After the international break,
Atlético Madrid faced Valencia in Matchday 29 of the league.
Away from home,
the Bat Wing Army's fighting spirit was beyond question. They needed to fight for a top-four place.
This season, the battle for fourth in La Liga was even more intense than in the Premier League.
Valencia, Real Sociedad, Málaga, Levante, Athletic Bilbao...
The biggest gap between these teams was only four points.
Any of them still had a real chance of finishing fourth.
So at Mestalla,
Atlético Madrid did not have an easy time.
Even in the 89th minute, the score was still 1-1.
Then in the 90th minute,
Atlético Madrid won a free kick in the attacking third.
Thanks to Shane Carter's direct free kick goal,
Atlético scraped together all three points away from home.
After this match,
Atlético Madrid had to turn their attention to the first leg of the Champions League quarterfinals.
They were heading to Turin to challenge Juventus.
This season, Atlético Madrid had really gone head-to-head with Serie A clubs...
Champions League matches were, of course, attracting huge attention.
And now that Juventus were Italy's only remaining team,
they were under even greater scrutiny in their own country.
The Italian media were all giving Conte advice, telling him how to beat Atlético Madrid.
The reporters were full of words, sharp as knives on the page, as if they knew everything.
They could teach rocket science from the top, then give advice on agriculture at the bottom, and still sound like football tacticians in between.
In short,
that was the value of the "unofficial king of the press."
But Conte knew better.
Listening to those reporters would get you killed before you even knew how.
Aside from constantly offering Conte tactical advice,
the Italian media also dragged Juventus' young star Paul Pogba into a comparison with Shane Carter.
Pogba was actually a year older than Shane.
And he had become famous earlier too.
He had already attracted attention back in 2010, when he led Manchester United's U19 side to the Youth FA Cup title.
That U19 side had several promising players.
There was attacking midfielder Jesse Lingard, and goalkeeper Henderson.
All of them were seen as young talents who might one day break into the England national team.
Don't be fooled by Lingard's later reputation as "Zero King"—
at Carrington's youth academy, he was basically "Little Messi," able to dribble past entire teams on his own.
But in that squad,
the most closely watched player was still Pogba.
He was well over 1.9 meters tall.
He had ball feel comparable to Ronaldinho.
His physical duels were very strong.
His flexibility was terrifyingly good.
His long passing was precise.
His long-range shooting was also accurate.
Ferguson saw him as Scholes' successor.
Unfortunately, his agent was Mino Raiola.
Ferguson's original plan was to hold Pogba's ego in check first,
and let him work his way up from the bottom.
After all, there were plenty of players with talent.
Only a tiny fraction would ever fully realize it.
On player development,
Ferguson was an expert.
He was the kind of manager who could turn Cristiano Ronaldo into one of the best players in the world.
Just from pure talent alone, Ronaldo and Messi did have a gap in some areas, and Ronaldo could even be said to fall short of players like Ronaldinho.
Under the normal path,
Pogba would have developed under Ferguson's guidance.
But would Raiola let Ferguson do that?
A few years as a junior at Manchester United?
Impossible.
A player with that kind of talent had to make big money from the very start.
When Raiola tore up Manchester United's contract offer for Pogba in front of Ferguson, and said, "This is a contract not even dogs would sign," Ferguson completely lost it.
He immediately declared Raiola the most unwelcome man at Carrington.
But Raiola didn't care.
He took Pogba to Italy.
As it turned out,
the Italian stage really was perfect for Pogba.
Especially at Juventus.
With Pirlo and Marchisio cleaning up behind him,
Pogba could let loose and unleash his attacking talent.
If the Golden Boy award last year had belonged to Shane without question,
then this year's Golden Boy was unquestionably Pogba.
"This is a duel between two top young midfield geniuses!" — that is how Tuttosport framed it in its coverage.
That report made its way to Spain.
Spanish media nearly laughed out loud.
Marca responded: Italian media are actually comparing Pogba and Shane? From the numbers alone, we can easily see that the two are not even in the same class as players; the only thing close between them is age.
Fans also thought the Italian media were making a fool of themselves.
Even French media, Pogba's own country's press, were a bit embarrassed to comment on the matter.
"Young midfield genius duel"—Tuttosport really had the nerve to write that.
Before the match,
many Juventus players mentioned Shane Carter in interviews.
Pirlo: Shane is a phenomenal player. We faced each other at the European Championship, and he's even stronger now than he was then. Honestly, I've never seen a young player improve this quickly. His future is that of a historically great number one midfielder.
Marchisio: Playing against Shane Carter will put us under enormous pressure.
Chiellini: When I see Shane, I always think of our failure at the European Championship. I hope God will be on our side this time...
From Juventus players' interviews,
you can tell exactly how wary they were of Shane.
At the pre-match press conference,
Conte would naturally be asked how Juventus planned to defend Shane Carter.
"We'll make good use of our home advantage. Defending Shane is certainly one of our key tasks."
Conte obviously wasn't going to reveal his tactics in a press conference.
But he also couldn't drastically alter Juventus' system just to stop Shane Carter.
Conte had built Juventus into a 3-5-2 system.
Its foundation was defense and counterattack.
The three center-backs—Barzagli, Bonucci, and Chiellini—were all strong players, all Italians, and all shared the same tactical philosophy.
And Buffon in goal needed no introduction.
He was one of the leading candidates for the title of the world's best goalkeeper.
On the counterattack,
Pirlo's passing was extremely sharp, and Pogba also had major influence in attack.
The forward duo of Quagliarella and Vučinić also complemented each other well.
This system had brought Juventus back to the summit of Serie A.
They were now the clear favorites to win the league title this season—
Inter were in chaos and couldn't even finish in the top four, AC Milan were inconsistent and plagued by conflict between coach and board, and Napoli, the team currently competing with Juventus, simply weren't strong enough.
So for Conte,
since the Serie A title was looking fairly secure,
his eyes were naturally on the Champions League.
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