Juventus secured the Serie A title with three games to spare on Sunday after closest challengers AS Roma were stunned 4-1 away by relegation-haunted Catania.
It is the Turin giants’ 30th official title in Italy’s top flight and third in succession under coach Antonio Conte.
Juventus remain on course to become the first team in Serie A to finish with at least 100 points.
Photo: Reuters
After hosting Atalanta BC yesterday, Juve travel to Roma next week and close out the season at home to Cagliari.
The Bianconeri congregated at a hotel in Turin on Sunday afternoon to watch Roma’s upset on TV and started celebrating immediately after the final whistle.
“We are the champions, we are the champions,” read a post from the club’s Twitter feed alongside photographs of the players dressed in identical black T-shirts in a nod to the club’s belief that they have actually won 32 Serie A titles.
Juventus were stripped of the two Scudettos they won in 2005 and 2006 following their demotion to Serie B for their role in the Calciopoli match-fixing scandal.
“After the five-title winning streak, this is a feat that no other great Juve sides had achieved,” Conte said.
Club president Beppe Marotta heaped praise on the 44-year-old coach saying: “We said and knew that it would be a difficult season, but we were able to count on a superb coach and team who had great hunger and motivation to achieve this third title.”
Roma emerged as Juve’s only real challengers this season after setting a new Serie A record of 10 opening wins under coach Rudi Garcia.
Yet despite the capital club clinging to Juve’s heels in recent weeks and Garcia remaining defiant, he finally conceded defeat on Saturday.
“The championship is over. Tomorrow’s [Sunday’s] result at Catania won’t change a thing, but we’ll still be going there looking to win,” the Frenchman said.
After a testing season trying to keep pace with the Juve juggernaut, who went on a 22-match unbeaten run following a shock 4-2 defeat to ACF Fiorentina in their eighth match of the season, Garcia’s words appeared to have a soporific effect.
Roma were 2-0 down within 34 minutes on Sunday thanks to a brace from Mariano Izco. Despite Francesco Totti reducing the arrears three minutes later, further goals from Gonzalo Bergessio and Pablo Barrientos humiliated the Crociati.
Roma will host Juve next week at the Stadio Olimpico and Garcia said that” “Next week must be a festival of football, for Roma to show we’re happy and proud of what we’ve achieved this season.”
Elsewhere on Sunday, Torino and Parma boosted their hopes of European soccer next season with 1-0 and 2-0 wins over AC Chievo Verona and UC Sampdoria respectively.
Torino’s win in Verona kept them in sixth, the last spot offering a Europa League place via the Coppa.
Napoli, who are virtually assured a Champions League spot, won the Coppa on Saturday with a 3-1 victory over Fiorentina, who have nearly sealed a Europa League berth.
Torino hold a one-point lead over Parma, who moved up to seventh, and a three-point cushion on SS Lazio and Verona, who faced each other yesterday.
Also in Serie A on Sunday, AC Milan moved back into Europa League contention after shading a tight Milan derby in which a second-half header from Nigel De Jong gave them a 1-0 win over Inter.
It was Milan’s first derby success since April 2011, when coach Clarence Seedorf was still a player, to move up to provisional eighth, one behind Torino in the first Europa League qualifying spot, ahead of Verona’s visit to Lazio yesterday.
Earlier on Sunday, Udinese striker Antonio di Natale hit a brace in a 5-3 home win over AS Livorno, who dropped to bottom spot, with Catania moving the other way.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier