Italian Roundup

Juve, Milan meet again in not-so-Supercup

ROME (AP) -- The Italian Supercup could have been truly "super" this year.

Reigning league champion Juventus faces Italian Cup champion AC Milan on Sunday in a rematch of the Champions League final played little more than two months ago.

If the Supercup was kept in its usual calendar slot about a week before the Serie A season begins in late August, the match would have been a worthy curtain raiser for the Italian league, coming off one of its best seasons in years.

Instead, the match at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, has been turned into another midsummer exhibition, albeit with a large trophy up for grabs.

"The uniqueness of the event obliges me to make choices that, after just 15 days of work, no coach would want to make," Juventus coach Marcello Lippi was quoted as saying in Thursday's Gazzetta dello Sport. "The game is an anomaly for when it's being played and I'll make my choices on the basis of the condition of my players."

One player Lippi cited as out of form and unlikely to see action Sunday is Argentine-born midfielder Mauro Camoranesi, who holds dual citizenship and has become a mainstay on coach Giovanni Trapattoni's national team. Brazilian star Rivaldo did not even make the trip for Milan, staying in Italy to rest his strained muscles.

Another of Trapattoni's new recruits, diminutive striker Fabrizio Miccoli, is expected to start his first meaningful match for Juve after joining the club from Perugia.

In his first season in Serie A, Miccoli was the shortest player in the league at 1.68 meters (5 feet, 6 inches). Yet he scored nine goals for Perugia and gained enough respect that Juventus, which controlled his rights, took him back.

"Even in practice he's very difficult to mark," said Juve's Uruguayan defender Paolo Montero. "He's small, nimble, fast and very strong technically."

Miccoli's stated celebration plans should he score on Sunday offer insight into his enthusiasm:

"I'll climb up the Statue of Liberty and kiss it in the mouth," he told the Gazzetta.

Perhaps one of the only players that can match Miccoli for sheer enthusiasm is Milan's darting striker Filippo Inzaghi.

Inzaghi once played for Juve, although he showed no interest in offering up Sunday's game as a rematch for the Champions final that Milan won on penalty kicks.

"Let's not say the Supercup is a rematch," he said. "We won the Champions and that's it."

More subdued Portuguese midfielder Manuel Rui Costa echoed Inzaghi's words.

"At Old Trafford we won with merit. To beat a great club is pleasurable, but a result in August means nothing."

The Italian Supercup, which pits the league champion against the Italian Cup winner, has been held outside Italy on two other occasions. Last August, Juventus defeated Parma 2-1 in Tripoli, Libya and in 1993 Milan beat Torino 1-0 in Washington.

Italian champion Juve opens against Empoli

ROME (Reuters) -- Italian champions Juventus, seeking a third successive Serie A title, kick off their 2003/2004 campaign against Empoli on August 31, while European champions AC Milan face newly-promoted Ancona.

The season's fixture list, released on Thursday, also shows that Italy's big two will have to wait until November 2 for the chance to go head-to-head and continue last season's battle of wits.

The clubs beat each other 2-1 in the league last season, though Juventus comfortably clinching their 27th scudetto, finishing 11 points above third-placed Milan.

But in the Champions League final in Manchester, Milan got their revenge, winning on penalties after a goalless draw to snare their sixth European Cup.

Catania booted out of Italy's Serie B

ROME (Reuters) -- The Italian Football Federation booted Catania out of Serie B on Thursday, standing its ground after a bitter two-month relegation battle, fought in court instead of on the pitch.

Some pundits had suggested expanding Italy's second division to 21 or 24 clubs to sidestep the legal quicksand threatening to delay the new season. But Italian football's ruling body stuck to the current 20-squad set-up.

"The federation...relegates Catania, Genoa, Cosenza and Salernitana," it said in a statement after a two-day meeting.

Catania, squabbling about points they said they should have been awarded, had been seeking to avoid relegation through civil law courts, which is prohibited under the statutes of soccer's world governing body FIFA.

Italy's federation ignored the court verdicts, not wanting to set a precedent by bowing to Catania's legal moves, and said it stood by rulings handed out by sports judges CAF.

"We must protect the independence of sports rules," it said.

Separately on Thursday, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who also owns European champions AC Milan, met his cabinet which backed approving an urgent measure to strengthen sports justice.

On the other side of Rome, Catania fans who had traveled from Sicily to protest against possible relegation, let off red and blue flares outside soccer headquarters.

Catania had been fighting for three crucial points from an April clash with Siena -- the difference between 17th place, the last automatic relegation spot and second division survival.

Successful appeal

The match finished 1-1 but Catania successfully appealed to the league for the full three points because Siena had used a player serving a two-match ban.

However, Siena got the ruling overturned, prompting Catania to take the unprecedented step of turning to a regional court, which ruled in the Sicilians' favor, saving them from Serie C.

But other clubs like Venezia and Salernitana jumped in with protests of their own and Serie B descended into a closed season of attack and counter-attack.

Confusion reigned with one newspaper publishing four tables to show readers how the Serie B standings might end up, even though the season finished seven weeks earlier.

But Catania had no appetite for surrender.

"Tomorrow we'll present a new complaint to the regional court and start all over again," President Riccardo Gaucci told Italian news agency ANSA in Palermo."The war is not over."

Juventus president Chiusano dies

TURIN, Italy (AP) -- Juventus president Vittorio Chiusano died Thursday, state TV and the ANSA news agency said.

Chiusano, 74, died at a private clinic in Turin, the northern Italian city that is home to the country's most famous soccer club. He reportedly had suffered heart problems in the last few years.

Chiusano became president of Juventus in 1990. He was also vice president of the Turin newspaper La Stampa from 1985 to 1999.

Both Juventus and La Stampa are part of the business empire of the Agnelli family of Fiat automaker fame. Chiusano was a close friend of former Fiat and Juventus chairman Giovanni Agnelli, who died in January.

Juventus sell defender Moretti to Parma

ROME (Reuters) -- Defender Emiliano Moretti has joined Parma from Italian champions Juventus for 1.8 million euros (US$2.04 million), the Turin club said on Thursday.

Juventus signed the defender last year, after Moretti's club Fiorentina went bankrupt, but loaned him to Modena halfway through the season.

The club also said midfielder Davide Baiocco would go on loan to Reggina, who avoided relegation from Serie A when they beat Atalanta in a playoff last month.

 

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Both the Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.