Copyright

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First published by HarperCollins 2019

FIRST EDITION

© Michael Cox 2019

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Source ISBN: 9780008291167

Ebook Edition © May 2019 ISBN: 9780008291150

Version: 2019-05-07

Contents

1  Cover

2  Title Page

3  Copyright

4  Contents

5  Introduction

6  Part One – Voetbal, 1992–96

7  1 Individual versus Collective

8  2 Space

9  3 Playing Out from the Back

10  Transition: Netherlands–Italy

11  Part Two – Calcio, 1996–2000

12  4 Flexibility

13  5 The Third Attacker

14  6 Catenaccio

15  Transition: Italy–France

16  Part Three – Foot, 2000–04

17  7 Speed

18  8 The Number 10

19  9 The Water Carrier

20  Transition: France–Portugal

21  Part Four – Futebol, 2004–08

22  10 Structure

23  11 The First Port of Call

24  12 Wingers

25  Transition: Portugal–Spain

26  Part Five – Fútbol, 2008–12

27  13 Tiki-taka

28  14 False 9s & Argentines

29  15 El Clásico

30  Transition: Spain–Germany

31  Part Six – Fußball, 2012–16

32  16 Verticality

33  17 Gegenpressing

34  18 Reinvention

35  Transition: Germany–England

36  Part Seven – Football, 2016–20

37  19 The Mixer

38  Epilogue

39  Bibliography

40  Acknowledgements

41  List of Searchable Terms

42  Also by Michael Cox

43  About the Publisher

LandmarksCoverFrontmatterStart of ContentBackmatter

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Introduction

Despite this book’s chronological nature, it was not originally intended to be a history of modern European football. The primary intention was to analyse the various playing styles that dominate Europe’s seven most influential footballing countries – the Netherlands, Italy, France, Portugal, Spain, Germany and England – a fairly unarguable septet, based on a combination of recent international performance and the current strength of their domestic leagues.

A nation’s footballing style is reflected in various ways. It’s not simply about the national side’s characteristics, but about the approach of its dominant clubs, the nature of its star players and the philosophy of its coaches. It’s about the experiences of a country’s players when moving abroad, and about the success of its imports. It’s about how referees officiate and what the supporters cheer. That’s what this book was always going to be about.

But then came the issue of structure – in which order should the countries be covered? Geographically? Thematically? By drawing balls out of bowls at UEFA’s headquarters? It immediately became clear that the story wasn’t simply about the different style of each country. It was also about how Europe’s dominant football country, and dominant style, had changed so regularly.

1992 was the obvious start date, heralding the back-pass law, the rebranding of the European Cup to Champions League and the formation of the Premier League. From that point, each country could be covered in turn, by focusing on a four-year period of success.

In the early 1990s the Dutch footballing philosophy was worshipped across the continent, but its influence declined after the Bosman ruling. The baton passed to Italy, which clearly boasted Europe’s strongest league. But then France started winning everything at international level and its national academy became the template for others, before suddenly, almost out of nowhere, Europe’s most revered player and manager both hailed from Portugal. Next, Barcelona and Spain won across the board during a very obvious four-year period of dominance, before tiki-taka’s decline meant Bayern and Germany took control. Finally, Europe’s most successful coaches found themselves competing in England, introducing various styles to the Premier League.

Naturally, each section strays outside these four-year boundaries. You can’t analyse Dutch football in the mid-1990s without relating it back to the Total Football of the 1970s, and you can’t analyse Didier Deschamps’ performances for France at the turn of the century without noting that he won the World Cup as manager in 2018. None of the chapters are named after specific individuals or teams from each period; they’re based around more general concepts that have been reflected in each nation’s football over a longer period.

The seven sections are different in style. The Netherlands section is about how the Dutch dictated the nature of modern European football, the Italy section focuses on specific tactical debates and the France section is about its production of certain types of player. The Portugal section is about its evolution into a serious footballing force, the Spain section about its commitment to a specific philosophy, the Germany section about its reinvention and the England section about how it borrows concepts from elsewhere.

By virtue of the book’s structure, some noteworthy teams aren’t covered extensively here: there are only passing mentions of Greece’s shock Euro 2004 triumph, Italy’s World Cup success two years later and Real Madrid’s Champions League-winning sides of recent years. But the most influential players, coaches and teams since 1992 feature heavily, and therefore, while it wasn’t the original intention, this book hopefully serves as a history of modern European football by outlining its crucial innovations, including gegenpressing, playing out from the back, tactical periodisation, tiki-taka and, of course, zonal marking.

