Juventus "will return to the top table of European football this Saturday" when it steps into Berlin's Olympiastadion to take on Barcelona in the Champions League final, according to Vivek Chaudhary of ESPN. But behind the likes of Andrea Pirlo, Giorgio Chiellini and Gianluigi Buffon "is another equally impressive team" that has "helped it get back on its feet" after it was demoted to Serie B and stripped of two Serie A titles in '06. Juventus' resurrection from the lowest point in its history has been led by club Chair Andrea Agnelli -- appointed in '10 "and part of the fourth generation of his family to run the club they have owned for more than 90 years." Agnelli "has initiated a tenacious business culture at Juventus that has been shaped by his background as an Anglophile and his days as an Oxford University student." Central to the club's revival "has been the building of the 41,000 capacity Juventus stadium: on the site of the old Stadio delle Alpi, making the Turin side the only one in Serie A to own their own ground." The new stadium "was actually commissioned before Agnelli's appointment but, in planning how it should operate, he and other Juventus officials visited Arsenal's Emirates Stadium and studied the success of other English clubs to understand how they maximise revenue from merchandise, drinks and other commercial ventures." Fausto Zanetton, a former banker who provides financial advice to a number of Italian football clubs, said, "Agnelli is a savvy businessman who has surrounded himself on the board with like-minded business brains. His focus has been all about reviving the Juve brand. Owning their own stadium has given them a huge advantage over their rivals and helped to make them, once again, one of Europe's strongest sides." Juventus is still in the red but, under Agnelli's stewardship, "losses have been cut by one-third over the past four years" to just under £45M ($69M), according to club accounts (ESPN, 6/2).
