It was a tweet considered not to be in good taste. At least not in Florence.
Moments after Juventus' 1-0 win against their team in Turin early on Sunday afternoon, the champions' official account posted the following message to its followers: "Fiorentina good for lunch. We'll see each again in four days time, for dinner."
The context here is culinary. A bistecca alla fiorentina is a delicious, juicy grilled steak traditionally accompanied by rosemary flavoured olive oil and a bowl of white Tuscan fagioli beans. Yum.
Yet Fiorentina supporters will be hoping Juventus get their just desserts when they play each other again in the first leg of their Europa League round of 16 tie on Thursday night. But their response wasn't confined to that. Asked if lo stile Juve -- the style and class with which the Old Lady conducted herself in the past -- still existed, Giancarlo Antognoni, Fiorentina's paramour, told La Gazzetta dello Sport "In today's football no-one has style. Style is lacking on everyone's part."
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This rivalry didn't cover itself in glory on Sunday. Anti-Semitic chants were heard in the Curva Sud of the Juventus Stadium. Named after Gaetano Scirea, himself the greatest exemplar of the stile now feared lost, his widow Mariella asked that it no longer be called that.
In the away end as the game drew to a close, a Fiorentina supporter unrolled a poster of Giorgio Chiellini, their former player, now at Juventus. On it in black pen was "-39! Heysel!" -- a reference to those Juventus fans who went to the 1985 European Cup final in Brussels and tragically never came back.
Rest assured, action is being taken by the relevant authorities.
"Events like this have no colours [not black and white, not purple]. They are chants and banners that should be condemned regardless," Chiellini said at the release of a book about Scirea. "It's necessary to take example from the name the Curva carries and the values that Scirea represents. The spectacle of football mustn't be ruined by a minority, whose way of expressing themselves doesn’t correspond to that of the majority of fans."
Juventus president Andrea Agnelli's stance was also dignified. He described Mariella Scirea's reaction as "legitimate" and added that "it takes a strong and unified message against all forms of discrimination."
Overall, Juventus can't be accused of complacency on this issue. Only last week, Agnelli was invited to give a presentation by UNESCO at their headquarters in Paris to discuss the club's "Kick Out Racism" and "Play With Me" social integration projects. It must be of great frustration to see them undermined by a small number of idiots whose actions are largely beyond his control and only bring shame on the club.
The same goes for Fiorentina, another club that has introduced a series of initiatives down the years aimed at promoting civility: the Terzo Tempo and the Cartellino Viola to name just two.
Though Sunday's game was a narrow 1-0 win for Juventus, off-field events only served to inflame tensions between the two sides.
But to bring this back to this particular rivalry, there's also an obligation to "lower the tones," a responsibility to not add fuel to a fire that started on Oct. 7, 1928, when Juventus humiliated Fiorentina 11-0, flared up again on Feb. 22, 1953, when the Tuscans went down to nine men and were shown no mercy as the Torinese ran up the score to 8-0 and that really took hold in the 1980s and raged into the '90s.
Sunday's tweet may have looked harmless -- it was amusing to some neutrals and Juventini -- but given how prone people are to over-react on the sides of this divide and blow things up, you could be forgiven for thinking that posting it was akin to lighting a match in a petrol station.
Old burns smarted again: like those of '82 when Fiorentina, level on points with Juventus going into the final day, had a Ciccio Graziani goal disallowed in Cagliari where they were held to a 0-0 draw. Meanwhile, their rivals were awarded a penalty in Catanzaro which Liam Brady showed incredible nerve to score, clinching a 1-0 win and the scudetto.
"I saw [the Juventus president Giampiero] Boniperti eating nuts in the stands. He looked like an American mafioso," the film director and fan of the Viola, Franco Zeffirelli, famously said. It caused a storm.
The 'sale' of Roberto Baggio from Fio to Juve is just one contentious chapter in the sides' history.
Rather than calm it down, Fiorentina's then-president, Count Ranieri Pontello, dismissed Juventus' owner, distinguished international playboy and curate of the FIAT empire Gianni Agnelli, as nothing more than a "metal mechanic." He'd later go cap in hand to him. This was between 1989 and 1990. Pontello needed the money and wanted a get-out at Fiorentina. So he agreed to sell Roberto Baggio to Agnelli. And while briefing journalists that it was the player who had demanded the move, misrepresenting him as a mercenary, he then sold the club claiming he was disillusioned by it all.
Clever, really. Pontello has a lot to answer for. There were riots in the streets of Florence after Baggio's exit. He was cast as a traitor when he was really anything but. Baggio didn’t want to leave Fiorentina. He showed his respect for the club by refusing to take a penalty on his return to the city with Juventus, picking up a purple scarf and draping it around his neck as he left. His last game for them, incidentally, was the second leg of the 1990 UEFA Cup final, the outcome of which further contributed to the "urban warfare" that followed Baggio's departure.
Minds may well be turning to that final ahead of Thursday's game, for Juventus were Fiorentina's opponents. Current coach Antonio Conte recalled supporting his belovedBianconeri that night. His assistant Angelo Alessio played. It was the first all-Italian final in a UEFA competition. Juventus won the first leg 3-1 in the last game ever played at the Stadio Comunale. Interviewed after the match Celeste Pin, the Fiorentina defender, told RAI their opponents were "thieves."
Controversially, the second leg was held at a neutral venue following the closure of the Artemio Franchi after incidents in the semifinal with Werder Bremen. Fiorentina wanted it played in nearby Perugia. Instead it was hosted in Avellino, a city considered a hotbed of Juventus support. They got to play at home twice, the Fiorentina fans say. A stalemate meant that Juventus lifted the cup.
Speaking on Wednesday, Conte expressed his wish that fans support their own team and concentrate on that rather than seeking to offend their rivals. It's a noble sentiment in light of Sunday's events and the bickering of the recent past: the courting of Cesare Prandelli in 2010 to the attempted hijacking of the Dimitar Berbatov transfer in 2012, the Della Valles referring to Andrea Agnelli and Lapo Elkann as "nightclubbers" and John Elkann as "an imbecile," or the "machine guns" Carlos Tevez and Paul Pogba pulled at the Artemio Franchi in October, using Gabriel Batistuta's celebration only to themselves get whacked and lose in Florence for the first time since 1998.
These are two clubs who play great football. Let that do the talking. "It could be a great advert for Italy and Europe the game between Juve and Fiorentina," Conte said.
Indeed it could. Let it be.
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