Part One

1
Individual versus Collective

At the start of football’s modern era in the summer of 1992, Europe’s dominant nation was the Netherlands. The European Cup had just been lifted by a Barcelona side led by Johan Cruyff, the epitome of the Dutch school of Total Football, while Ajax had won the European Cup Winners’ Cup. And there was strength in depth domestically – PSV had won the league, Feyenoord won the cup.

Holland failed to retain the European Championship, having won it in 1988, but played exciting, free-flowing fotball at an otherwise disappointingly defensive Euro 92, the last tournament before the back-pass change. Europe’s most dominant player was also a Dutchman – that year’s Ballon d’Or was won by Marco van Basten, while his strike partner at international level, Dennis Bergkamp, finished third.

But the Dutch dominance wasn’t about specific teams or individuals; it was about a particular philosophy, and Dutch sides – or those coached by Dutch managers like Cruyff – promoted this approach so successfully that football’s modern era would be considered in relation to the classic Dutch interpretation of the game.

When Total Football revolutionised the sport during the 1970s, the nature of the approach was widely associated with the nature of Amsterdam. The Dutch capital was the centre of European liberalism, a mecca for hippies from all across the continent, and that was reflected in Dutch football. Ajax and Holland players supposedly had no positional responsibilities, and were seemingly allowed to wander wherever they pleased to create vibrant, free-flowing, beautiful football.

But in reality the Dutch approach was heavily systematised – players interchanged positions exclusively in vertical lines up and down the pitch, and if a defender charged into attack, a midfielder and forward were compelled to drop back and cover. In that respect, while players were theoretically granted freedom to roam, in practice they were constantly thinking about their duties in response to the actions of others. In an era when attackers from other European nations were often granted free roles, Ajax and Holland’s forwards were constrained by managerial guidelines. Arrigo Sacchi, the great AC Milan manager of the late 1980s, explained it concisely: ‘There has only been one real tactical revolution, and it happened when football shifted from an individual to a collective game,’ he declared. ‘It happened with Ajax.’ Since that time, Dutch football has held an ongoing philosophical debate – should football be individualistic like the stereotypical depiction of Dutch culture, or be systematised like the classic Total Football sides?

During the mid-1990s, this debate was epitomised by the rivalry between Johan Cruyff, the golden boy of Total Football now coaching Barcelona, and Ajax manager Louis van Gaal, who enjoyed a more prosaic route to the top. Both promoted the classic Ajax model in terms of ball possession and formation, but whereas Cruyff wholeheartedly believed in indulging superstars, Van Gaal relentlessly emphasised the importance of the collective. ‘Van Gaal works even more structurally than Cruyff did,’ observed their shared mentor Rinus Michels, who had taken charge of those legendary Ajax and Holland sides in the 1970s. ‘There is less room in Van Gaal’s approach for opportunism and changes in positions. On the other hand, build-up play is perfected to the smallest detail.’

The Dutch interpretation of leadership is somewhat complex. The Dutch take pride in their openness and capacity for discussion, which in a footballing context means players sometimes enjoy influence over issues that, elsewhere, would be the responsibility of the coach. For example, Cruyff sensationally left Ajax for Barcelona in 1973 because Ajax employed a system in which the players elected the club captain, and was so offended when voted out that he decamped to the Camp Nou. When you consider Cruyff’s subsequent impact at Barcelona, it was a seismic decision, and one that owed everything to classic Dutch principles.

Dutch players are accustomed to exerting an influence on their manager, and helping to formulate tactical plans. As Van Gaal explained of the Ajax system, ‘We teach players to read the game, we teach them to be like coaches … coaches and players alike, we argue and discuss and above all, communicate. If the opposition’s coach comes up with a good tactic, the players look and find a solution.’ While in many other countries, players instinctively follow the manager’s instructions, a team of Dutch players may offer eleven different opinions on the optimum tactical approach, which partly explains why the national side are renowned for constantly squabbling at tournaments – they’ve always been encouraged to articulate tactical ideas. This inevitably leads to disagreements, and players in the national side only ever seem to agree when they decide to overthrow the coach.

Michels, the father of Total Football, actively encouraged dissent with his so-called ‘conflict model’, which involved him luring players into dressing-room arguments. ‘I sometimes deliberately used a strategy of confrontation,’ he admitted after his retirement. ‘My objective was to create a field of tension, and improve the team spirit.’ Crucially, Michels acknowledges he always picked on ‘key players’, and when a nation’s most celebrated manager admits to provoking his best players into arguments, it’s hardly surprising that those in future generations saw nothing wrong with squabbling.

