Leonardo Bonucci has had an emotional week already, by his own admission.
He captained Italy at Wembley Stadium on Tuesday night, took the honour conferred by the skipper’s armband to heart but acknowledged that leading his country at a fabled venue carried bittersweet feelings.
For the home side, Italy’s 1-1 draw with England was a useful World Cup preparation. For the Azzurri it was a session in shadow boxing.
“It will hit us in the summer that we are not part of the World Cup,” said Bonucci, one of a number of world-class footballers from a great football nation who can still scarcely believe they failed to reach Russia 2018.
This weekend, the Bonucci soul will be touched again by the sorts of forces his tough mask may struggle to conceal. Bonucci, six times an Italian champion in the colours of Juventus, will lead the opposition into the field at the Juventus stadium in a high-stakes Serie A collision.
It will seem eerie to be there in the colours of AC Milan, up against Juve on their own turf as a member, a figurehead of the club who in many respects are Juve’s fiercest domestic rivals.
Bonucci has thought about this fixture, this return to Turin a great deal since he took the decision, last summer, to move from Juventus to Milan, accept the challenge of leading a new-look rossoneri into a bold, ambitious new era and risk the opprobrium of Juventus supporters and indeed the mild surprise of long-term colleagues.
Juve collected a handsome €42 million (Dh190m) for the transfer of a defender already into his 31st year, a player whose accomplishments are spread thick across a broad skill-set: rugged stopper, tackler and man-marker as well as calm, precise passer out from the back.
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Last season, Bonucci occasionally had the impression his coach at Juventus, Max Allegri, held those qualities as slightly diminished. The pair had fallouts last season, and being drooped to the bench for an Uefa Champions League last-16 tie marked a turning point for Bonucci.
He sensed he wanted to move even after, restored to the team, he played in his second European Cup final in two years for Juve, and collected his sixth scudetto on the trot.
He always knew he would be judged at Milan according to precedents. The list of footballers who have crossed the electrified fence between the two most successful Italian clubs of Bonucci’s lifetime has some distinguished names on it.
He himself cited Andrea Pirlo’s switch. Pirlo left Milan, where he had won two European Cups, in 2011, released. Juve snapped him up, and there he answered emphatically any perception that he, at 32, had passed his peak. Pirlo had left Milan as a Serie A champion; at Juve he won the same title for the next four years.
Allegri himself was the last Milan coach to guide them to the league title. He now chases his fourth title as Juve’s mastermind, and, should he succeed, this may well rank as the toughest of them.
The champions have trailed a captivating Napoli for the majority of the campaign, but gleefully, ominously leapfrogged the challengers from the south earlier this month.
Bonucci has fortified himself. “From a personal point of view, Saturday will be unlike any game I have played before or may play in the future,” he said to reporters in London while on Italy duty.
“I spent seven great years at Juventus, won a lot with them and went through joy with and sometimes suffered with great colleagues who are still there. It will leave me with strong emotions, in head and heart. It will be intense.”
He will hear some scorn from the crowd, no doubt, and probably some generous acknowledgement of his Juve legacy. There are aspects of Bonucci’s authority the club miss, although Milan will have to scratch very hard to find frailities in Juve’s post-Bonucci defence.
The champions head towards April yet to concede a Serie A goal in all of 2018. Their clean sheet now spreads over 14 consecutive hours of football. Only something special, or perhaps just lucky, will pierce it.
The story in numbers
18
This is how many recognised sects Lebanon is home to, along with about four million citizens
450,000
More than this many Palestinian refugees are registered with UNRWA in Lebanon, with about 45 per cent of them living in the country’s 12 refugee camps
1.5 million
There are just under 1 million Syrian refugees registered with the UN, although the government puts the figure upwards of 1.5m
73
The percentage of stateless people in Lebanon, who are not of Palestinian origin, born to a Lebanese mother, according to a 2012-2013 study by human rights organisation Frontiers Ruwad Association
18,000
The number of marriages recorded between Lebanese women and foreigners between the years 1995 and 2008, according to a 2009 study backed by the UN Development Programme
77,400
The number of people believed to be affected by the current nationality law, according to the 2009 UN study
4,926
This is how many Lebanese-Palestinian households there were in Lebanon in 2016, according to a census by the Lebanese-Palestinian dialogue committee
World Test Championship table
1 India 71 per cent
2 New Zealand 70 per cent
3 Australia 69.2 per cent
4 England 64.1 per cent
5 Pakistan 43.3 per cent
6 West Indies 33.3 per cent
7 South Africa 30 per cent
8 Sri Lanka 16.7 per cent
9 Bangladesh 0
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Dubai World Cup Carnival card:
6.30pm: Handicap (Turf) | US$175,000 | 2,410 metres
7.05pm: UAE 1000 Guineas Trial Conditions (Dirt) | $100,000 | 1,400m
7.40pm: Handicap (T) | $145,000 | 1,000m
8.15pm: Dubawi Stakes Group 3 (D) | $200,000 | 1,200m
8.50pm: Singspiel Stakes Group 3 (T) | $200,000 | 1,800m
9.25pm: Handicap (T) | $175,000 | 1,400m
THE BIO
Occupation: Specialised chief medical laboratory technologist
Age: 78
Favourite destination: Always Al Ain “Dar Al Zain”
Hobbies: his work - “ the thing which I am most passionate for and which occupied all my time in the morning and evening from 1963 to 2019”
Other hobbies: football
Favorite football club: Al Ain Sports Club
Why the Tourist Club?
Originally, The Club (which many people chose to call the “British Club”) was the only place where one could use the beach with changing rooms and a shower, and get refreshments.
In the early 1970s, the Government of Abu Dhabi wanted to give more people a place to get together on the beach, with some facilities for children. The place chosen was where the annual boat race was held, which Sheikh Zayed always attended and which brought crowds of locals and expatriates to the stretch of beach to the left of Le Méridien and the Marina.
It started with a round two-storey building, erected in about two weeks by Orient Contracting for Sheikh Zayed to use at one these races. Soon many facilities were planned and built, and members were invited to join.
Why it was called “Nadi Al Siyahi” is beyond me. But it is likely that one wanted to convey the idea that this was open to all comers. Because there was no danger of encountering alcohol on the premises, unlike at The Club, it was a place in particular for the many Arab expatriate civil servants to join. Initially the fees were very low and membership was offered free to many people, too.
Eventually there was a skating rink, bowling and many other amusements.
Frauke Heard-Bey is a historian and has lived in Abu Dhabi since 1968.
