Carlton players met with some of the stars from Italian soccer giants, Juventus in a special Nike promotion prior to training at Princes Park today. Nick Stevens, Marc Murphy, Matthew Kreuzer, Brendan Fevola, Jarrad Waite and Shaun Hampson donned the special Nike PRO tops to take part in a joint AFL, soccer promotion with the giant Italian club.

Thankfully the Juventus goalkeeper, Jess Van Stratten, was one of the five Juventus players involved in the promotion. Jess is originally from NSW and he was the only player to speak English so he had a full-time job as the interpreter for the players of both sides.

The Carlton players took their Juventus counterparts through some handball and kicking exercises with the football. While the kicking was a little shaky the handball was interesting with the soccer players surprised at how hard the Aussie Rules football is, a couple players shaking their hand after a handball.

When it was time to kick the soccer ball there was no doubt a few of the Carlton players thought they were pretty handy with the round ball. Of course Fev kept talking about his ‘soccer goal’ from last week’s game against Fremantle while Marc Murphy was not only trying out his soccer skills but also a few words in Italian that he said he had studied at school. Stevo and Kreuzer went about their business as they do on the football field, all class, while Jarrad Waite saved up for his turn as the gaol keeper. Shaun Hampson was very keen to be involved as he was a Queensland representative soccer player, as a striker.

With Jarrad in goals the Juventus players took it easy on him with some penalty shots while his Carlton team-mates were very keen to get the ball passed him into the net. A change in goals saw Jess Van Stratten show his style with one full length dive to his right for a great save. A few corner kicks finished off a fun promotion before all the players decided to kick for goal, the Aussie goals with the Aussie football.

With both clubs being Nike clubs, to complete the activities the Carlton players presented the Juventus players with a Carlton guernsey and each Carlton player received a Juventus shirt from the Italian stars.

The Juventus players had trained at Princes Park on Tuesday in preparation for their match against Melbourne Victory on Friday night. The Juventus players involved in the promotion were Jess Van Stratten, Raffaele Palladino, Cristiano Zanetti, Cristian Molinaro and Nicola Legrottaglie.

Juventus has 12 million supporters in Italy and an estimated 170 million supporters world wide. Following today’s promotion it will be more like 170,000,006 although as their home strip is black and white stripes perhaps the Carlton players will only support them in their away games! One thing is for sure, if Juventus wear the black and white home shirt on Friday night, the Victory captain, Kevin Muscat, who is a keen Carlton supporter, will be even more determined for a victory.