This emphasis on voicing opinions means Dutch players are often considered arrogant by outsiders, and this is another concept linked to the nature of Amsterdam. The original Total Footballers of the 1970s Ajax team were described by Cruyff as being ‘Amsterdammers by nature’, the type of thing best understood by his compatriots. Ruud Krol, that side’s outstanding defender, outlined it further: ‘We had a way of playing that was very Amsterdam – arrogant, but not really arrogant, the whole way of showing off and putting down the other team, showing we were better than them.’ Dennis Bergkamp, on the other hand, claims it is simply ‘not allowed to be big-headed in the Netherlands’, and describes the notoriously self-confident Cruyff as ‘not arrogant – it’s just a Dutch thing, an Amsterdam thing.’

Van Gaal was arguably even more arrogant than Cruyff, and was so frequently described as ‘pig-headed’ that critics sometimes appeared to be making a physical comparison. Upon Van Gaal’s appointment as Ajax boss he told the board: ‘Congratulations for appointing the best manager in the world,’ while at his first press conference, chairman Ton Harmsen introduced him with the words, ‘Louis is damned arrogant, and we like arrogant people here.’ Van Gaal was another who linked Ajax’s approach to the city. ‘The Ajax model has something to do with our mentality, the arrogance of the capital city, and the discipline of the small Netherlands,’ he said. Everyone in Amsterdam acknowledges their collective arrogance, but no one seems to admit to individual arrogance, which rather underlines the confusion.

His long-time rival, Cruyff, was arrogant for a reason: he was the greatest footballer of the 1970s and the greatest Dutch footballer ever. His career was littered with successes: most notably three Ballons d’Or and three straight European Cups. He also won six league titles with Ajax, then moved to Barcelona and won La Liga, spent some time in the United States before returning to Ajax to win another two league titles. In 1983, when not offered a new contract at Ajax, he took revenge by moving to arch-enemies Feyenoord for one final year, won the league title, was voted Dutch Footballer of the Year, and then announced his retirement. Cruyff did what he pleased and got what he wanted, enjoying all this incredible success while simultaneously claiming that success was less important than style. He personified Total Football, which made his status – as the only true individual in an otherwise very collective team – somewhat curious. He was a popular choice as Ajax manager in 1985, just a year after his playing retirement. He won the Cup Winners’ Cup in 1987 and inevitably headed to another hero’s welcome in Barcelona, where he won the Cup Winners’ Cup again in 1989, then Barca’s first-ever European Cup in 1992 and their first-ever run of four straight league titles. A legendary player had become a legendary coach.

In stark contrast, when Van Gaal was appointed Ajax manager in 1991 after several disappointing post-Cruyff managerial reigns, supporters were unhappy. Cruyff had been heavily linked with a return and Ajax fans chanted his name at Van Gaal’s early matches, while De Telegraaf, the Netherlands’ biggest-selling newspaper, led a campaign calling for Cruyff’s return. Some believed Van Gaal was merely a temporary solution until Cruyff’s homecoming was secured, so it would be understandable if Van Gaal harboured resentment towards him based on those rumours. In fact, the tensions had their origins two decades earlier.

Van Gaal was a relatively talented footballer, a tall and immobile player who started up front, more playmaker than goalscorer, and later dropped back into midfield. He enjoyed a decent career, primarily with Sparta Rotterdam, but considered his playing career something of a disappointment, mainly because he had expected to become an Ajax regular. He’d joined his hometown club in 1972 at the age of 20 and regularly appeared for the reserve side, but he failed to make a single first-team appearance before being sold. The player in his position, of course, was Cruyff, and therefore Van Gaal’s entire Ajax career was spent in Cruyff’s shadow: first as his understudy when a player, then unpopular second-choice as coach.

By the early 1990s Cruyff was Barcelona manager and Van Gaal was Ajax manager, and the two were not friends. ‘We have bad chemistry,’ Cruyff confirmed. Initially, as coaches, they’d been on good terms. In 1989, when Van Gaal was Ajax’s assistant coach, he studied at a coaching course in Barcelona over Christmas and spent many evenings at the Cruyff family home, getting along particularly well with Cruyff’s son Jordi, then a Barca youth player. This, however, is supposedly where things turned sour. Van Gaal received a phone call from the Netherlands, bringing the news that his sister was gravely ill, and he rushed back to Amsterdam to see her before she died. Much later, Van Gaal suggested Cruyff was angry with him for leaving without thanking the Cruyffs for their hospitality, something Cruyff strongly denies, claiming they had a friendly encounter shortly afterwards in Amsterdam. It seems implausible that Cruyff would use Van Gaal’s tragic news to start a feud, and more likely that there was a misunderstanding at a moment when Van Gaal was emotional. But the truth is probably much simpler: this was a clash of footballing philosophies, and a clash of egos.

