What on earth was going through the minds of the Juventus board when they rubber-stamped their new badge? Not very much I would wager. Maybe just a faint breeze.

It’s one thing when a club updates and refreshes their club crest – modernisation is understandable – but it’s another when they completely massacre it.

I’m looking at the new image as I type this and I am struggling to find a single redeeming feature. Well, I suppose they did spell Juventus correctly. And they got the colours right.

This is the sort of thing only of a bunch of marketing people with no love for football could come up with, probably while sitting down on beanbags, sipping frappuccinos and trying to be trendy.

We are talking about a football club with 119 years of history and tradition behind them. One of the most successful clubs in Italian football and a giant of the European game.

And they now have a badge that would look considerably more at home on a packet of condoms than a football shirt. (If you look at the logo in a certain way, it has more than a hint of penis about it).

We can’t lay all the blame for this travesty at the feet of the image consultants that came up with it. The club’s owners, as I said before, would have had the final say and rubber stamped the new logo. It might have helped if they actually had a look at it before they did so.

Of course, Juve’s decision to swap a good old fashioned badge for what looks like a cheap henna tattoo is merely part of the ongoing process of turning football clubs into ‘products’ and, by default, their badges into ‘logos’.

But even so, Juventus have gone to an extreme.

Everton, for example, changed their badge a year or two ago. But they kept enough of the old style and content to ensure that you wouldn’t mistake their new crest for a toothpaste logo. Within a split second you know what you are looking at belongs to a football club.

The new Juventus logo, on the other hand, could be absolutely anything beginning with J. If it wasn’t black and white with the word Juventus at the top, you wouldn’t have a clue what brand was being promoted.

Maybe it’s just me. Maybe the majority of Juventus fans love it (although most I have spoken to think it is bloody awful). Maybe I am just being old fashioned.

One Juve-supporting friend of mine tried to justify it by saying it gives a common identity to the Juventus brand across its restaurants, shops and other commercial ventures.

But I don’t care about that other stuff because Juventus is, first and foremost, a football club. Without the football, none of that peripheral crap would exist. And I think most of their fans will agree that this betrayal of their proud history is a step too far in the commercialisation of their team.

Far be it from me to stand in the way of progress. But what Juventus have done is take a proud football emblem and turn it into a weird, meaningless symbol. They are the Prince of the football world.

Hopefully other clubs in Italy and around Europe won’t follow suit. But you know for a fact that if it helps Juventus boost their revenue, they probably will…

Safety first

The most disturbing thing I heard last week was that Manchester United have become the first club in England to appoint a full-time counter-terrorism manager.

It is a sign of the times we are living in that any football club should feel the need to introduce this sort of role.

Juventus now have a badge that would look considerably more at home on a packet of condoms than a football shirt

Having said that, with crowds of 70,000 filing into Old Trafford every other week, and the club’s global profile, United’s ground is an obvious target for terrorists looking for maximum impact and exposure.

In the good old days the worst a club would have to deal with in terms of crowd safety was the odd pitch invasion, a few drunken fans and groups of lobotomised hooligans.

But, as the attack on the Stade de France in 2015 showed, there are much more evil forces at work these days.

As sad as it is that society has driven football to this, United should be commended for taking the initiative. Now the Premier League should think about making it compulsory.

LVG should get down and dirty

Wouldn’t it be nice if once, just once, a big name manager decided to round off his career with a proper, meaty, manly challenge?

Louis Van Gaal – displaying the aptitude for decision making that made his time at Old Trafford such a thumping success – last week announced his retirement on Tuesday before un-retiring on Wednesday.

But whether or not the former Manchester United boss actually does manage again apparently ‘depends on the offers’ he gets.

LVG won titles in Holland, Spain and Germany, a Champions League trophy with Ajax and numerous other cups in what has been a mostly illustrious career. He even managed an FA Cup triumph during his ill-fated spell in England.

And on that basis you would imagine that he would only be tempted out of non-retirement (‘sabbatical’ if you prefer the official buzzword) if one of Europe’s big clubs dangled a managerial carrot in front of him. Or if maybe one of China’s new super clubs offered him €20 million a year plus two-thirds of Taiwan as a bonus for winning the league.

But let’s be honest, the man has already proved himself a good manager at the top level. He’s won all the trophies he needs and he isn’t short of money either – his wage at Man United was apparently £6 million a year and he got paid for the final year of his contract even though he has been sat in Holland twiddling his thumbs.

So wouldn’t it be great if, instead of looking for another high-profile job, he were to take over at a club that actually needs some real managing – a struggling lower-league team or a sleeping giant maybe.

True, he wouldn’t be challenging for league titles or managing in Europe. But he has already been there, done that and bought the T-shirt. So why not do something that other top managers never do and take on a bit of football’s dirty work? Give a bit back to the game, make a difference where it matters and maybe become a legend in the process.

What sort of club do I have in mind? Well, to pick an easy example, how about Nottingham Forest? Sleeping giants don’t come much bigger than former European champions who are now involved in a battle to avoid relegation to the third tier of English football. I don’t think they would turn him down if he offered his services.

It’s easy walking into a top team and making them better. But the test of true managerial greatness, in my opinion at least, would be walking into a crap team and making then decent again.

Of course, it will never happen. These managers have their ‘reputation’ to think of and they wrongly assume that if they failed at a club like Forest, that is all they would be remembered for.

But, to my mind at least, I would have nothing but the utmost respect for a manager who, in his twilight years, turned his back on the big time for a bit of genuine blood and guts football management.

sportscolumnist@timesofmalta.com
Twitter: @maltablade