29 December 2023
The year 2023 has been an intense one for Juventus Women. It will be remembered as one filled with emotion, with joy, with difficulty, and with everything else that any great team has to go through to grow and become stronger.
To reflect on the year, we asked one of our Bianconere to sit down with us and talk it through.
We didn’t choose the player at random, either. This is the year 2023 in the words of Barbara Bonansea, the match-winner in our Italian Cup triumph in Salerno against Roma back in June.
Enjoy the read.
I’d like to start by talking about this photo. It’s a significant photo.
This is the pure jubilation of the team, and my own, after the goal against Roma in the Italian Cup final. It was a strange but beautiful feeling, I scored a goal that I had tried to score a thousand times in training, and when that went in, nothing else mattered.
Do you know why this picture is so good? In it, you can see all of the emotion, you can see the release of suffering after such a complicated season. It’s a photo in which everything is encapsulated, and the best thing about it is that at a glance you can’t even tell who scored it. It was everybody’s goal.
“It could be the first year without a trophy”
When I close my eyes and think of 2023, the first thing I see is the trophy we won. But most of all, I remember the week before the game. Stefano Braghin came and spoke to us, and he put it to us that this could be our first-ever season without a trophy.
It was a real blow, it made me feel some bad things, but also a lot of good things. I was coming, we were coming, from a point of almost accepting a season without a trophy, but those words flicked a switch and we knew it couldn’t happen. I told myself that we were Juventus, and we had to win that game.
It became something personal for me, it couldn’t go like that. Juventus had to win, it was an intimate feeling and one that I couldn’t share. As well, that wasn’t an easy period of my career. But with each day I became more and more convinced that if everybody did their part, we could do it.
A season of ups and downs
Last season was full of ups and downs, there were moments when it seemed like a turning point was coming, but then it never came to be. It was almost as if our soul, the soul of Juventus, was lost. Even the second game in Rome, against Roma, was symbolic. We led twice, we were pegged back twice, and right at the end they won it. That was something that happened often, but usually the other way and in our favour.
Then again, it’s true that our history is unique. We have always won things, since we were founded as a team. From the first year there was the feeling that we could win the title, but we were made to sweat it out all the way to a playoff. Then, as time passed, we changed, as any team does. Last season there was a feeling that we had to figure out how to respond to that change, that change that we had suffered, we had to tell ourselves: “we are still Juventus”.
And then, that day…
I’ll tell you a secret - on the morning of that game I told one of my teammates that I had a feeling, a clear and strong feeling, that I was going to score with my head. I had been working on it for months as it’s something that I feel I lack a little. At the end of training I would work on meeting crosses from both sides with my head. I dreamt of scoring with my head, and preferably a decisive goal. But on that morning it wasn’t a dream - I had the feeling that I would do it.
But it wasn’t an easy day - not at all. Before the game, sitting alone, I started crying, crouched over myself. That’s not something that happens to me very often. All of those difficult days came back to me, all of that tension, and that desire to do what we knew how to do best. I had the feeling that I had to give my all on the pitch.
Then came the goal, just as I thought it would. When the cross came in I told myself: "that ball is mine".
Key word: Restart
This season didn’t start well either. The ruthless and cruel Champions League format delivered an early disappointment to us. It came as early as August, and something like that weighs on the season. But we had to start again from there, we had to roll up our sleeves. We slipped up twice, and I don’t consider the Roma game as one of those. That was a game that was decided by incidents, things that can happen. But those things teach you that you have to be at 100 percent at all times.
The loss against Sampdoria was worse. We played without focus, it was a day when everything went wrong, and it absolutely was not because of our approach. Sport is unpredictable, and sometimes it throws days like that at you, days when nothing goes your way.
All together
Now, we have started preparing for this same challenge, again against Roma, again with a trophy on the line. The key is to be aware that every one of us is key, and that each of us needs to do our part. If that happens, we get the most out of what we are, we’re ready to play, and the puzzle is complete.
Holding on to the difficult moments
The year 2023 was, for me, the first real year of difficulties in a career that, in truth, had never really presented me with any. It’s something that I hold on to. I noticed something about myself, and it’s that when you start to see black, everything can go black. That had never happened to me before. I’ve always been optimistic, and I’ve always looked at everything through that lens - even difficult things.
If I look at the numbers of 2023, it wasn’t all bad, but I know that for me it was a formative year, it’s a year that I’m glad I went through. I wouldn’t change anything, because I feel like I’ve grown as a result of it. Of course, everybody has regrets and I have mine, the World Cup being one. I went there without being ready to hit my own standards, and I can only repeat the things I’ve already told you about that.
But, in the end, everything that happens, simply has to happen. Barbara Bonansea