Cruyff devoted a considerable amount of time to winding up Van Gaal, while increasingly becoming wound up himself. By 1992 journalists were inevitably comparing Cruyff’s Barcelona to Van Gaal’s Ajax, the European Cup winners and the European Cup Winners’ Cup winners respectively, which prompted a furious response from Cruyff. ‘If he thinks Ajax are much better than Barcelona, then he’s riding for a fall, he’s making a big mistake,’ he blasted. ‘When you look at Ajax at the moment, you can see the quality is declining.’ He became increasingly petty. In 1993 he said he wanted Feyenoord to win the league ahead of Van Gaal’s Ajax. In 1994, when asked which teams across Europe he admired, Cruyff replied with Auxerre and Parma – the two sides that had eliminated Ajax from European competition in the previous two seasons. In February 1995, when a journalist suggested that Ajax might be stronger than Barcelona, his response was blunt: ‘Why don’t you stop talking shit?’ But Van Gaal’s Ajax demonstrated their superiority by winning the Champions League that year.

Van Gaal eternally stressed the importance of collectivism: ‘Football is a team sport, and the members of the team are therefore dependent upon each other,’ he explained. ‘If certain players do not carry out their tasks properly on the pitch, then their colleagues will suffer. This means that each player has to carry out his basic tasks to the best of his ability.’ Simple stuff, but you wouldn’t find Cruyff speaking about football in such functional, joyless language. Cruyff wanted his players to express themselves, to enjoy themselves, but for Van Gaal it was about ‘carrying out basic tasks’. When Ajax failed to win, Van Gaal would typically complain that his players ‘did not keep to the arrangement’, effectively accusing them of breaking their teammates’ trust by doing their own thing. However, Van Gaal’s sides were not about grinding out results – they would play in an extremely attack-minded, if mechanical, way. ‘I suspect I’m fonder of playing the game well, rather than winning,’ he once said.

A fine example of Van Gaal’s dislike for individualism came in 1992, when he controversially sold the exciting winger Bryan Roy, which prompted criticism from Cruyff, who complained that his rival didn’t appreciate individual brilliance. Van Gaal’s reason was intriguing; he ditched Roy because ‘he did not mind running for the team, but he could not think for the team’. He was hardly the first autocratic manager to become frustrated with an inconsistent winger, but whereas others eschewed them entirely in favour of narrow systems, Ajax’s approach depended heavily on width, and Van Gaal needed two outright wingers.

Left-sided Marc Overmars and right-sided Finidi George were given strict instructions not to attempt dribbles past multiple opponents: in one-against-one situations they could beat their man, but if faced with two defenders they were told to turn inside and switch the play. Ajax supporters, accustomed to wingers providing unpredictability and excitement, were frustrated by their lack of freedom, as were the players themselves. Finidi eventually left for Real Betis, where he spoke of his delight at finally being able to express himself. Van Gaal, though, hated dribbling; not only did he consider it inefficient, he thought it was the ultimate example of a footballer playing for himself. ‘We live in a laissez-faire society,’ said Van Gaal. ‘But in a team, you need discipline.’

Van Gaal’s schoolmasterly approach was entirely natural considering he’d juggled his playing career with teaching for 12 years, following in the footsteps of his hero Michels, who was also a schoolteacher. Van Gaal was by all accounts a hard taskmaster who worked in a tough school with difficult pupils, often from poor backgrounds, and this shaped his managerial philosophy. ‘Players are really just like big children, so there really is a resemblance between being a teacher and being a coach,’ he said. ‘You approach students in a certain way, based on a particular philosophy, and you do so with football players in exactly the same manner. Both at school and in a football team you encounter a pecking order and different cultures.’ Before becoming Ajax’s first-team coach, Van Gaal took charge of the club’s youth system, where he coached an outstanding group featuring the likes of Edgar Davids, Clarence Seedorf and Patrick Kluivert. This, rather than managing a smaller Eredivisie club, served as his bridge between being a teacher and becoming a first-team coach. He enjoyed working with youngsters precisely because they were malleable; once a footballer was 25, Van Gaal believed, he could no longer change their identity. The only veterans in Ajax’s 1995 Champions League-winning side were defenders Danny Blind, in his ninth year at the club, and the returning Frank Rijkaard, who had initially risen through the club’s academy in the 1980s. Van Gaal wouldn’t have countenanced signing a fully formed, non-Ajax-schooled superstar, even if they were individually superior to an existing option. ‘I don’t need the eleven best,’ Van Gaal said. ‘I need the best eleven.’

