‘Can’t be a coward’

Manchester City and Chelsea won’t be demoted but it is fun to recall those loyalists who stayed through that fate – even when Manchester United came calling.

Fabien Barthez

Perhaps not the name most associated with goalkeeping loyalty upon shameful demotion, but Barthez can be separated from his 2006 World Cup final contemporary Gianluigi Buffon by a quick comparison of Champions League winner’s medals.

The Divine Bald One actually sported plenty of hair and would have made for a far less compatible Laurent Blanc companion around the time of his European triumph with Marseille in 1993, which should rank among his proudest achievements.

But two seasons on from masterfully keeping Milan at bay in the Olympiastadion, Barthez was turning out in Ligue 2 for a Marseille side stripped of its domestic title and shorn of its best players. A bribery scandal caused most to jump ship but not the French keeper, who stayed long enough to inspire their immediate return to the top flight as champions before instantly heading to Monaco.

READ MORE: The top ten best players never to win the Champions League

Giorgio Chiellini

Future Tottenham historian Chiellini had only just broken into the Juventus first team at left-back when Calciopoli rocked Italian football, but most specifically The Old Lady. It had taken the defender long enough to receive his opportunity and dropping to Serie B was not about to change his course.

Chiellini went from complementing a back four of Zambrotta, Cannavaro and Thuram to leading a defence of Birindelli, Kovac and Boumsong in the space of a few short months. The Italian colossus even scored twice in the victory which sealed their Serie A return at the first attempt, guiding their rise back to the summit thereafter.

Alessandro Lucarelli

“The message that comes from Parma is that we’re back,” said Lucarelli as captain and indeed the only surviving member of a ship which plunged the depths of Serie D following bankruptcy. Three successive promotions for the iconic UEFA Cup winners marked the quickest possible return, upon which Lucarelli immediately retired with his work complete.

So too did his shirt number. No player has worn the No. 6 for Parma since as the legend of Lucarelli – the club’s oldest player and record holder in terms of league appearances – has proven far too burdensome for anyone to even contemplate carrying.

Bernard Casoni

A former captain in his 30s when the Marseille match-fixing scandal erupted, Casoni was an unused substitute for the 1993 Champions League final win but did come in handy when the French giants needed numbers upon relegation.

The France international never featured as regularly at club level as in his final two seasons at Marseille, which culminated in them rising back into Ligue Un and Casoni promptly retiring.

Angelo Di Livio

The archetypal loyalist, Di Livio played for Italy at the 2002 World Cup while uncertainty raged over the very existence of his beloved Fiorentina. While many would have found such uncertainty difficult to compartmentalise and reconcile, the captain had long since made up his mind to represent whatever future form the club would take.

For a solitary year that would come to be Florentia Viola, before the naming rights and traditional purple shirts were secured following bankruptcy and demotion to the Italian fourth tier in 2002. Di Livio was the sole bridge between that troubled past and an unknown present and future.

Still as skipper, he took them through consecutive promotions to reach the top flight again in 2004, staying for one last campaign before retirement. He quite wonderfully won Serie C2 with Perugia and Fiorentina 15 years apart, claiming all manner of trophies at Juventus in between. But only in Florence is he regarded as a ‘Guardian Angel’.

Lee McCulloch

“They have been kind enough to me over the years and I’ve had the success so that’s why I chose to stay,” explained McCulloch of his decision to head all the way down to the Scottish Third Division with Rangers in 2012. Some agreed to transfer their contracts to the new company following administration and liquidation but most could not leave quickly enough, despite the captain’s public pleas for unity.

It was never a factor for McCulloch, who went from scoring at Lyon, playing in the Nou Camp and winning the Premier League to netting against Elgin City and Peterhead without prejudice.

READ MORE: Pep Guardiola ‘will leave’ Man City amid Premier League ‘expulsion’ claims as exit date emerges

Jean-Philippe Durand

The first substitute Marseille called upon in the 1993 Champions League final also came on at half-time of the fabled game against Valenciennes a week earlier, which OM won 1-0 after midfielder Jean-Jacques Eydelie attempted to bribe three opposition players to take it easy.

Durand stuck it out all the way through to his retirement in 1997, bowing out with Marseille firmly back in the Ligue Un mid-table.

Mauro Camoranesi

The Juventus exodus swept away Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Patrick Vieira, Fabio Cannavaro, Emerson, Lilian Thuram, Gianluca Zambrotta, Adrian Mutu, Fabio Capello and many more, but not Camoranesi. Five days after helping Italy become world champions, he was among those confronting the reality of at least a season in Serie C.

That sanction was slightly reduced as Juventus were dumped in Serie B with a points deduction, but they strolled to an inevitable title regardless.

Camoranesi had a fine time of it, saving probably his best performance for promotion rivals Napoli, against whom he scored and assisted goals in a 2-0 home win.

Alessandro Del Piero

But Del Piero was the Juventus linchpin, finishing as Serie B top scorer ahead of Claudio Bellucci and Papa Waigo N’Diaye about a decade and a half after he last graced that stage as a teenager with Padova.

Manchester United actually tried their luck with Del Piero, a known target for Sir Alex Ferguson as early as 1996 but a player they thought might have suddenly become available after a slight change in circumstances.

“At first I was flattered, but I never really thought of leaving Juventus,” the captain said, adding: “A true gentleman never leaves his lady.”

Ferguson himself, meanwhile, added much later of the one player he “would’ve gone mad for”:

I courted him even just after Italy’s World Cup win. In that time, Real Madrid were also after him and, given the issues around Juventus at the time, I imagined that between us at United and the Galacticos, there would be a fair auction to get him.

And so I called him directly: “Alex, I’d like you at United”, I said. “You’ll be the star of the squad, and together we’ll win everything”. He laughed and replied: “Sir, you know that nothing has changed from all those years ago. Juve are facing difficult times, and I have to help them. I can’t be a coward.”

Pavel Nedved

The demise of Juventus was almost certainly karma for Thierry Henry being robbed of the 2003 Ballon d’Or by Nedved. Having inspired the club to the utterly dreadful Champions League final that year – for which he was suspended – the Czech had formed inexorable bonds which he felt had to be honoured even a division lower.

It likely helped that Nedved was in his 30s and his family had settled in Turin since moving in 2001. He spent a fair amount of his time in Serie B threatening to retire or serving a five-match ban for, to quote the Italian Football League’s disciplinary commission, “insulting the referee and stamping on his foot”, and there is something to be said for that.

David Trezeguet

Not content with trying to tempt Del Piero, Manchester United also pursued Trezeguet in the same summer they sold varying degrees of goalscoring excellence in David Bellion, Sylvan Ebanks-Blake and Ruud van Nistelrooy.

Trezeguet seemed a little more open to the prospect, even if only as a bargaining chip to negotiate a contract extension when Juventus returned to Serie A within a year, the French striker scoring 15 goals en route. Perhaps he simply felt indebted to them after missing his penalty in that awful Champions League final against Milan at Old Trafford.