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TSN Soccer Analyst

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There comes a time in a game when the opposition has their moment. Depending on how good a team you have compared to theirs, this moment can sometimes seem to last a footballing lifetime.

This is how teams in Serie A have felt about playing Juventus for three seasons. On Wednesday night in Madrid, the roles were reversed and the Italian champions did the chasing.

They’d gone behind to a first-half Cristiano Ronaldo penalty caused by an unnecessary reckless foul by Giorgio Chiellini and for the 10 minutes on either side of half time, the visitors were poor in every department. Except, likely, their mental state.

Too many of their players had lived this before.

Dressed in all blue on an enormous occasion, it wasn’t hard to look at the team and think of their Italian influence. Only this time, the core also had reliable international full-backs and two of the finest midfielders in the sport today.

It was back in the group stages of Euro 2012 when five of these Juventus starters dug deep, spent possession after possession chasing after a wonderful Spain side, and then hit them with a sucker punch to take a 1-0 lead through Antonio Di Natale. It speaks to the leaders on these sides that, in both games, the moment they were able to level, they defended brilliantly to get results they deserved.

The same five – Gigi Buffon, Chiellini, Leonardo Bonucci, Claudio Marchisio and Andrea Pirlo – were outstanding in the semifinals to defeat a favoured Germany and reach the final. Ultimately in the final, they were outclassed, but they’d relied upon the big game experience and footballing intelligence of their leaders to get them there.

We may end up saying the same come June 6 against Barcelona, but for now, this is a time to look at the triumphant journey this group has accomplished – once again – to book a ticket to another grand stage. In an era dominated and influenced so much by Spanish football, this small group of Italian players has done a remarkable job to accomplish what they have.

There might have been a mammoth $500 million between the teams in how they had been put together, but it is tough to put a price on big-game experience and a willingness to know how to come through difficult times.

For minutes before Juventus equalized, Max Allegri’s team were a shambles, unable to put passes together and keep the ball. The locals had seen this story play out many times before. Real Madrid’s superstars stepping up a gear and trampling all over their opponents, finishing off a game way before the final whistle. Against this group, though, that wasn’t how it played out. In difficult times, led by the brilliant Buffon, no look of panic ever came over any of their faces.

They had set the tone during the Champions League anthem. The stadium was a breathtaking site, but as the camera panned across the Juventus side, it could have easily been filming a group of men standing calmly waiting for a bus. There was no look of intimidation. Only Buffon allowed himself a brief glance up to the stands, but a calm, deep breath followed and then he guided his mates onto the field for yet another enormous football match.

Champions League semifinal? No big deal. You could make the case that only two or three Juventus players were playing the biggest game of their careers and one ended up scoring the crucial goal.

There had been some whispers in the international media that Italian football was clawing its way out of the pit it had somewhat created itself on the European stage, but this was no night for national pride to be restored by this team. This was a night for Juventus, not for Italy; because the Italian players who refused to be intimidated in Madrid have never dropped off the way much of their league has in recent years.

This was not a night when a core group of Italian players suddenly found a way to win a big game for the first time in years. With an Italian core, the Old Lady had been building towards this in the Champions League for the last few years. They knew they didn’t need Carlos Tevez or Patrice Evra, for example, to win another domestic title. They added winners to winners like Pirlo, who at almost 36, now gets to go up against Xavi in the Champions League final, two of the best puppet masters this game has ever produced.

It’s hard to find any footballers who love the game more than Xavi and Pirlo and, as the Italian magician heads back to Turin, he no longer needs to switch on his PlayStation just to play Barcelona.

His autobiography features some wonderful lines and in it he writes: “After the wheel, the PlayStation is the best invention of all-time. And ever since it's existed, I've been Barcelona, apart from a brief spell way back at the start when I'd go Milan.”

At Milan, Pirlo would spend hours before and after training playing as Barcelona against Alessandro Nesta, who would also be Barcelona. The two of them became obsessed by the Spanish giants and the coach Pep Guardiola, who once tried to bring Pirlo to the Nou Camp.

“I wasn't really bothered about much else in the room besides the person who had summoned me,” wrote Pirlo.

He continued:  “Guardiola was sitting in an armchair. He began to tell me about Barcelona, saying that it's a world apart, a perfect machine that pretty much invented itself. I immediately thought of Sandro – he'd die of jealousy when I told him [that Guardiola wanted to sign Pirlo]. I was taking away the 50 per cent of Guardiola that belonged to him.”

The Italian’s journey to another Champions League could well have been very different, as he may have been a Barcelona player next month up against Juventus. Thankfully, Pirlo only played for Barcelona on the PlayStation. Italian football has struggled enough in recent years without having its finest artist showing off all his work in Spain every week.

Like Xavi in Spain, Pirlo has spent his life falling in love with playing football for his national team and, if the rest of Italy wants to grab any glory in this journey, it has been those experiences that have helped him and his teammates prepare for moments like the ones that happened on a hot night in Madrid.

“I don't feel pressure,” Pirlo wrote. “I don't give a toss about it. I spent the afternoon of Sunday, July 9, 2006 in Berlin sleeping and playing the PlayStation. In the evening, I went out and won the World Cup.”

Expect something similar to happen on June 6, only this time he gets to play against Barcelona for real.