Whereas Van Gaal was a teacher, Cruyff wasn’t even a student. He’d been appointed Ajax manager in 1985 despite lacking the requisite coaching badges: Cruyff was Cruyff, and so, as always, an exception was made. And whereas Van Gaal was highly suspicious of individuals, Cruyff was delighted to indulge superstars, and his Barcelona side featured far more individual brilliance in the final third because he could, at various stages, count on four of the most revered superstars of this era: Michael Laudrup, Hristo Stoichkov, Romario and Gheorghe Hagi. The rise and fall of Cruyff’s Barcelona depended largely on his treatment of these players.

The most fascinating individual was Laudrup, effectively the Cruyff figure in Cruyff’s Dream Team. Cruyff had been his childhood hero, and at World Cup 1986, a tournament for which Holland failed to qualify, Laudrup was the outstanding player in the fabulous ‘Danish Dynamite’ side that drew comparisons to the Dutch Total Footballers of the 1970s. Laudrup signed for Barca in 1989 and immediately became the side’s technical leader, dropping deep from a centre-forward role to encourage midfield runners into attack. He could play killer through-balls with either foot, and possessed an uncanny ability to poke no-look passes with the outside of his right foot while moving to his left, leaving defenders bamboozled. He would finish his career, incidentally, with a one-year stint at Ajax in 1997/98.

On one hand, Cruyff adored Laudrup’s natural talent. When Laudrup scored a stupendous last-minute equaliser at Real Burgos in 1991/92, flicking the ball up with his left foot and smashing it into the top-right corner with his right, Laudrup rushed over to celebrate with a delighted Cruyff, among the warmest embraces between player and manager you’ll witness. But Cruyff also labelled him ‘one of the most difficult players I’ve worked with’, believing that Laudrup didn’t push his talents hard enough, and he constantly complained about his lack of leadership skills. Cruyff used Michels’s ‘conflict’ approach, but it only served to annoy the Dane, who was a nervous, reserved footballer requiring more delicate treatment.

The beneficiary of Laudrup’s measured through-balls was another supremely talented superstar, Bulgarian legend Stoichkov. ‘From more than 100 goals I scored, I’m sure that over 50 were assisted by Michael,’ Stoichkov said of his period at Barca. ‘To play with him was extremely easy – we found each other by intuition.’ That was a telling description; in a Van Gaal side attacking was about pre-determined moves, in a Cruyff side it was about organic relationships.

Like Laudrup, Stoichkov idolised Cruyff and still owned videos of the Dutchman when he agreed to join him at Barcelona, but he was completely different from Laudrup in terms of personality: aggressive, fiery and unpredictable. He’d been handed a lifelong ban from football in his homeland, later reduced to a year, for fighting at the 1985 Bulgarian Cup Final. After impressing Cruyff by scoring a wonderful chip over the head of Barcelona goalkeeper Andoni Zubizarreta for CSKA Sofia in the Cup Winners’ Cup, he arrived at the Camp Nou in 1989. ‘He had speed, finishing and character,’ Cruyff remembered. ‘We had too many nice guys, we needed someone like him.’ But in Stoichkov’s first Clásico he was shown a red card, stamped on the referee’s foot on his way off and was handed a ten-week ban. At another club Stoichkov might have been sacked, but Cruyff kept faith and he scored the winner on his return, then the following week scored four in a 6–0 victory at Athletic Bilbao. Stoichkov was worth indulging, even if he received ten red cards while at Barca, an incredible tally for a forward.

Unlike Laudrup, Stoichkov was well suited to Cruyff’s ‘conflict model’, perfectly understanding the purpose of his manager’s attacks. ‘In front of the group he told me that I was a disaster, that I wasn’t going to play the next game and that he was going to sell me,’ Stoichkov explained. ‘But at the end of training we would go and eat together.’ He repeatedly professed his hatred for Real Madrid, and supporters loved his attitude – Stoichkov would refuse to sign autographs, yet fans would just laugh at his anarchic nature. ‘He shook things up,’ said Zubizarreta. ‘Although he sometimes went too far, I am grateful for people like him who are capable of breaking the monotony of everyday life.’

