A night to remember!

August 5, 1999
Juventus Official Site

For Alessandro Del Piero this was a night he will never forget, but one he will never want to repeat. Only Del Piero himself knows quite what kind of waters have passed under the bridge linking a November afternoon in Udine with a 37-minute merry dance with Russian outfit Rostselmash. He told reporters that there was nothing to compare to the emotion he felt as he walked back onto the field of play. Forgetting debut appearances and goals in football’s most celebrated competitions, all to be cherished for many different reasons, forgetting Serie A and the Champions’ League, this was the moment.

The sense of anticipation was tangible. The football circus had gathered to watch his every movement, the public urged him on, his team-mates applauded him. Alex is good at hiding his feelings but you just need to remember his gesture at the end of the match to realise how much this meant to him. "One of the opposition wanted to swap shirts with me, but I said I wouldn’t. I wanted to keep it as something to remember the game by."

The day before the match, rather than single out anyone in particular, Alex had expressed his gratefulness for all the messages of support he had received in the last few months. On the day after his comeback game he referred back to Ferrara’s gesture. "When Conte left the pitch he handed the captain’s armband to his vice-captain Ciro, who promptly came over to give it to me. That was a wonderful and spontaneous gesture, but there's only one vice-captain and that's him."

The fact that he played so well, as well as setting up Inzaghi and scoring himself, should be no real surprise. "It was what I expected at this stage of my preparations, I know that I still have room for improvement. It was an important signal for people who don’t believe in what they don’t see, and that’s the way it should be. I’m glad I made the right choice when I set up Inzaghi, that I didn’t try to finish it off myself and didn’t dribble, but passed to someone in a goalscoring position."

It was a real match in every sense of the word. "Bessmertnyi’s foul, which earned him a red card, was proof of that. The Russians wanted to play well and they gave their all right to the final whistle. As far as they were concerned I was just another player the same as the others."

His aims are still the same. "I’ve got twenty four days to be fully match fit for the beginning of the season. Before then we have the two legs of the Intertoto final in which I will definitely play a part. Together with the medical team and Ancelotti we’ll decide the how and when."
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