Zidane, Guardiola, Dalglish, Simeone, Conte, Ancelloti and Klopp. The list of former players that have become immensely successful managers is needless to say significantly larger than the seven individuals listed above. What these former players share, however, is an understanding of the beautiful game that has enabled them to lead their respective clubs to the pinnacle of European football. Not all managers of course have had successful playing careers, which would indicate that the road to managerial success is not solely dependent upon one’s ability to actually play the sport. That said, finding a top flight manager who has neither played professionally nor attended formal managerial school is almost impossible. This paper aims to substantiate the notion that there is no prerequisite behind managerial success, by using the example of an innovative manager who has unconventionally achieved triumphs with twenty clubs across Europe, by designing his own approach to management.
This rather fascinating example is Maurizzio Sarri. A 61 year old, chain-smoking former currency trader who decided to manage a club for the first time at the age of 30.[1] Sarri demonstrated his passion for the game by playing as a center back for an Amateur Italian club while working full time in Finance. His career as a player, however, never surpassed the amateur level, which led him to pursue a different path that would enable him to satisfy his love of the game.
At the inception of his managerial career in 1990, he oversaw the Italian non-league team USD Stia 1925 and by the end of the decade in 1999, he had won promotion to Serie D with U.S.D Tegoleto. Over the course of the following six years, Sarri managed to scale another three divisions in Italy through a host of clubs. By 2005 he had garnered enough expertise to land a job with the Serie B club Empoli, which he subsequently guided to the Italian top flight after two seasons at the helm.[2] In his final season with Empoli, he succeeded in avoiding relegation and progressed to the next stage of his career at his hometown club of Napoli in 2015.
At Napoli, his seemingly peculiar yet undeniably efficacious style became visible, yielding immediate results as his new club were the league leaders by Christmas in his first season. He inherited a Napoli squad that had consistently flirted with the top four finishes in Serie A in the years prior to his arrival, yet could never genuinely challenge the likes of Juventus. Within a few months, Sarri’s Napoli were in a head to head battle for the league title. The approach he brought to Napoli was not in fact a new one, but one he had crafted and honed over the previous 15 years with all of his teams and the same one that he has brought to his current and former club, Juventus and Chelsea respectively.
At the beginning of his career he adopted Arrigo Sacchi’s zonal marking and redesigned it with a 3,5,2 formation that would shift to a high pressing 5,1,2,2 when his teams were not in possession.[3] He had coined a positionally flexible strategy his former captain at the Serie D club Sangiovanese, Simone Simonti, noted as being one of the fundamental ingredients to his success across the plethora of leagues he has scaled. Sarri’s shifting style of play has become a trademark of top teams across Europe and has resulted in accolade from the likes of Guardiola who stated that the Italian was “one of the coaches he admired the most” and Fabio Capello, who remarked that there was “something new in football thanks to Sarri”.[4] A constantly shifting formation that employed a combined and structured high press and zonal marking at the back has accompanied Sarri throughout the teams he has managed and been a foundation of his impeccable record.
There are, however, many other factors that have contributed to his success. One of the most noteworthy of these factors is not actually visible to the spectator: an unparalleled attention to detail. Another former player and captain of Sarri’s Sangiovannese side (2003-2005), Simone Calori, stated that Sarri’s level of detail concerning “psychological analysis” and “physical tests” was completely “alien” to his players at the time. In his interview with BBC sport, Calori recalls the time when Sarri had researched and then explained the background of the striker he was marking for an upcoming game and told him exactly how he could “get into his head” before the match had even started. Calori also noted that Sarri “knew as much about the opposition’s players” as his own.[5] The sheer amount of investigation and the depth of the analytical lens through which Sarri studies an opponent as well as his players ensures that he is as close to omniscient as humanly possible regarding anything that pertains to football.