Yet by 1993/94, when Cruyff won his final league title, Stoichkov wasn’t even the most arrogant forward at Barcelona, because Cruyff had raided Ajax’s rivals PSV to sign Brazilian striker Romario, an extraordinary talent who also had a reputation for skipping training sessions. ‘People say he’s a very difficult individual,’ suggested a journalist upon Romario’s arrival. ‘You could say the same thing about me,’ Cruyff fired back, delighted to sign a footballer who possessed his individualistic nature. Romario declared himself the world’s best-ever striker, announced he would score 30 league goals (he did, winning the Pichichi Trophy as La Liga’s top goalscorer), then spent the season promising that the 1994 World Cup would be ‘Romario’s tournament’ (it was, and he was then voted World Player of the Year). Whereas at PSV Romario was regularly involved in build-up play, at Barcelona he would vanish for long periods before providing a ruthless, decisive finish. His acceleration was incredible, he had a knack of surprising goalkeepers with toe-poked finishes and he unashamedly celebrated goals solo, even when he’d simply converted into a gaping net after a teammate had done the hard work.

Stoichkov and Romario had a love–hate relationship throughout their 18 months together. Cruyff said they had ‘the same problem’, thinking the side was built around them, and they sometimes appeared to be competing to score the most goals rather than combining as a traditional strike partnership. Yet it spurred both on to new heights, and they struck up a surprising friendship. ‘It seems bizarre and even now I ask myself how it was possible,’ Stoichkov said later. ‘But we became good friends right from the start; we were inseparable.’ Their wives became best friends, their children went to school together, Stoichkov became godfather to one of Romario’s sons and acted as a minder when Romario visited the hospital to visit his newborn, getting a photographer out of the way by punching him.

On the European stage their most memorable display was a 4–0 thrashing of Manchester United at Camp Nou in November 1994. Stoichkov scored the first, Romario grabbed the second, then Stoichkov dribbled forward, slipped in Romario, who backheeled a return pass for Stoichkov to smash in the third. Full-back Albert Ferrer rounded off the scoring. ‘We just couldn’t handle the speed of Stoichkov and Romario,’ admitted United manager Alex Ferguson. ‘The suddenness with which they attacked was a new experience.’ But for Barcelona fans the 5–0 thrashing of Real Madrid earlier that year meant more. Romario hit a hat-trick, including an opener featuring him outwitting Real centre-back Rafael Alkorta with an incredible move that became known as ‘the cow’s tail’: receiving the ball with his back to goal, then turning on the spot by touching the ball twice in one movement, dragging it around into his path and finishing. ‘It will go down in history,’ said Stoichkov, referring to Romario’s move when he could have been speaking about the scoreline. But Barca were hugely inconsistent at this point, and only an excellent late run meant they pinched the title from Deportivo on goal difference, the second straight season they’d triumphed courtesy of a rival slipping up on the final day. That wasn’t, in itself, disastrous – but a 4–0 loss to Milan in the 1994 European Cup Final was.

Things started to fall apart. Cruyff and Laudrup’s relationship had broken down, the Dane was omitted from the squad for that Milan final and his contract wasn’t renewed. He promptly imitated Cruyff’s controversial switch to Feyenoord in 1983, joining Real Madrid and inspiring them to the league title while Cruyff, intriguingly, claimed Laudrup had become too individualistic. ‘He lacked discipline,’ Cruyff protested. ‘If you have a lot of stars in a team, there has to be a limit as to what each does as an individual.’ This was something of a curious explanation, though, considering that Laudrup was evidently a selfless player who loved assisting others. The reality was that Barcelona simply now had brighter stars, and with the three-foreigner rule still in place, Laudrup had become fourth in the pecking order behind Romario, Stoichkov and centre-back Ronald Koeman.

Romario, meanwhile, was proving equally problematic, and his friendship with Stoichkov had broken down because of his complaints about the Brazilian’s increasingly hedonistic lifestyle. Other Barca players became equally exasperated. Having won the 1994 World Cup, Romario inevitably spent a month partying in Rio and returned to Barcelona late. Cruyff wasn’t too bothered by his tardiness, but Barcelona’s committee of senior players, including Koeman, Zubizarreta, José Bakero and Txiki Begiristain, demanded a meeting to address the situation. Cruyff reluctantly agreed, and sat down with the players, asking them to spell out their grievances. Romario listened attentively, before launching into an angry tirade. ‘You, you and you got knocked out early,’ he fired at the Spanish trio, before turning to Koeman and reminding him, ‘You got eliminated by me. You guys lost! I am the winner here! I thought this meeting would be to welcome me, to congratulate me, that you would give me a trophy. What am I doing answering to you guys? Go shove it up your arse!’ Cruyff’s response was typical: ‘Right, back to training.’

