Zonal Marking - Michael Cox

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trequartisti and many still insisted on a libero. Italian football during this era was not about following Sacchi’s Dutch-centric ideals, but about returning Serie A to the old Italian way.

Part Two

       Flexibility

      In the closing stages of Juventus’s 1996 Champions League Final victory over Ajax, there was an unusual incident that summed up so much about Juventus, and so much about Italian football.

      Ajax, in keeping with their customary approach, constantly switched play in the first half between right-winger Finidi George and left-winger Kiki Musampa. Juve’s aggressive 4–3–3 system, featuring three outright forwards in Alessandro Del Piero, Gianluca Vialli and Fabrizio Ravanelli, meant that neither of Juventus’s most impressive performers on the night, the unheralded full-back pairing of Gianluca Pessotto and Moreno Torricelli, were afforded protection against Ajax’s wingers, but both defenders were magnificent, sticking tight and refusing to let the Ajax wingers turn. Pessotto completely nullified Finidi, while Torricelli intercepted passes and launched quick counter-attacks. Louis van Gaal evidently decided that Ajax weren’t likely to get the better of Torricelli, and at half-time he removed Musampa. Ronald de Boer, who had started in central midfield, moved to the left.

      It was, on paper, a simple solution, but it’s difficult to imagine other full-back pairings of this era doing likewise. You wouldn’t have witnessed Brazil switching Cafu and Roberto Carlos, or Barcelona moving Albert Ferrer to the left and Sergi Barjuán to the right; it would have been unthinkable and fundamentally compromised their natural game. Italian sides, though, weren’t about playing their natural game; they were about stopping opponents from playing theirs. They were – and still are – defensive-minded, reactive and tactically intelligent. Torricelli and Pessotto weren’t playing out of position, they were in another position they could play.

      For all Juventus’s superstars during the mid- to late-1990s, it’s those underrated, jack-of-all-trades, versatile squad players who best exemplify the nature of Italian football. Lippi could depend on four players who would struggle to identify their best position, something that would be considered a sign of weakness elsewhere but was very much a virtue in Serie A. Torricelli, Pessotto, Angelo Di Livio and Alessandro Birindelli could play as full-back, wing-back or wide midfielder, they could play on the left or the right and sometimes through the centre. These were the club’s leaders. ‘Every year we sold our best players, but the backbone of the squad stayed,’ remembered Lippi. ‘And when new players would arrive and wouldn’t work as hard, players like Di Livio or Torricelli would put an arm around them and say, “Here, we never stop, come on!,” and the message would come from these players who had won the league and the Champions League, and on the pitch they worked their arses off. They were exceptional examples.’

      That described Torricelli, Pessotto and Birindelli perfectly; they were probably defenders who could play in midfield, while Di Livio was the reverse. He was nicknamed Il soldatino by Roberto Baggio, who observed that he continually sprinted up and down the touchline like a little soldier. It didn’t matter which touchline, and while Di Livio was right-footed, he occasionally took corners with his left. Usually the mark of a technically outstanding player, the workmanlike Di Livio hardly falls into that category. In his case, it was a sign of a flexible player who had worked hard to improve his weaknesses and could adapt to any situation.

      Lippi was the most celebrated graduate from Coverciano, the Italian Football Federation’s technical headquarters. Based in Florence, just over a mile east of Fiorentina’s Stadio Artemio Franchi, Coverciano was different from Clairefontaine in France, for example, which was famous for its development of players. Instead, Coverciano focused primarily on the development of coaches, and was effectively football’s version of Oxford – Europe’s greatest university of football coaching.

      Coverciano’s highest coaching certificate was necessary to coach in Serie A, but entry requirements were strict, with only 20 places per year. You needed to be an Italian citizen or to have resided in the country for two years, you needed to have qualified from the second level of coaching course, and then you had to complete an assessment based upon your playing career (35 points), coaching career (40 points) and academic career (5 points), with 20 points on offer for your performance in an interview.

      Playing and coaching careers were assessed according to an absurdly complicated points system that awarded 0.02, 0.04 and 0.06 points for club appearances in Serie C, B and A respectively, with bonus points available for winning Serie A, playing internationally or appearing in the World Cup. The famous quote from Arrigo Sacchi, who never played football professionally, about how ‘a jockey doesn’t need to have been a horse’, becomes more significant when you realise the extent to which the Italian coaching school was predisposed to favour former players.

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