The final, and equally essential aspect of Sarri’s managerial approach, is his ability to bring a group of players together by condensing and focusing the collective of his teams as a whole instead of establishing objectives for an individual player. In doing so, Sarri ensures that his team has an entwined sense of obligation to fulfill a task in order to enable another player to fulfill his own. This perspective is outlined by the Historian and football expert Laurent Dubois who notes that the action of any player “only becomes meaningful” through its “relation to a common goal”.[6] Sarri’s ability to bring his players together by establishing an inter-reliant network of tasks for players enables his teams to execute his intricate tactics in each match.
This leads us to the question of whether there is a formula for success as a manager. In light of the list of names this paper started out with, one would be inclined to argue that a successful career as a player is to a large degree a prerequisite for any individual seeking managerial credibility at the top flight level. What makes Sarri an exceptional anomaly is that he was never given a chance by a club in the way many of his colleagues were, such as Massimiliano Allegri, who was given a first division role by Cagliari directly after leading a club to promotion to Serie B. Sarri had to achieve recognition the hard way: by scaling each division in Italian football. The BBC Sport Columnist James Horncastle noted that if one has been to Tuscany, the chance she/he has driven through a town which had a team coached by Sarri is high.[7] Albeit a slightly hyperbolic statement, Horncastle’s remark pays testament to the scale of the mountain Sarri had to climb in order to be where he is today.
The three tactical approaches that have been discussed in this paper exemplify how Sarri threw himself into management with a daring and innovative stance. He created strategies that had not been seen before and consequently baffled opponents of all levels. In his work The Language of the Game: How to Understand Soccer, Dubois states that “the manager is a recruiter, a trainer, a tactician, a theorist, a psychologist, an artist, and even a spiritual leader.”[8] Sarri ticks all of these boxes to the highest degree, in a similar fashion to the managers listed at the inception of this paper. What sets him aside from these individuals, however, is his ability to create and implement a style of play and managerial approach that was initially so bold but as we have seen, so effective. He added a new box to Dubois’ managerial checklist: innovator. Arrigo Sachi, one of Sarri’s influencers, once said that “you don’t need to have been a horse to be a jockey” and his career has substantiated Sachi’s claim. There is no set formula for managerial success. In a constantly evolving sport, strategic innovation is a risky yet potentially rewarding means of achieving success on the pitch.
Works Cited
Amin, Youssef. “An In-Depth Look at Maurizio Sarri’s Tactics at Napoli.” The False 9, 9 Nov. 2017, www.thefalse9.com/2017/11/maurizio-sarri-tactics-napoli-formation.html.
Dubois, Laurent. The Language of the Game: How to Understand Soccer. Basic Books, 2018.
Horncastle , James. “Maurizio Sarri: Who Is the New Chelsea Manager and What Is His Football History?” BBC News , 14 July 2018, https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/44809500
Ianni, Nicola De. Maurizio Sarri: Una Vita Da Raccontare. Rubbettino, 2019.
Kirrane , Kevin, and Patrick Nathanson. “Maurizio Sarri: Chelsea Manager’s Journey from Banker to Premier League.” BBC News , 11 Dec. 2018, https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/46473490.
Pact for Serie B. Amaranto Magazine. 22 July 2011 edition.
[1] Ianni, Nicola De. Maurizio Sarri: Una Vita Da Raccontare. Rubbettino, 2019.
[2] Pact for Serie B. Amaranto Magazine. 22 July 2011 edition.
[3] Amin, Youssef. “An In-Depth Look at Maurizio Sarri’s Tactics at Napoli.”
[4] Kirrane , Kevin, and Patrick Nathanson. “Maurizio Sarri: Chelsea Manager’s Journey from Banker to Premier League.”
[5] Kirrane , Kevin, and Patrick Nathanson. “Maurizio Sarri: Chelsea Manager’s Journey from Banker to Premier League.”
[6] Dubois, Laurent. The Language of the Game: How to Understand Soccer.
[7] Horncastle , James. “Maurizio Sarri: Who Is the New Chelsea Manager and What Is His Football History?”
[8] Dubois, Laurent. The Language of the Game: How to Understand Soccer.
