Italy's Coppa Italia recently took on a whole new significance.

The two finalists, Juventus and Napoli, have intriguing back stories that will set this finale apart from every other. While the Bianconeri, who claimed their first Serie A title after six year on Sunday, will be looking to pay departing club captain Alessandro Del Piero a fitting tribute by lifting their tenth Coppa Italia, the onus lies with Napoli to make something out of their most realistic chance so far to lift silverware in decades.

Napoli, since their promotion once more to Serie A, have gone on to establish themselves as a force to be reckoned with. While they played a part in last season’s Scudetto race as well as gave the Champions League’s much-vaunted EPL sides a run for their money this term, this final represents their best shot at glory and a return to the big time. For the southern outfit, winning the Coppa Italia will be taken as a symbolic achievement, a small stepping-stone on the way to greater success as the first trophy to be won in the new eras being painstakingly forged.

A physically beleaguered Napoli that invested so much effort in Europe was unceremoniously dumped out of the elite club competition by a team sporting nearly three times the monetary resources at their disposal. Sunday’s final arrives as a gift just when the Partanopei need to rediscover and maintain their belief that they have been doing great things since they returned to Serie A. Seizing this chance at cup success will spark renewed impetus and create new belief in the players’ and club’s means, in order to begin next season with the best foot forward.

Napoli's players have a chance to give their club's name renewed pride this Sunday.

The reason is simple: The Coppa Italia may remain a smaller piece of silverware in the eyes of the ordinary public as a domestic cup, when in contrast, winning it will represent much greater value to the hungry players and fans of the once-great club, who are at the forefront of a revival of one of Calcio’s historic sides.

For all the talk of Lionel Messi being the next Diego Maradona, the same moniker could be placed upon Napoli patron Aurelio De Laurentiis, who has made the same impact on the club as the Argentine superstar, albeit not from the field. Despite punching above their weight, Napoli may struggle to retain the services of coveted attacking triumvirate Edinson Cavani, Marek Hamsik and Ezequiel Lavezzi in the face of interest from clubs who consistently challenge for Europe’s greatest club trophy. That explains the feeling of ‘now or never’ amongst the club’s loyal fans, who already missed seeing their team qualify for next season’s Champions League. 

Napoli will do well to shake their notorious inferiority complex playing against the more established sides of Calcio if they are to have any chance against the new league champions however. That said, Juventus are by no means unbeatable, and if the Partanopei can exploit their opponent’s Achilles heel of being profligate in front of goal, then the game will be a wide-open affair. 

Recent encounters between both sides have never failed to entertain.

If encounters between Juventus and Napoli are anything to go by, this Coppa Italia final will be a cracker of a game. The last three meetings between these two sides yielded 11 goals, with a particularly spectacular 3-3 draw fought out in Naples last year.

This season’s Coppa Italia is a road to redemption. Starting small, success for Napoli will serve as a springboard to spur the club to keep faith in its reconstruction project and look forward unto a horizon that promises much. Over in Spain, it is not by chance last season’s Copa del Rey winners Real Madrid have broken the dominance that arguably is the greatest ever club team in the history of the game, F.C. Barcelona. To the rest of Serie A, beware. Underestimate the Coppa Italia to you peril.

Dortmund retained their status as Deutscher Meister after a 2-0 win over Gladbach. This is Dortmund’s second back-to-back Bundesliga title; the first time that happened was in the 1955-1966 and 1956-1957 seasons – they join only Hamburg, Borussia Mönchengladbach and Bayern Munich in achieving this feat.

For the past two seasons, the man that has stood out as the knight in the shining armor for Jurgen Klopp’s victorious side is the 19 year old sensation Mario Götze, dubbed by many as “The German Messi”.

Götze is a product of Dortmund’s youth academy, first entering the club as an eight-year-old. During the winter break of the 2009-10 Bundesliga season, Borussia Dortmund manager Jurgen Klopp gave Mario Götze an opportunity to impress in the first team and handed him his Bundesliga debut on the 21st November 2009 in a 0-0 draw against FSV Mainz 05.

Götze grabbed the opportunity and played a vital role in Dortmund’s Bundesliga Championship winning team of the 2010-11 season. He wasted no time in fitting in with the first team last season, scoring six league goals and setting up a further 15 as the club claimed their seventh Bundesliga title. This made him the best 18 year old player to have ever graced the Bundesliga. His haul of 15 assists in 2010-11 is the highest number in a single campaign since the accurate collection of goals and assists (2004-2005).

