Chapter 405: History Between Finalists

Although the team medical team believes that the specific situation of the three injured people needs to be examined in more detail at the hospital to get the results, the FM system clearly shows the injuries of each individual. Ranocchia suffered a slight sprain in his right knee and will need to rest for at least two weeks, given his past injury history; Dickman's right ankle sprain was much more serious, although it did not hurt the bone, but the ligaments and muscles were injured to varying degrees, and he had to rest for at least twenty days; Only Gourcuff is slightly better, don't look at the pain he was dying of pain at the time, it was just a hard injury, but the tendon on the back of the ankle is also a part that needs to be paid attention to, and a week of rest is the least.

With the addition of Moretti with a fractured right metacarpal bone, Farke who suffered a leg injury in the Turin derby and Silvestri who suffered a nose injury last weekend, Torino will have six players unavailable for this weekend's home league game against Crotone, as well as next Thursday's Europa League quarter-final against Lokomotiv Moscow, and even next weekend's away trip to Roma is likely to be maintained, causing serious problems for the manager's line-up.

Other positions are better to say, after all, they can barely scrape together people to rotate, but the injury of two homegrown right-backs has left England's Flanagan in the first team with only one player to use, even if he plays a 3-5-2 formation, there is no substitute for the right wingback, which is the biggest problem facing Li Mudi at present.

There are no good right-backs in the academy at the moment, but there is no other way to do this in such an emergency, with Simone Ambrogio, born in 2000, being called up to the first team on a temporary basis. When I checked it with the scouting tool at the end of last year, the young man's double values were 92 and 138, and combined with the feedback from the youth team coach, his future is not very bright, at most he can play as a main force in the lower Serie A team and act as a substitute in the middle of the team.

In order to make amends, the Torino coach submitted a transfer proposal to the marketing department in conjunction with the club's budget, and after a meeting to study it, Valentino Caiiro temporarily put aside the links with several free agents who will become free agents in the summer, and focused on the introduction of players who will join the work schedule on a temporary basis. Fifteen days later, both Torino and Bari announced on their official websites that 1998-born right-back Giuseppe Scalera would join the Red Bulls on a one-year loan on 1 July 2018 for €250,000, with the option to buy him out for €3.75 million before the loan expired.

Turning the timeline back to the night of the semi-finals, the result of the Tu-Asia match did not surprise most people, although the visitors had a physical advantage and a stronger desire to qualify, but there was still a certain gap between the two sides this season's form, not to mention that the Torino team still had the advantage of being at home. The post-match stats also showed that the home side's narrow one-goal win was no accident, with 54 per cent possession and a 4-of-11 lead over 3-of-7 in shots, with both sides hitting the woodwork once each, with the only controversy being the penalty.

In his post-match press conference, Gasperini spoke about his thoughts on the result and the penalty, saying: "Torino are a good team, they are very strong, but we also caused them a certain amount of problems and the game showed the quality of our team. Although we couldn't turn the score around and advance to the final, the result of the semi-finals was satisfying and we could fully focus on the latter stages of the league. That penalty? In my opinion, it is not at all, Mancini did not have any obvious foul action, so it is a shame that such a result is a pity. ”

"Finally, I wish my good friend Lee and hope that he can have enough luck in the final, just like Gomez hit the post today, and losing to the final champion is barely a consolation for us."

Li Mudi believes that both sides have shown their respective levels, and the excitement of the game is also worthy of the attention of fans, and the only deficiency is the injury of three players. He said: "This victory is the result of the hard work of everyone, especially the players who have overcome the fatigue of consecutive battles and the unfavorable external environment after heavy snowfall, and they are worthy of praise. However, injuries to the likes of Ranocchia have also caused us a big problem with the future fixtures, and the team will still face the difficulty of two games a week in the next two weeks, but each of us will do our best to try for every good result and hopefully live up to the expectations of the fans. ”

"Reaching the Coppa Italia final again after 25 years is a big achievement for the Torino club, but if you don't win the title, there is no difference between finishing second and going out in the first round, and this last hurdle is the most important test. Who do you want to play against in the final? Whether it is Juventus or AC Milan, they are both big names in domestic football, top giants with championship DNA, don't look at the Rossoneri's results this season are not too outstanding, but the final is completely different, and their tradition will make this team reawaken and become extraordinarily strong. So it's going to be a tough battle for us no matter who we face, and it's not going to be a good win, but we're ready to put a lot of money on the club's roll of honours. ”

Three hours after the end of the Dua-Asia match, the Red Bulls' final opponents were decided, as their local rivals Juventus beat AC Milan 2-0 at home to reach the Coppa Italia final for the fourth year in a row with a two-legged aggregate score of 2-0. The Italian Football Federation immediately announced the schedule of the final on its official website, which was set for May 9, and the venue of the match was still the Olympic Stadium in Rome.

This is the twelfth time in the history of Torino that they have reached the final of a domestic cup competition (the Coppa Italia in 1967-70 changed the knockout format to a double round-robin group stage between the semi-finals, with the Red Bulls winning one title and two runners-up, but not counting them because there is no real final), which is the fifth-highest in the history of the tournament, behind Juventus, Roma and Milan. But it's not enough to see their sworn enemies in the same city. After knocking out AC Milan, the Old Lady has reached the final for the 18th time in their history, surpassing Roma 17 times to dominate the rankings. Moreover, their previous 12 championships and more than 70% of the finals winning percentage are also the highest among teams that have won more than two championships, and no one can come close.

Interestingly, however, it is surprising that the two teams from the same city, who have ruled the Apennine Peninsula in the past, have reached the final 30 times this year and won 18 titles (including those already scheduled for this year). In the distant 1937-38 season, Juventus won 5-2 over two legs against Torino, stepping on the corpse of their rivals to win the Coppa Italia for the first time in their history.

