Inasmuch as Juventus is currently visiting North America, officials of that fabled football team understand being compared to another legendary sports franchise — the New York Yankees Jersey of baseball.
After all, there are the striped uniforms, the modern luxury-box stadiums, the international branding, with Juve jerseys and Yankees caps seen all over the world.
Then there are — according to official league records, anyway — the 27 championships won by each dynasty.
Actually, make that 29, says Andrea Agnelli, the chairman of the Juventus board and a member of the Fiat family that has owned Juventus since 1923.
The two titles won in 2004-05 and 2005-06 were taken away after the Juventus general manager was detected openly bargaining for referees he wanted for his matches — a scandal known as Calciopoli (Footballgate).
But other clubs also lobbied, said Agnelli, 35, who took over active control of his family team in 2010 during a continuing championship drought.
Agnelli has promised to pursue the two titles, preferably through the league structure, but, if necessary, through the courts.
The revoked championships are still an issue as Juventus tours the New World in the growing summer festival of crack European squads training and making money in the World Football Challenge. On Tuesday night, Juve beat Club America of Mexico 1-0, courtesy of Cristian Pasquato’s goal in the 41st minute, entertaining the crowd of 20,859 at Citi Field in New York.
On Thursday the bianconeri will play Chivas Guadalajara of Mexico in Raleigh, North Carolina, and then head home.
On Sept. 10 the club will open its new 41,000-seat stadium, the first major football stadium in Italy built with private funds, Agnelli said.
Juventus, known as La Vecchia Signora, or the Old Lady, is a giant in its own field. Its name comes from the Latin word for youth, which is highly appropriate since the club recruits prospects from all over Italy.
“When Juve calls, you go,” said Paolo De Ceglie, 24, who joined the organization as a 10-year-old.
“When you think about the four World Cups that Italy has won,” Agnelli said, referring to 1934, 1938, 1982 and 2006, “we actually employed 27 players out of 44 in the starting lineup.”

Juve is in the embarrassing position of being shut out of the two major European tournaments this season because it finished a dismal seventh last year.
At the moment, the club is identified with the scandal involving the general manager that caught the world’s attention as Italy was winning its fourth World Cup in Germany in July 2006. Those nasty implications have been followed by a time of other scandals, often in lesser leagues, around the world. MLB Jerseys. Wiretaps caught Luciano Moggi, the general manager, pressuring league officials to supply referees he liked.
The wiretaps only reinforced the suspicions in Italian minds that Juventus often seemed to catch the lucky bounce, to say nothing of the timely whistle.
The 2004-05 championship Juve won is now listed as empty because the league could not identify a worthy contending team. Juve’s 2005-06 title was turned over to Inter Milan.
The scandal of Calciopoli has held Juventus back, but the entire Serie A has fallen behind other leagues, said Andrei Markovits, a co-author of “Offside: Football and American Exceptionalism.”
Agnelli does not deny that Italian football has fallen behind.
“To be candid about Serie A, we are certainly not where we want to be today,” he said. “It certainly has to do with the facility. All the stadiums are obsolete. We have a lot of violence, we still have police around the stadium, so it is not very friendly.”
To combat this, the Agnelli family put together financial backing for a stadium that blatantly appeals to well-heeled patrons of luxury boxes.
He has also overhauled the front office and brought in a new coach, Antonio Conte, a Juve mainstay in its 1996 Champions League victory. Agnelli said he expected more movement in the player market in August.
While they do not mind an American linking them with the Yankees and their 27 World Series titles, Agnelli and everybody else in the white-and-black uniforms have a common answer about their number of championships: Ummm, make that 29.