A sea of knowledge

There are some key principles that have made it possible for me to be a manager in more than 700 games.

The most important is respect for other people’s roles. In fact, when I graduated from the Italian Football Federation’s National Training Centre at Coverciano, it was with a dissertation on the role and responsibilities of the assistant manager. Ever since, I have been clear that every level of a club’s structure needs remits to be set, developed and accomplished, with no meddling.

It is this principle that enabled me to climb the managerial ladder, with plenty of success along the way. My coaching career began with Bologna’s youth team and am proud that I was in Serie A after just four years as a manager. Along the way I managed in the fourth, third and second tiers of the Italian league. Every season was an upgrade, leading to Italy’s top division and later the Premier League in England. Even the best managers who started in the lower leagues usually need more time than that to adjust, grow and reach the top. It was quite a rise for me.

It started when I led Bologna’s youth team to their national final. I then accepted a proposal to manage the senior team of Acireale, a fourth-tier club at the time, but one where I had experienced promotion to Serie B in my playing days. After a season there – in a wonderful Sicilian coastal town at the foot of Mount Etna – I received an offer from third division Pistoiese, in Tuscany.

It was a successful season there, too, the highlight of which was defeating Serie A side Empoli in the Coppa Italia. That made headlines, and the following season I was hired by another Tuscan club, Livorno, taking me back to the coast, but this time in Serie B. I led them to Serie A promotion for the first time in 55 years, but it was not the time to rest on my laurels. Instead, I accepted a move down south to a minor Serie A club, Reggina, who are situated on the tip of the Calabrian coast.

The Reggina board tasked me with keeping the club in Serie A. In my three seasons there I accomplished that goal, ending with the miracle of the 2006/07 season. We started that campaign with a 15-point deduction – eventually reduced to 11 – as a result of the Calciopoli scandal. In the end, we avoided relegation on the last day, winning 2-0 against the newly crowned European champions, AC Milan. It was an achievement that prompted 70,000 people to celebrate in the streets of Reggio Calabria, the city where Reggina are based.

“With these ‘Three Tenors’, we led Napoli to the best era they had experienced since Diego Maradona”

It also earned me the Bergamotto d’Oro – the ‘Golden Bergamot’ – which is an honorary citizenship of Reggio Calabria. Receiving this award, which is usually given to those who bring glory and wealth to the city, still gives me indescribable feelings. The people there adopted me and always made me feel like one of their own. I have been a Reggina fan ever since, which is why it has pained me to see them struggle to regain their place on the football map.

Nonetheless, I hold dear the experience we shared – the best emotions in the club’s history. Memories I will keep forever, just like those I have from Sampdoria – another club from a city by the sea.

In just two seasons there we built a team that qualified for the Europa League, where we defeated Sevilla to reach the last 16. We also reached the 2009 Coppa Italia final, losing to Lazio on penalties after the game had finished 1-1. It was Sampdoria’s best spell since their golden period of the 1980s and early 1990s, when they won their only Scudetto and reached the European Cup final.

And it was at Sampdoria that I had the chance to coach important players like Antonio Cassano. An Italian international, he had just left Real Madrid, where he had become slightly overweight due to a lack of training and playing. He soon turned into one of our key players, however. An immensely talented attacker with inspiring skill, his character could be whimsical. So I committed to getting my principles and vision across to him. I made daily, extra effort to keep him on the right path. It was effort that he paid back massively through his performances.

Managing Cassano gave me a huge confidence boost to embrace the challenge I faced when joining Napoli, in the summer of 2009. There, I met a young Argentinian star, the forward Ezequiel Lavezzi. Two years younger was his talented teammate, the Slovakian midfielder Marek Hamsik. And joining them the following season was Uruguayan attacker Edinson Cavani. With these ‘Three Tenors’, we led Napoli to the best era they had experienced since Diego Maradona two decades before.

Playing in my formation, Lavezzi – previously a creative player without much scoring prowess – started to consistently hit double figures for goals. Cavani, meanwhile, exploded as a goalscorer, registering 33, 33 and 38 goals in his three seasons at the club. Paris Saint-Germain bought Lavezzi for €33m and Cavani for €70m, which massively helped Napoli’s finances.

“Wherever I went, I let the board know in advance that I was deadly serious about my principles”

When I arrived, the club had been signing players from mid-table Serie A teams. Our exploits led to them signing players including Gonzalo Higuaín, Pepe Reina and José Callejón, from European giants Barcelona, Liverpool and Real Madrid. Success on the pitch had a cascade effect that benefited the club finances.

The season before I joined, Napoli had finished 12th. In our first year we improved that to sixth, then third – qualifying for the Champions League – and eventually second, while replacing Lavezzi with Goran Pandev from Inter in my last season. But the best memory I have is our 2012 Coppa Italia final, at Rome’s Stadio Olimpico. There, we faced Antonio Conte’s Juventus, who had won the Scudetto with a 38-game unbeaten streak.

In that final we deservedly won 2-0 – the club’s first trophy since the league title with Maradona 22 years earlier. Taking the trophy back to Naples to celebrate, we all lived the crazy emotions that Napoli fans may only have experienced during Maradona’s time, and later their Scudetto win in 2023.

With my experience at Napoli, the pattern of my career had been on a consistent upward curve, but there had also been another pattern. I often joked that I needed to be close to the sea to be successful. I had grown up on Elba Island, a little frog-shaped rock between Tuscany and Corsica. There, the waves added salt to the passion that was in our blood – a passion I had been able to convey to my players, so that they gave everything on the pitch. It was a passion shared by fans of the southern Italian clubs I managed, Acireale, Reggina and Napoli – as well as coastal clubs Livorno and Sampdoria, who, while not southern, were similarly passionate.