However, if you take a closer look at history, you can easily see that this situation is not accidental. These two former hegemons of Italian football have been cleverly separated from each other at their peaks, and there are few times when they are strong at the same time. The Red Bulls, formerly known as Inter Torino founded in 1891, first reached their peak at the end of the 19th century, finishing runners-up in the first two Italian football championships (the predecessor of Serie A, but results are also counted in historical results), and then they ushered in the first wave of Juventus' slump in results. The Bianconeri won one championship and finished three runners-up in the 1903-06 tournament, when Genoa were the dominant champions.

In the decade of 1920-30, Turin's two teams were close together, winning a national championship each, but neither showed any particularly dominance in the midst of a scuffle, and the only meeting in the Coppa Italia final took place in the summer of 1938.

It is worth mentioning that in the 1926-27 season, Torino won their first Serie A title in their history in July, but the title was stripped four months later on the grounds that the team was playing match-fixing. According to Sport, in the Turin derby on June 5, 1927, the Red Bulls bought Juventus defender Alemanti to win 2-1. Although it is impossible to determine whether there is an inevitable relationship between winning and buying opposing players (Alemanti scored Juventus' goal, but the performance in the first and second halves is considered to be a big contrast), the news still caused an uproar in the country, and the Football Association revoked the title of Torino champion. It was one of only two title vacancies in Serie A history, the other being in the 2004/05 season when Juventus lost the title after the phonegate eruption.

In the thirties, the Bianconeri had an invincible period in their history, completing five consecutive Serie A titles in 1931-35, becoming the third dynasty team after Genoa and Vercelli to win at least three consecutive titles. At that time, the Torino team could only sit in the middle of the table, posing no threat to their rivals in the city. Eight years later, in the 1942-43 season, the Red Bull turned into serfs and sang the "Gods", and they won the championship in the next five seasons, also winning five consecutive championships, establishing the "Great Turin Era". If it weren't for the two-year cancellation of Serie A due to World War II, the first seven consecutive titles would have been around seventy years ago.

As previously introduced in the later script, on May 4, 1949, the Supega air crash directly broke all the bones of the red bull's body, and the blood was basically drained. After narrowly finishing sixth in the 1949-50 season, Torino were relegated to the second division until they said goodbye to the top flight for the first time in their history in the summer of 1959. In the fifteen years since the end of the "Turin era", Italian football has formed a situation in which Juventus and Milan compete for hegemony, and Fiorentina occasionally disrupts the situation. The Red Bulls, who returned to Serie A, have been stable between sixth and tenth place in 1965, only beating their local rivals in 1965 to finish third in the league once, but overall they are still at a disadvantage in derbies.

For more than a decade, Juventus remained in the top three, while Torino were relegated to fifth to seventh place, with the exception of a third-place finish in 1972. It wasn't until the 1975-76 season that Luigi Radice, the legendary of the team, took over as head coach and the squad was strengthened. That season, Pulic, who led Torino's scorers with 134 Serie A goals, and his striker Graziani won the Serie A Golden Boot and Silver Boot, helping the Red Bulls regain the league throne after a 27-year absence, and the runners-up at that time were Old Lady. It was the team's seventh Serie A title and the last to date.

With that group of excellent players and Radiche's coaching ability, the Torino team won a second place and a third place in the next two years, and the championship went to the sworn rivals in the same city, and these three years were also the closest period of real strength between the two sides. However, the good times did not last long, and after entering the 80s, Italy lifted the previous restrictions on foreign aid, making the whole league more dynamic, and the name of "Little World Cup" gradually took shape. However, due to the weakness of the Torino team in terms of capital, there was no opportunity to get strong foreign aid, and gradually fell into the disadvantage in the competition, and the team's striker twin stars Pulic and Graziani also left the team, making the team fall into a trough again. Only in the 1984-85 season did they take advantage of the general slump of Serie A powerhouses to finish runners-up once, and the rest of the season could only watch Juve continue to jump up and down at the top of the table.

In the 1986-87 season, with Maradona leading Napoli in the Apennines as the dividing line, the Bianconeri began to enter a period of hibernation, and the results were not satisfactory for four consecutive years. Torino were even worse on the other hand, having made a run in the second division in 1989-90, but they regained their footing with the likes of Enzo Hifo, Walter Casagrande, Martin Vazquez and Gian Luigi Lentini. In the 1991-92 season, the Red Bulls not only finished runners-up in the league, but also reached the final of the League Cup, where they eliminated the mighty Real Madrid in the semi-finals. Unfortunately, in the final of the two-legged home and away meeting, the opponent drew 2-2 but saw Ajax reach the top because of the lack of away goals, thus missing out on the first European top trophy in team history.

The following year, the Red Bulls won the Coppa Italia 3-0 at home and 2-5 on the road, winning their fifth and last Coppa Italia title by virtue of away goals, and then fell into a nightmare that lasted for more than two decades, but fortunately they finally waited for Li Mudi.

Juventus, on the other hand, as they are nicknamed "The Old Woman", seem to be faltering, but in fact they are moving forward with great stability. From 1992 to 2006, they finished fourth once and seventh once, and finished in the top three for the remaining eleven seasons, including five titles. In the first year of the 2007-08 Serie A season, the Bianconeri returned to third place, and after three seasons of adjustment, they started a six-game winning streak in 2011-12.

For more than 100 years, there have been few occasions when two teams based in the same city of Turin have been evenly matched, and while every derby has been a source of attention, the vast majority have been the result of one side having the upper hand, which has seriously affected the excitement of the game. However, the results of the two teams are similar this year, with Juventus leading the smallest in more than two decades, making everyone look forward to the final on 9 May, which will be a classic derby to remember.