Juventus defeated Milan 2-1 in the quarterfinals of the Coppa Italia on Wednesday which, unfortunately for Italian football, isn’t really news. Juventus have won five straight Serie A titles, and, even with the higher likelihood of upsets in knockout football, they’ve managed to win the Coppa Italia two straight years.
Their hegemony of Italian football makes a neutral viewer more apt to turn to other competitions, like The Great British Bake Off. But the romance of Italian football can still be found if you know where to look. You should be looking at Carlos Bacca.
The 30-year-old Colombian has got pride, he’s got power, he’s a badass mother who don’t take nothing off of nobody. Journeying from the second division of Venezuelan football to the Belgian top tier and finally finding recognition with Sevilla, Bacca might not be the highest caliber forward to have ever donned the jersey of the seven-time European champions. He’s not exactly Andriy Shevchenko or Marco van Basten, but you bet your ass he’ll get stuck in and sometimes score some goals.
While his inability “to create chances for himself” and his tendency to become “isolated from his team’s overall play” is cited from 14 different sources on his Wikipedia page, the boy will put the ball in the back of net with borderline regularity.
Milan lost to Juventus on Wednesday, but Carlos Bacca made art with his right leg. He became a flying machine from the imagination of Leonardo da Vinci, helicoptering in the air and reminding us, if only for a moment, that Italian football is still being played, much to the irritation of Juventus.
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