Arturo Vidal left the Juventus Stadium on Wednesday night with a souvenir. He carried it under his arm. "I'm taking the ball home with me!!!" he tweeted. "Forza Juve!!!!" Uploaded in accompaniment was a photo of Vidal the proud father with his son Alonso, dressed in Juventus' pink away shirt from the season before last.
It showed Vidal in front of a Christmas tree holding the signed ball and with his son giving a thumbs-up. Santa had come ahead of schedule. It was an early present. A couple more are expected between now and Dec. 25: a baby sister for Alonso and a new contract for Papa. But the ball will do for now. It held a special significance.
Vidal had scored a hat trick with it in the Champions League against FC Copenhagen. "It's my first tripletta," he said with a smile in the mixed zone afterward. It was the first that any Juventus player had scored in the competition since Pippo Inzaghi struck three times in a memorable 4-4 draw with Hamburg in the group stage in 2000. Only Omar Sivori, Paolo Rossi, Michael Laudrup and Alessandro Del Piero had also done it in the club's storied history. "I'm proud," Vidal said.
People can and will scoff at the opponent, but remember Sivori's came away at Wiener Sport Club, Rossi's in Finland at Ilves and Laudrup's against Valur from Iceland. More important ones have been scored. It's enough to recall Juventus' run to the Champions League final in 1998. Inzaghi's first came in the second leg of their quarterfinal against Valeri Lobanovsky's Dynamo Kyiv. Del Piero then hit another in the first leg of the semifinals a fortnight later against the Monaco of David Trezeguet and Thierry Henry.
Even so, Vidal's was not without significance relative to the circumstances Juventus found themselves in ahead of Wednesday's game. His team was bottom of Group B and still without a win. There could be no more slipups if qualifying for the last 16 were to remain in Juventus' hands. Thanks to Vidal, it's now well within reach.
Twice he scored from the penalty spot. One is pressure enough. Two can make you second-guess yourself. Has the goalkeeper sussed you out? Do you go the same way? As it happened, Vidal did but not because he has a favourite spot. "For the second penalty, I watched the keeper, and when I saw him take a step to his right I decided to go where I went for the first one," he said. That's a player in complete control -- able to stay cool, adjust if needed and still execute.
And how Juventus needed him to. FC Copenhagen had equalised moments earlier. The Old Lady was making things difficult for herself again. Vidal spared her blushes. He got Juventus back in front and then put the game beyond any doubt with the goal of the game. Paul Pogba served up an alley-oop, and Vidal jumped, got some hang time and looped a header up and over Johan Wiland in the Copenhagen goal.
It was his 32nd in 99 games for Juventus. To put that figure into some kind of perspective, it's one more than Zinedine Zidane managed in five years in Turin. Vidal has been there for just two and a bit. No one at the club has scored more than him in that time, not even the strikers, Fabio Quagliarella (29) and Mirko Vucinic (25). He’s been putting the forwards to shame.
The top scorer last season, Vidal was not expected to be so in this one. After all, Juventus' long pursuit of a so-called "Top Player" -- someone capable of scoring 20 to 25 goals a campaign -- finally ended this summer with the signing of Carlos Tevez. He's lived up to the billing, finding the net seven times in all competitions. Vidal, though, has already got 10 and remains their most decisive player.
Some might query that. What about Andrea Pirlo, they ask? Make no mistake, he is fundamental to Juventus and was the hinge on which the balance of power swung in Serie A in 2011-12. But this team plays more in Vidal's image than Pirlo's. No one -- perhaps with the exception of Tevez, though he has been at the club only a short while -- better expresses Antonio Conte's hard-running, lung-bursting, "eat grass" mentality than he does.
"He runs for four players," Claudio Marchisio observed.
"If I had to go into battle, Vidal would be the first player I'd take with me," Conte added. His nickname certainly isn't El Guerrero for nothing.
So highly did Conte come to rate Vidal after his signing from Bayer Leverkusen for 12.5 million euros in 2011 that he was prepared to compromise on what many regarded to be his favourite system, the 4-2-4 that he got Bari and Siena promoted with, instead experimenting with a 4-2-3-1 before alternating between a 4-3-3 and 3-5-2 in order to accommodate him.
"We soon realised that Vidal was a really important player, so I changed the formation," Conte admitted.
What has subsequently become apparent, however, is that Vidal can play almost anywhere. "The only position I haven't played in is in goal," he joked Wednesday. With Andrea Barzagli out injured and Leonardo Bonucci and Angelo Ogbonna both suspended, Vidal played centre-back against Livorno at the weekend, and not for the first time. So well did he do in a 2-0 win that Conte argued that he has a future as a defender. In his opinion, Vidal was more than a Top Player. He was a "Tutt Player," an Everything Player, a Total Footballer.
Reflecting on that, Juventus great Zibi Boniek, who played in many different roles while in Turin, commented: "It's no small thing. Not everyone has the intelligence to change position. If you know how to play everywhere, it means that you've watched your teammates and studied how they move. Like a good actor, you need imagination too.
"In my day, strikers earned a lot more than defenders, who'd complain about it. In the dressing room, I'd say: 'Lads, you only know how to mark. We have to tackle, pass, dribble and score goals. It's not easy.' If you've been an attacker, defending is child's play. You know how strikers move and can predict their movements. If you were to put [Francesco] Totti and [Marco] Borriello in defence, they'd do well. If you were to put [Mehdi] Benatia and [Leandro] Castan in attack, it would be a tragedy."
It's not as simple as that, of course. As Boniek says, you need to be intelligent. La Repubblica compared Vidal with Lothar Matthaus. Bayern Munich perhaps saw Vidal as the latest successor to Matthaus when they arranged to sign him in 2011 only for the player, according to their version of events, to go back on his word and put pen to paper with Juventus instead.
How angry they were about that speaks of how highly they regarded Vidal. They knew they had missed out on a great player, someone considered worthy of a place in a team that would go on to win the treble the season after.
Juventus are expected to make Vidal their highest-paid player in the next week or so. A five-year deal is on the table, and his intention is to sign. Keeping him is essential. When it was mooted that Juventus might sell Vidal last summer and use the windfall to strengthen across the board -- like they did by cashing in on Zidane and Inzaghi in 2001 -- Conte let it be known that, were it to happen, he would seriously consider his own position.
Vidal was Serie A's best player last season. As with Juan Mata, he was a conspicuous absentee from the Ballon d'Or shortlist, an omission that puzzles and baffles. Other, less political rankings had Vidal up where he deserves. A study into the 20 most valuable players at next summer's World Cup published by the Brazilian sport business site Pluri Consultoria had Vidal at No. 19, with an estimated value of 41.7 million euros. He is without doubt among the world's elite midfielders, and after winning two Scudetti in a row, maybe even already among the grandi Juventini too.
Interviewed by Tuttosport, Juventus' penalty hero from the 1996 Champions League final Vladimir Jugovic said: "There isn’t a player from the past [at Juventus] like Vidal. ... Vidal is Vidal.
"He’s the thermometer of this side. When he plays well, the team expresses itself at its highest level too. He is the motor, a really impressive midfielder.”
For Juventus supporters, he is simply King Arturo. Every other Sunday, they watch the throne. All hail him. They are his loyal subjects. Opponents are made to kneel before him. When Vidal signs that contract, expect shouts of "Long live the King!"