Jim HOLDEN
AT THE HEART OF THE GAME
Why Italy continues to produce some of the finest coaching minds in football
There are two names on the list when Pep Guardiola identifies the greatest influences on him as a manager. One, unsurprisingly, is Johan Cruyff. The other is Carlo Mazzone.
Outside his native Italy, the likely response of most football fans to that name would be: “Carlo who?” Yet, in his own country, and for players like Guardiola, Andrea Pirlo and Roberto Baggio, there is no doubt: Mazzone is one of the legendary coaches.
Mazzone didn’t win any big trophies, nor did he claim any personal prizes. But he does hold the all-time record of 792 matches as a manager in Serie A, working at 12 different clubs between 1968 and 2006, and guiding some of the greatest stars of his day. When he died last year, Guardiola spoke with rare emotion about his boss at Brescia, the man he called “The Master”.
The esteem in which Mazzone was held by players and supporters alike symbolises a crucial element of Italian footballing culture: huge respect for head coaches. And it is this culture that lies at the heart of Italy’s seemingly endless production of top managers.
Five of the nations at Euro 2024 have Italian coaches – Belgium, Turkey, Slovakia and Hungary as well as Italy. Four different Italian first-team bosses have won the English Premier League – Carlo Ancelotti, Roberto Mancini, Antonio Conte and Claudio Ranieri – compared to not a single Englishman. In World Soccer’s list of the 30 most-demand coaches, published in May, five Italians were name-checked, including Roberto De Zerbi, Thiago Motta and Francesco Farioli.
All of which leads us to ask: why are there so many Italian coaches? And why are they so good?
Of course, each manager has his own backstory, but the starting point for almost all is the teaching they receive at the famed Coverciano coaching school, situated just outside Florence. It is an unrivalled factory, where the greats of the past like Arrigo Sacchi and Fabio Capello come to inspire new generations. They are open to ideas from everywhere – David Moyes, for example, told me it was a huge honour to be a guest speaker there.
At the heart of the education is tactics. This is an Italian obsession, debated at length every day in three separate sports papers. And there is as much reverence for defensive strategies as attacking ones.
A word you hear very often in foo
