Three times the charm for bitter rivals Juventus and Fiorentina

Fiorentina have shown they possess the ability to derail Juventus' steady march of success

Juventus' Fernando Llorente, left, fights for the ball with Fiorentina's Gonzalo Rodriguez during their Serie A match at the Artemio Franchi stadium in Florence on October 20, 2013. Giampiero Sposito / ReutersShow less

By the third week of March, it is safe to report, Juventus and Fiorentina will be sick of the sight of one another. In an 11-day period of intense eyeballing, they face as many as five shared hours on the pitch, across distinct competitions.

In an Italian season characterised by Juve’s apparent invulnerability, fate has conspired to examine, repeatedly, the champions’ potential Achilles’ heel.

Juve have been defeated once in the league all campaign, and the team who interrupted their serene progress to a third successive scudetto was Fiorentina, in devastating fashion.

On a topsy-turvy October afternoon in Tuscany, Juventus took a 2-0 lead into half time and then conceded four times within 14 minutes after the interval to lose 4-2.

The return fixture in Turin takes place on a day in which all four of the leading teams in the division are in direct confrontation.

Later, third-placed Napoli take on second-placed Roma. No gaps will be closed by Sunday’s fixtures, because it is not tight at the top of the table. But markers can be laid down.

A Napoli win would make Roma’s position look vulnerable over the 10 matches remaining.

A positive result for Fiorentina, in fourth, would keep a faint dream alive that they might still grasp a place in the Uefa Champions League next season.

More immediately, it would set the scene for the most resonant of the Europa League’s last-16 ties, the all-Serie A meeting between Juve and Fiorentina, with the first leg in Turin four days after the two clubs have meet at the same venue in the league. The Europa League return match is in Florence on March 20.

This is no ordinary, arbitrary, all-Italian clash. Into this trilogy of Juve-Fiorentina matches is packed not just the baggage of Juve’s greatest domestic setback of the past nine months, but decades of animosity, domestic and European.

Juve and Fiorentina have met in continental competition before, the 1990 Uefa Cup final, a tense meeting over two legs, won by Juventus, 3-1 on aggregate, in the build up to a World Cup staged in Italy.

Rancour coloured the preambles. Eight years previously, Juve had beaten Fiorentina to the scudetto on the last day of the season, amid controversy over a disallowed goal that would have secured the league for Fiorentina, an event that still animates the rivalry.

A few days after that Uefa Cup final, another chapter in the enmity led to rioting in the streets of Florence.

The cause was not the defeat but the predatory swoop made by Juve for Fiorentina’s best player of the time, Roberto Baggio, for a world-record price.

Baggio, who expressed little public enthusiasm for the transfer, was loved by Fiorentina fans and continued to be long after the protests. A year later, he left the field after a Fiorentina-Juventus match in his Juve kit but with a Fiorentina scarf around his neck.

Banners and chants will recall charged episodes like those, today and on the two Thursday evenings in the knock-out format that follow.

Italians without an affiliation to Juventus, though reconciled to Juve's steady march to the domestic crown, will watch with renewed interest if Fiorentina, the one team capable of beating the league-leaders in Serie A, can also pick out the other chink in the Juventus armour: their fragility in European contests.

Knocked out of the Champions League by Galatasaray in December, Juve head coach Antonio Conte is conscious that although he has built a commanding domestic force, his squad carry less swagger in Uefa competitions.

Fiorentina have already shown they have the flamboyance, even without the injured Giuseppe Rossi, to buckle the Juve machine.

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