The Soccer Coach

Johann Aif is an unusual European soccer-star who has to now wrestle with gossip and post-career challenges as he takes the helm of a very diorama-like Italian club-soccer team!

Johann Aif had a very successful soccer career playing for achieving club teams in Spain and England and then for his Dutch national side in the World Cup. However, his third World Cup appearance was plagued by speculations that he had marriage problems because of an extra-marital affair, causing him to sit out for most of the games and deal with personal and family issue back in Holland! After this final World Cup for the talented Aif, the world soccer celebrity was offered the chance to coach the Italian Serie A team Juventus. Aif took the opportunity and in his first press-conference about his new job, he made a light-hearted comment about Juventus' referee-like black-and-white stripe team uniforms: "I'll be the head of a team of referee-looking soccer athletes, which is an honor and a parody simultaneously."

Aif had an unusual background. He grew up working on the streets in the Netherlands after his parents were killed in a plane crash. He had to raise himself and worked odd-jobs and while doing so apparently picked up the amateur interest of playing street-soccer with Dutch youngsters. He attended secondary-school with the help of his orphanage-center counselor and then was admitted into a respectable Dutch college where he played soccer and became the team's captain. He met his girlfriend-then-wife Elana while at college and decided he'd play professional soccer after graduating. He married Elana and accepted a roster-position on the English Premier League team Chelsea. While playing for Chelsea, Aif developed his unusual interest and talent in coordinating 'free-form team play' which was conducive to a special and new brand of exciting and fluid soccer!

Now that Aif was the manager of Juventus, his press-agents wanted him to firstly deal with the society/gazette scandals and gossip about his extra-marital affair, with a KLM stewardess named Ingrid. Aif denied the rumors, of course, but he actually did have a relationship with the beautiful Ingrid and bought her an apartment in Venice. Aif was trying to have a domestic life which included a double-marriage, or two wives! He felt he'd loved Elana and Ingrid equally and fully and honestly and didn't want to officially convert to Mormonism to be accepted socially rather than marked as an illegal polygamist! Aif decided to focus on his Juventus soccer-management to forget about all the society 'noise' linked to undesirable gossip and scandal. As far as Elana and Ingrid knew, Aif loved them both equally and satisfyingly.

For the 2019-2020 season, Juventus had the aspiration to make it to the Champions League Final and defeat the strong-horse ream Real Madrid (from Spain's La Liga table!). To do so, Juventus would have to add serious talents and reorganize their philosophy of play to match and suit Real Madrid's incredible ability to coordinate talent with teamwork. To this end, Aif decided to recruit some very prolific goal-scorers from Africa, mostly young prodigies, and incorporated them into Juventus' roster. He then shuffled around salaries to make the expenses for the managing board more balanced. Aif also made press statements about Juventus' new 'African poise' to send the message that the Italian Serie A team would be focusing on team mentalism rather than social intrigue in the 2019-2020 season. Aif's advice paid off, and Juventus stood out that season!

After Juventus captured the Serie A title, it stormed into the Champions League tourney and defeated heavyweights Chelsea, Barcelona, Liverpool, and Inter before squaring off against favorites Real Madrid in the Final. Despite a heart-breaking 3-2 loss to Real Madrid in the championship, Aif's Juventus team took home a very satisfying 'silver medal' for a very satisfying 2019-2020 club soccer season in Europe! Aif accomplished mostly everything he wanted to for his team and managed to balance personal/domestic issues with the social spotlight and his career as a post-star club coach. Juventus was now poised to becoming a European club stalwart, and Aif was steadied and fit to be Juventus' solid and wise head! As long as Aif used his sense of intuition and his sanity-profuse ciations to his Christian faith, he just might be able to carry Juventus into the normal spotlight. Would the sports-writers agree?