But even before that, the playmaker was scoring goals and laying on chance after chance for his teammates at all levels from 2007-10. During this time, Götze made 41 youth and reserve appearances for the club and scored 20 goals while assisting another 13. Meanwhile at the national team level, he scored three and set up another two during the 2009 Under-17 World Cup.

After consistent performances in 2010-11 which saw Götze cement his place in the heart of Dortmund’s attack, he continued his superb form in 2011-12 with 7 goals and 8 assists.

As is often the case with a player who bursts onto the scene at the top level at such a young age, Götze has already played his way into the record books. On the international stage too, the teenager has already made his mark not only on the history of the German national team but also on the nation itself.

Götze was called up for his first senior match for Germany against Sweden, on November 17 2010. He and Leverkusen forward Andre Schuerrle came on as substitutes in the final 15 minutes of Der Mannschaft’s game against Sweden in November 2010. The pair were the first players born after the reunification of Germany to become internationals for the country. Götze became the youngest German international since Uwe Seeler in 1954 to represent the country at the age of 18. He scored his first goal in a 3-2 friendly win over Brazil, thus becoming the youngest player to net for Germany in the post-war era since Klaus Stuermer in 1954. Both players struck for Germany aged 19 years and 68 days.

Götze is rated as the best young talent in the Bundesliga and surely is one of the most exciting talents to emerge from the country in a generation. After helping Borussia land back-to-back titles, he has attracted the interest of Manchester United, Arsenal, Real Madrid and Barcelona. The youngster, who is contracted with Dortmund until 2016, has admitted: “Who would not dream of playing with a club like Real Madrid, Barcelona or Manchester United?”

Such statistics are pretty impressive for such a young man. To think that he has around 15 years in which to see his vision and technique improve is a truly exciting prospect. Klopp is not the only one who has been falling over himself to praise Götze’s prodigious talent.

Mathias Sammer, the one-time European Footballer of the Year who won the Champions League with Dortmund, famously called him “one of the best talents we’ve ever had.” 

Despite his manager’s pleas to the media not to jeopardize the youngster’s development by hyping him up too much, the newspaper Neue Ruhr Zeitung couldn’t contain itself, stating: “He is not just the talent of the century, he is a white Brazilian.”But for a German there can be no higher praise than that of Der Kaiser himself, Franz Beckenbauer. The Germany legend said:”There is no one playing better than him. He runs through opponents as though they aren’t there. He is an instinctive footballer, just like Messi.”

Götze, already looks set to become a major player for his country in the upcoming EURO 2012, despite not yet being 20 or reaching double figures in senior caps. The only problem he would face is the presence of Mesut Ozil, who has been in a superb form for his club and country. National team boss Joachim Loew admits it will be difficult to try to accommodate Götze in the same team. ”I don’t see (Mario) on one of the wings, neither left or right. He has the skills to play in the centre of our midfield. It will be a problem.” He said.

With either Sami Khedira or Toni Kroos currently preferred in the deeper midfield role and Bastian Schweinsteiger a permanent fixture in the side, it is up to Götze to force his way into a regular starting berth.

It’s a pretty contrived theory, but there are those who believe that the name you are given can have an influence in deciding the course your life takes, specifically what job you have and skills you acquire. Mario Götze is on track to become a true ‘Fussball Götze’ in his homeland – Götze means idol in German.

Somewhere amongst all the headlines made by Yaya Toure’s cameo performance that effectively sealed Manchester City’s name on the Premier League title at Newcastle on Sunday afternoon, the undercard role turned its teary eye into the direction of sentiment as they fittingly ended a superb campaign by unveiling a bronze statue of Sir Bobby Robson outside the Sports Direct Arena. The footballing plotlines barely saw time to stand and reflect on the symbolism of this behemoth of footballing gentry that served the club and the sport so dignifiedly throughout his life that was regrettably cut short to cancer at the age of 76.

His memory will live on in front of the building he used to know as St James’ Park and the setting here could not be in starker contrast. Perched proudly with his foot under a football, Robson peers across the plains of Newcastle, next to one of the most impressive grounds in the country where his journey to Ipswich, England, Barcelona and back again to the North East began as a small boy. Look further around however and the darker, far more sinister side of the game begins to rear its head. Emblazoned across the building is the bright lettering “SportsDirectArena”, serving as a reminder of the willingness of the club’s board to sell a significant part of the club’s heritage for profit in a game now inhabited by crooks and mercenaries that Robson would have been ashamed to be a part of.

