Pippo Inzaghi, once a Juventus goalscorer, now manager of Benevento, wanted the achievement recognised. “Taking four points off Juventus isn’t something that happens very often,” Inzaghi beamed after Benevento’s 1-0 win proved October’s draw with the champions had been no fluke.
Benevento are 16th in Serie A, and Sunday's victory counted as another lowlight of a dispiriting month for Juventus, freshly eliminated from the last-16 of the Champions League by Porto. It also came with a nasty equation, Juve left marooned at 10 points behind Italian league leaders Inter Milan, with 11 matches left.
Barring an Inter collapse and Juventus’s novice manager, Andrea Pirlo, rediscovering the formula his three predecessors applied to always take Juve to the top of the table by season’s end, an era is over. Pirlo is set to become the first Juventus manager in almost a decade not to win the scudetto.
Benevento. Verona. Bottom-of-the-table Crotone. Juventus have dropped points against all of them. Fiorentina, 14th, beat them 3-0.
If Inzaghi justifiably regards Benevento’s four points against the serial champions as a collection to savour, he may soon be trumped. Napoli, who have already beaten Juve at home in the league, come to Turin just after the current international break.
Much hinges on that visit. Napoli, fifth, are just two points behind Juventus in third. The real battle for Pirlo is to ensure Juventus make the top four, and the next Champions League.
Even if he achieves that, there are no guarantees he keeps the job. His immediate predecessor, Maurizio Sarri was sacked when a last-16 exit from the European Cup was deemed a failure.
The manager before Sarri, Max Allegri, was shown the door because he had only claimed two runners-up medals in the Champions League. Serie A was a given for both: At this stage in 2019-20, Sarri had Juventus on 11 points more than they have now. The season before – Allegri’s last of five in charge – they were 20 points better off.
It all adds up to steep decline. Nor can it be soothed by that helpful term ‘transition’. “Transition is not a word that exists at Juventus,” Fabio Paratici, the club’s football director, said after the loss at Benevento, while reiterating that Cristiano Ronaldo, bought in 2018 and contracted until 2022 explicitly to deliver a European title, would not be leaving this summer.
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Gallery: Liverpool's horror run at home
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But there is no successful sporting institution where transition is not a key part of strategy and this has been a challenging time for the best strategists, the richest buyers, the most accomplished fitness specialists.
Pirlo, who had never coached at a significant level before last August, was thrust into a calendar compacted by the pandemic, a transfer market whose values have been scrambled by the economic impact of the Covid-19 crisis, and he was obliged to make his mark in a Juventus stadium, traditionally a fortress, without spectators.
To harness momentum – and nine league titles on the trot, Juve’s sequence, is some momentum – under those circumstances requires agility. Even the most experienced tacticians have found the unique circumstances of 2020-21 taxing.
In the Premier League, another champion is about to be deposed. Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool were the definition of momentum before the crash.
The reasons for their drop in form are well chronicled: fatigue-related injuries, concentrated in specific areas of the squad, notably central defence; a game plan built on high-energy press undermined by a sapping, tauter fixture-list; an empty Anfield, where for much of a 68-match unbeaten league run dating back to April 2017 there was a rousing noise few arenas can match.
In the last two months, an empty Anfield has been a three-point takeaway kiosk for Burnley, Brighton, Fulham, and – a modern rarity – even Everton.
The cost for the soon-to-be ex-English champions is heavy. Liverpool are five points off the Champions League places, with nine matchdays left.
Spain meanwhile anticipates a dethroning of Real Madrid. The 2019-20 champions’ post-lockdown momentum – 10 wins on the trot – of last summer has not been replicated, even if, with injury problems easing, they have lately turned harder to beat. The gap to Liga leaders Atletico Madrid, whose last title came in 2014, remains at six points.
Paris Saint-Germain, French champions seven times in the last eight years, face an unexpected joust with Lille, with whom they share the leadership of Ligue 1.
In Portugal, the long-running duopoly of Porto and Benfica, is being torn apart, as Sporting line up their first title since 2002, nestled on a 10-point lead over champions Porto.
That’s a situation that hardly comforts Pirlo. The same Porto, a distant second in Portugal, knocked Juventus out of Europe, in a tie where Porto spent the last hour reduced to 10 men.
Sun jukebox
Rufus Thomas, Bear Cat (The Answer to Hound Dog) (1953)
This rip-off of Leiber/Stoller’s early rock stomper brought a lawsuit against Phillips and necessitated Presley’s premature sale to RCA.
Elvis Presley, Mystery Train (1955)
The B-side of Presley’s final single for Sun bops with a drummer-less groove.
Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two, Folsom Prison Blues (1955)
Originally recorded for Sun, Cash’s signature tune was performed for inmates of the titular prison 13 years later.
Carl Perkins, Blue Suede Shoes (1956)
Within a month of Sun’s February release Elvis had his version out on RCA.
Roy Orbison, Ooby Dooby (1956)
An essential piece of irreverent juvenilia from Orbison.
Jerry Lee Lewis, Great Balls of Fire (1957)
Lee’s trademark anthem is one of the era’s best-remembered – and best-selling – songs.
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
How Alia's experiment will help humans get to Mars
Alia’s winning experiment examined how genes might change under the stresses caused by being in space, such as cosmic radiation and microgravity.
Her samples were placed in a machine on board the International Space Station. called a miniPCR thermal cycler, which can copy DNA multiple times.
After the samples were examined on return to Earth, scientists were able to successfully detect changes caused by being in space in the way DNA transmits instructions through proteins and other molecules in living organisms.
Although Alia’s samples were taken from nematode worms, the results have much bigger long term applications, especially for human space flight and long term missions, such as to Mars.
It also means that the first DNA experiments using human genomes can now be carried out on the ISS.
The White Lotus: Season three
Creator: Mike White
Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell
Rating: 4.5/5
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