Meanwhile, in response to Laudrup’s departure, Cruyff recruited another absurdly talented attacker, Hagi, a magnificent player sometimes regarded almost interchangeably with Stoichkov, as two glorious number 10s who inspired their country to their peak in the mid-1990s. Only Cruyff would be crazy enough to pair them, and he welcomed the Romanian’s arrival by directly comparing him with Laudrup: ‘If you exchange Laudrup for Hagi, you have to assume you’re not trading down … I bet that Hagi scores at least double the number of goals Laudrup managed, and provides at least as many assists.’ Cruyff was wrong, and it was unusual to witness a manager so directly comparing the output of two footballers, especially considering he was denigrating a player so fundamental to his Dream Team.

Hagi was signed on the strength of his World Cup performances, which meant Cruyff had assembled three of that tournament’s All-Star Team XI: Romario, Stoichkov and Hagi. The Romanian was a tempestuous character: individualistic, aggressive, inconsistent, arrogant and lazy, but capable of producing genuine moments of magic. His injury-hit Barcelona spell was disappointing, but Hagi considered it successful because of the freedom he was granted. ‘There were several rumours and discussions about me, but Johan Cruyff had faith in me and gave me the opportunity to show what I could do. I repaid his confidence,’ he declared. Hagi produced a moment of genius in a 4–2 victory at Celta Vigo, taking the ball straight from kick-off in thick fog and shooting directly from the halfway line into the net, surely the ultimate example of individualism.

But Cruyff’s obsession with individualistic players was spiralling out of control. Romario’s attitude upon returning from the World Cup was a sign of things to come, and he spent most of his time in Barcelona partying, permanently renting two hotel suites to entertain guests. ‘Have sex every day, but three times at the most,’ was his self-declared motto. Throughout that second season, various Barcelona players suggested that Romario turned up for training barely able to move, having been up all night. Cruyff was forced to send him home, and Romario was frequently late for team meetings having overslept. ‘Romario never came back after the World Cup. His body was there but his mind was still in Rio’, sighed Stoichkov, while Cruyff simply complained that ‘he lacked discipline’, the exact words he’d used to describe Laudrup. The beginning of the end came exactly a year after Barcelona had defeated Real Madrid 5–0. Now, they lost to Real Madrid 5–0, with Laudrup sensational. Stoichkov was dismissed in the first half, while a desperately useless Romario was hauled off at the interval, never to play for Barca again. Cruyff had kept faith in the wrong individuals.

The following week Romario was voted World Player of the Year, while Stoichkov came second, the Bulgarian also winning the Ballon d’Or, which was then only open to Europeans. This was the starkest demonstration of Cruyff’s problem: Barcelona officially had the world’s two greatest players, but they were barely speaking to one another, or their manager, and their most recent performance saw neither making it into the second half of a 5–0 defeat. Cruyff was angry that Stoichkov even wanted to attend the presentation and made him train on the day of the ceremony, meaning he arrived late. ‘Something has gone wrong between me and the coach,’ bemoaned Stoichkov when he finally arrived, before referencing the individual versus collective dilemma again. ‘When we lose I am always the one singled out for blame. When we win, the whole team get the praise.’ Later he said something similar, but hardened his attack on his manager. ‘When we win it’s down to Cruyff, when we lose it’s the players’ fault.’ Cruyff’s conflict model had finally worn him down.

By the summer Stoichkov was gone, Romario had already returned to Brazil, Laudrup was celebrating a title victory in Madrid and only the underwhelming Hagi remained. Cruyff’s management had been undermined by his feuds with superstars and he responded, perhaps having enviously noted Van Gaal’s model at Ajax, by promoting from within, extending his trust to a host of youth products – Iván de la Peña, brothers Roger and Óscar García and his son Jordi – none of whom fulfilled their promise. New signing Luís Figo wasn’t yet ready to lead the side, while up front was the unspectacular and very un-Barca Bosnian Meho Kodro, who managed just nine goals. Cruyff was dismissed at the end of 1995/96 amidst a fall-out with club president José Luis Núñez, but arguments with star players had been equally decisive.

