss, (a 1-2 home defeat to Parma with Beunacasa grabbing our consolation goal), Andrea Zanchetta was relieved of his duties as first team coach.

This has been coming, due to a season of abject failure on all fronts. With our third defeat in our last five games in the league, disappointing exits in the UEFA Youth Lague at the group stage and coppa italia in the semis, followed by falling at the first hurdle in the viareggio cup, the writing was on the wall for the former Cremonese Youth Coach. Whilst we won the primavera supercup early on in the season, its often seen as not much more than a pre-season friendly, and in every other measure we have not reached our targets.

A season wasted, with tactics often seemingly completely absent from our performances, and several key players halted in their development. I was one of the majority who assumed we would replace Zanchetta in the Summer, but Juve have taken the unprecedented step of dispensing with his services (albeit to a position of less responsibility in the youth sector) mid season.

Whilst Fabio Grosso has been put in charge for the remainder of the season, the move seems more a stop-gap measure than a reward for what Grosso has accomplished thus far. For his debut in the coaching realm presently centres solely upon his role as assistant manager this term to Zanchetta.

It will be interesting to see if there is a change in form and with only the league to play for, with the team sitting in 4th with 7 games left to play, stopping the rot and producing a few convincing victories is the least we will hope to see if the new boss has any chance of remaining in the role after the summer break.