But in all seriousness, my success to that point had hinged on rigour and clarity.  Wherever I went, I let the board know in advance that I was deadly serious about my principles. Once signed and committed, I would work tirelessly for the club, but the priority always had to be the work on the pitch. Because up to that point in my career, the balance sheet, reputation and media value of every club I had managed had massively benefitted from our results.

My first sacking happened in my next role, at Inter – yes, in a city without the sea! There, I had been appointed by the club’s long-serving chairman, Massimo Moratti. In my first season, despite many financial problems, we finished fifth, having been as high as second. But Moratti sold the club and in the uncertainty that followed I was sacked 11 games into my second season.

“I could have waited for more prestigious offers, but I accepted the challenge of managing Watford”

The manager who replaced me couldn’t get better results, though. In fact, it would take Inter another four years to return to the Champions League, and seven years to win a trophy. Looking back, my season in charge was relatively successful during a difficult time for the club. In the seasons before and after my time in charge, they finished ninth and eighth.

Against the backdrop of that disappointment, I was determined to bounce back. I could have waited for more prestigious offers, but I accepted the challenge of managing Watford in the Premier League – my first and to date only experience abroad. Watford are a club that have made many managerial changes in their recent history. Of the last 16 managers, I am currently one of only two to last a season.

In that 2016/17 campaign, for the first time since the club’s heyday in the 1980s, we beat Manchester United, and Arsenal away, in the league. We also beat the reigning champions, Leicester City, and European qualifiers Everton. All clubs with much higher expectations than us. After the win against Everton in December, we were seventh in the Premier League. We went on to comfortably secure a third consecutive season in the top division – something Watford had only achieved once before. It was an exciting run abroad that I would like to experience again, given the right conditions.

When I went back to Italy in the middle of the 2017/18 season, I joined Torino, whose owner Urbano Cairo has always held me in high esteem. By the end of the following campaign, having had my say on transfers and preparation, we had accrued 63 points – a Serie A record for the club since the introduction of three points for a win. In the second half of that season our tally was 37 points, which was a mammoth accomplishment for a club that is usually mid-table.

With three games to play we were a whisker from the last Champions League berth. Playing seven-time defending champions Juventus, we were six minutes from a first away win in the Turin derby for 24 years. It was a win that would have put us level with fourth-placed Atalanta, but Cristiano Ronaldo equalised with a trademark towering header. The Champions League dream was not to be, but we qualified for the Europa League. And I felt like an accomplished manager – someone with national repute and friendly relationships throughout the game.

But the world of football was changing, and unconsciously I was too. By trying to help chairmen I was friendly with, or places I loved, I started to forget my principles and accept challenges mid-season. I have since realised that it had become harder to know from the outside if clubs chasing me could really offer the best working conditions. 

“It was a pity, because for three months I had the chance to work with Khvicha Kvaratskhelia”

For example, last year Napoli were the defending champions, but had sold some important players when they asked me to take over in November after a home defeat to Empoli. For my first game back we had a full week to work with the squad and beat Atalanta 2-1 away – the same powerhouse that would go on to win the Europa League later in the season. From that day on, though, we started playing big matches every three days, with no time to train.

In January I lost Victor Osimhen and André-Franck Zambo Anguissa to the Africa Cup of Nations. We also sold Eljif Elmas, one of our most committed and talented players, who had given us the three points against Atalanta. We played well, but due to injuries and particularly the absence of Osimhen, we struggled to score.

Results deserted us and in February I was sacked. It was a pity, because for three months I had the chance to work with Khvicha Kvaratskhelia. He is a player with the intensity, generosity and talent of Lavezzi, but with a higher goalscoring potential.

Since then, I have declined every offer that doesn’t meet my requirements. I still have the fire in me and am more experienced and skilled than ever. I want to prove that by embracing a project I can work on with the foundation of transparent conditions from the beginning. Because that is the way I have accomplished results and increased clubs’ revenues and reputations.

“It seems to me that regardless of the formation, the interpretation of football is becoming quite similar”

And it is why I have delved further into upskilling, studying other managers. As such, I have been pleased to see the success of the 3-5-2 – or 3-4-3 – formation. In Italy it is now the main formation thanks to the wonderful results achieved by Gian Piero Gasperini with Atalanta and Simone Inzaghi at Inter. I am proud to say I feel somewhat of a pioneer for this formation, having embraced it at Reggina almost 20 years ago. Before me, only Alberto Zaccheroni at Milan and Udinese, and Renzo Ulivieri at Bologna had done something similar.

Now I enjoy watching Inzaghi’s Inter exploiting Alessandro Bastoni and Benjamin Pavard’s attacking skills as centre-backs, adding options on the striker lines. I used to work on the same ideas at Napoli with Hugo Campagnaro, who was a very versatile defender.

It seems to me, though, that regardless of the formation, the interpretation of football is becoming quite similar. All coaches want to be front-footed and aggressively recover possession when it is lost. All of us aim to keep possession as much as possible by prioritising short passes. The media have hailed it as a new wave, but these are principles that I have held for a long time – at Torino in 2018, for example.

Or at Napoli, where we mixed this approach with a more strategical savviness. We would be aggressive until we scored, then I would gesticulate something my players could understand and we would defend a bit deeper, to unleash Lavezzi, Cavani and Hamsik, who were deadly in wider spaces. That led us several times to beating great clubs like Juventus, Milan, Inter, Lazio and Roma, 3-0 or 3-1. But if everyone plays possession-based football with short passes and never vary the plot, do the fans enjoy it, or will they eventually yawn?

I may be 63 and have gone through some unlucky choices, but my ideas have always worked out and are as relevant as ever – with some refinements for the modern game. It gives me the confidence to take on new challenges, with a mind that is young and skills that have been updated. After more than 700 games, I am keener than ever to be teaching the game of football.