Jasper
Maldini tier
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I'll pressure the forum management to arrange Player forum to be Players and Milan Icons subforum. So here's a thread for the one and only man who revolutionized the game and did priceless work for our belowed club.
From Xtratime some marvellous stuff:
From Xtratime some marvellous stuff:
San Siro said:Well, I have been working on this tribute to a man who truly deserves it.:thmbup: A man that not only was at the start of the Milan's ressurection and rise to unreachable heights, :stuckup: but also the pionner of a new era of football as he has totally revolutionized football with his avant-guardiste approach to football.
I didn't write this piece of master piece, I have merely translated it from French. It's not done yet as it's very long, but the rest should be done soon. A big thanks for Presidente (Diavolo) for posting this article in the first place)
Also, a relevant link to this topic:
http://www.xtratime.org/forums/showthread.php?t=142435
FORZA DON ARRIGO!!!!
Enjoy!!!:shades:
This article is composed of extracts from a very long article intitled: From Sacchi to Zeman, Capello and Lippi to arrive at Descartes and Kant. It seems interesting to me that the extracts regarding Arrigo Sacchi that I personally consider as a coach whom has marked, through AC Milan, a turning point in the history of European and Italian tactical aspects of football. I believe that Arrigo Sacchi is undisputable, or at least in the same manner as Kant and Sigmund Freud. They may have said some true things and other less verifiable ones, but the important thing is that it is not questionable that they have influenced so profoundly their own discipline to the point of becoming a constant point of reference. Sacchi has obtained exceptional results. We all know what he has won with Milan.
However, not many know that he has won right away during his first season as a coach the amateur league title with Fusignano. He won the Primavera league with Cesena with a record of 26 wins out of 32 and 5 ties, scoring 82 goals and conceding only 10. Then why is he so much questioned? I believe there are various reasons. First of all because he has been an innovator. On paper, we are all for progress, but in reality, Man is naturally conservator. Changes are risky and everything that’s not part of our habits is a danger. We only like what we are comfortable with and what we already know. From football, we demand even more so certitudes. Being one of our points of reference as we attribute an important part of our daily lives, we expect and demand from it certitudes. Sacchi has reversed our manner of living and seeing football. It has not been easy to follow him. He is posing a problem which is very practical and almost always underestimated. Playing the prophets in the era of instant global information is very difficult.
The History of Sacchi
Sacchi is a romagnolo from Fusignano, a city close to Ravenna. He has studied accounting and he plays football. His father is wealthy as he has a small shoe factory. Arrigo grows up in the middle of the perfumes of the province. He is natural and dry, he wants right away his Porsche, he is torn between the demands of changing the world and to enjoy the easy life thanks to the wealth of his father. He chooses the latter and works for his father in his factory. He stops playing football without football noticing it. He falls in love with the Dutch ways.
Then one day, he decides to leave and and goes around Europe meticulously and carefully studying the football of the others. He is particularly interested in the teaching of football to the youth. Sacchi believes that football starts from there. At the age of fourteen, a boy learns everything. He would know how to play in zone, the offside rule, pressing, diagonal, everything as he has a free spirit. At the age of 25 the boy becomes what he has learned. When he comes back from his Europe tour, he knows what is duty in life is. Sacchi remains profoundly convinced that the international experiences contribute a lot in forming a young footballer. When he trains the Cesena Primavera, he wants the club to send as much as possible the team to play tournaments abroad. And this team grows as a small chef d’oeuvre, balanced and mature. These boys win the league and they would all end up playing in Serie B and A.
His idea is that the man is more important and counts more than the player. In the sense that if a footballer is not a serious man, he would never be a good footballer. Serious means being humble, being always ready to learn, to make sacrifices, to respect the fatigue to the point of understanding its necessity and key role in his system; to play for the others rather for oneself; to understand that if a partner doesn’t help, he won’t be helped and if he doesn’t help the team won’t exist. There’s finally an entire evangil of Sacchi which is at the base of his working methods. Translated onto the field, his thought means two training sessions a day, sometimes three, in a world where one doesn’t go beyond 3 training sessions per week plus the friendly match on Thursdays.
That means a strict regime, a continuous study of one’s and the opponents’ movements; it means continuous discussion about one’s own limits, about being dust and about the infinite predisposition to become it. It means to totally immerse oneself into the philosophy of football and finally, to dive into the tunnel of excessive and unknown professionalism. When he arrives at Milan, he is a young technician of 41 years old who has never set foot in Serie A. Silvio Berlusconi welcomes him royally at Milan and surrounds him of grandeur. Sacchi defends himself with his hunger of glory, his evangil of work ethics of his region. He has spiritual eyes and a fixed smile. As Brera (great Italian journalis/writer of the 70s to 1990, Interista) writes, he often seems in direct conjonction and contact with God. His players are not listening to him. To Franco Baresi, he shows footage of Signorini, the Parma libero in Serie B.
He is not understood, he is underestimated, then when the team loses a few games, a certain incredulity and scepticism comes as well. He feels faced with a duty bigger than him. After all, who is he? That’s the question most people are wondering in Milano, and worst of all, inside the dressing rooms. Thus, one day, he takes all the players apart, closes the doors of Milanello and yells that he is ready to go back to Fusignano but that they (the players) have not won anything and that they will not win anything. No one really knows whether it was his frank and direct way of talking or his charisma, but the fact is that all the Milan players come out of this meeting extremely pumped up. Berlusconi respects him and starts to believe in him again. And when the team goes to play a crucial game away to Verona, also crucial for Sacchi, the president stands at the doors of the dressing rooms and repeats convincingly to each and everyone of the players the same thing: “Between Sacchi and the team, I choose Sacchi”. The message is clear and goes well. Milan wins. And would not stop for a very long time. And this says it all on the fact that to have a great team, it is indispensable to have a great club.
Discussion on the methods of Sacchi
Sacchi doesn’t invent a new football but a new manner to play football. He plays zonal on the natural basis of the 4-4-2. He presses the opponents in their own half by holding his defence at the level of the half line. Attacking this Milan during that time was difficult. Rare were the teams which succeeded. The team is very compact, tight and close with only one forward (Virdis) and a lot of versatile players (Donadoni, Evani, Gullit and Ancelotti.
On the right wing, Tassotti and Colombo take care of the marking and help each other and take turns in crossing; on the left wing, the young Maldini and Evani do the same. Baresi plays in line with the defenders and orchestrate the off-side. However what is spectacular in the Sacchi method is the capacity of playing in a collective manner. In general, the collective play doesn’t distinguish itself on the fact that the ball circulated and moves around between all the players of the team but rather of their total movement. In order to have a good coherent play, the players of the team have to move all together and in the same direction that the ball is going. It is not easy to do that. You will often see 5 or 6 players moving but not all. This means that there is no harmony, that that there’s a technical or physical difficulty.
Sacchi’s Milan, when it was moving, looked like the migration of a people. The players move up and down not only together but by staying at the same distance of each other, a metre away from each other. It is quite difficult to play against such a machine, so developed and well oiled. Numerous were the games were Galli, the goal keeper did not touch the ball. Milan win all their matches at home and without losing away and conceding only 14 goals in the whole season. The team is lacking a great deep playmaker, like a Rijkaard whom would join the following year. Ancelotti does not have the calibre to fill that role, he does his job well and can do the playmaking job well when needed but it is not his best position. Berlusconi says that Milan does have a chef d’orchestre, but he doesn’t know the music and tune.
Stay tuned for the remainder of the article to be posted soon...
Cheers.
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