The whole idea of the stadium re-naming has become a bit of a moot point in the North East, especially as media outlets still refer to it in its original capacity and owner Mike Ashley has reaped enough commercial benefit to post profits at the club and a rise in shares in his business, not forgetting a season of threatening to qualify for the Champions League and you get a feeling Sir Bobby wouldn’t have minded being a part of this at all. Manchester City won the game at Newcastle on Saturday as questions were asked of their fortitude in the face of a very impressive side forged by Alan Pardew. Mike Ashley and the Newcastle hierarchy answered their own questions almost as emphatically with the unveiling of their legendary statue that they haven’t totally lost sight of the club’s headlines amongst a public perception that they act in the sole interest of profit and greed.

It was a touching display, and to restore the memory of a man who stood for nothing but class and genuine footballing pride; everyday he served the game and he would have been enthusiastic over events a day earlier when his former England team-mate Jimmy Armfield, also touched by cancer, was given the opportunity to present the FA Cup to the winning captain at Wembley. The final itself may have been thrown around aimlessly to fit a TV-friendly kick off time in defiance of already long-standing accusations that the showpiece has lost most of its sparkle, but at the very heart of it, behind the sponsors and the overblown emphasis on event, class and humble sentiment still remain the order of the day.

Fabrice Muamba

It has been the season for it. Alongside Armfield at Wembley was Fabrice Muamba, impossible to pond on this footballing year without a mention of his miraculous recovery from a collapse in the earlier round of this esteemed competition. His story has not been one of grandiose fortune or even footballing achievement, but an incredible rise from the death when he had reportedly been pronounced dead for 78 minutes. Rightly or wrongly, footballing tribute to him was heart-warming and affectionate from all corners of the “footballing-family” that so often goes missing in the face of partisanship and unwilling subjectivity when it comes to the modern day supporting of a club. Football had a chance to ponder and that they did, magnificently, and for one Saturday night in March at least, the overwhelming majority pull together in the act of well-wishing. If that was not enough, the plight of Aston Villa’s Stiliyan Petrov tightened the grip of community further, as he was diagnosed with Leukaemia.

There has been an out-poor of emotion to these two, enough for football to take account of itself against the modern stereotype of heartless tribalism. In Italy, others were not as lucky as Muamba. Udinese’s Piermario Morisini sadly passed away on the pitch whilst playing for Torino, leaving his parent Serie A club, and most notably captain Antonio Di Natale, to pledge the care of his disabled sister who had been left behind by the most tragic of family stories. Even the most cold-blooded of human could shed a tear at the over-riding generosity afforded by Di Natale and his club that goes far beyond just the boundaries of professionalism.

There have been idiots of course, there always are. On the night of Muamba’s collapse, one imbecile took to the social networking site Twitter to plough a host of racist and heartless messages into the ether. He was duly sent down by the same criminal justice system aiming to get tough on the opportunists who seem to think the facelessness of a “Tweet” shields them from the commodity of the law. There was a grotesque sudden out-break of support for Sheffield United striker Ched Evans after a guilty verdict for raping a girl last summer from misinformed professional footballers and single-minded fans alike. There was news of quick judiciary punishment for the naming of the victim and also, the condemnation of certain players who had took to the airwaves to trivialise Evan’s crime. Football is reacting to the hatred and the bile now when once upon a time it was the sport’s unwanted melanoma. There is now nowhere to hide for those who use the game to spread ill-feeling and a mindless agenda as the authorities aim to sustain the same feeling of togetherness and solitude that was prescient upon Muamba’s incredible episode. This is the age of the rational thinking fan.

When that is compounded with the fact this is also the age for over-zealous spending in the quest for achievement, the same that has befallen Manchester City to the brink of Premier League greatness, it is a feeling of pleasantry and gratitude for the game could have easily lost sight of itself within the armada of foreign ownership that can share the same type of ineptitude and ignorance that sent Blackburn down to the Championship on Monday night. It is not quite a business yet, it is still beating some of the same blood and compassion that has made it a sport, so attractive throughout the years and which supporters flock in their droves to watch and we have been rewarded with the most exciting title race in years at the top of the table.

It has been an excellent season, one of incident, drama, copious amounts of goals, controversy and entertainment. Manchester City won the league at the last minute of the final game. What more could we ask for? There is nothing that a true footballing man like Sir Bobby, as he surveys the footballing land of England from his bronze-plated standing at Newcastle, would have wanted more than that.