The Cruyff versus Van Gaal debate continued when Van Gaal took charge of Barcelona only a year after Cruyff’s departure. He proudly declared ‘Louis van Gaal is the star now’ at his presentation, and attempted to import his Ajax model, including several of his old players. This initially proved successful, as Van Gaal won the Double in his first season and retained the league title in his second. But, predictably, he couldn’t cope with Barcelona’s big names, and in particular Rivaldo, the bandy-legged Brazilian genius who was briefly the world’s greatest player. Compared with Stoichkov and Romario, Rivaldo was a true professional, and whereas Cruyff’s rows with star players were largely about off-field discipline, Van Gaal’s problems with Rivaldo were about tactical discipline.

In their third season together at Barca, Van Gaal became infuriated by Rivaldo’s determination to dribble past opponents, a quality that would have been worshipped in the Dream Team, not least by Cruyff. In an incident that recalled Stoichkov’s row with Cruyff, Rivaldo openly criticised his manager on the day he was confirmed as European Footballer of the Year, explaining he would no longer play wide-left. ‘It’s different in Brazil – there, people don’t talk about tactics, and that means freedom,’ he said. ‘Here’s it’s a bit complicated, it’s more tactical … for years I have been doing things for the team, and I’ve done nothing for myself. I want to enjoy it more. I have played on the wing for a while, and now I want to play in the centre, not just with the shirt number 10, but as a number 10.’

Van Gaal couldn’t tolerate this level of self-importance, and so for the trip to Rayo Vallecano two days later he omitted Europe’s best footballer from his 18-man squad. Barca could only draw. Rivaldo was also omitted for a 3–1 win over Real Sociedad, before Van Gaal relented, with the Brazilian coming off the bench to score the second in a 2–0 win over Celta Vigo. He didn’t miss a minute for the next seven games. Rivaldo had won the power struggle, which was the beginning of the end for Van Gaal. ‘I’ve given him too many chances,’ he later rued. ‘The equilibrium in the dressing room is gone – that was my biggest mistake this season. This culture needs stars. Now, I have two players who rank among the ten best in the world [Figo was the other]. At Ajax in 1995, when I did not lose a single game, I had nobody on that list.’ A dressing room lacking stars suited him much better. Van Gaal also rowed with Sonny Anderson and Geovanni, two of Rivaldo’s teammates and, significantly, compatriots. Brazilian footballing culture places emphasis on individual attacking inspiration, which simply didn’t register with Van Gaal, and he was dismissed at the end of the campaign.

For two legendary coaches both obsessed with promoting the classic Ajax style, Cruyff and Van Gaal were remarkably different in almost every respect. Consider, for example, their approach towards match preparation. Cruyff backed his players to outplay anyone, and didn’t even think about the tactical approach of the opposition. In stark contrast, Van Gaal would study videotapes of upcoming opponents and explain, in extensive detail, their build-up play and how to disrupt it, while his assistant Bruins Slot constantly surprised the players with his level of knowledge about specific opponents.

It was Cruyff’s art versus Van Gaal’s science. The latter sat in the dugout with a tactics notepad on his lap, depended on data to measure his players’ performance and employed a man named Max Reckers, who was generally described as a ‘computer boffin’ in an era before statistical analysts were common. When Van Gaal moved between clubs, his ‘archives’, including endless piles of dossiers and videotapes, needed to be physically moved across the continent at great expense. This was anathema to Cruyff, who once said that his great footballing qualities ‘were not detectable by a computer’, said his football understanding was a ‘sixth sense’, and repeatedly admitted he had a dreadful memory and wasn’t big on detail. He was all about instinct, and embodied a philosophy in the truest sense of the word. Van Gaal believed in a studious approach, and developed robotic footballers discouraged from demonstrating flair.

The Van Gaal versus Cruyff saga continued over the next 15 years. Van Gaal was appointed Holland coach in 2000 and immediately ripped up Cruyff’s plans for developing Dutch youth talent. The Netherlands’ failure to qualify for the 2002 World Cup, however, meant that his tenure proved disastrous and he returned to Ajax as technical director in 2004, where he infuriated a young striker who boasted the requisite arrogance for Amsterdam. ‘Van Gaal wanted to be a dictator,’ Zlatan Ibrahimović wrote in his autobiography. ‘He liked to talk about playing systems. He was one of those in the club who referred to the players as numbers. There was a lot of “5 goes here” and “6 goes there” … the same old stuff about how number 9 defends to the right, while number 10 goes to the left. We knew all that, and we knew he was the one who came up with it.’ By this point, Cruyff had been retired from coaching for eight years but continued to repeat a familiar message in interviews. ‘What I notice particularly is that policy-makers in football are never really concerned about individuals, all they’re concerned about is the team as a whole,’ he said. ‘Yet a team consists of 11 individuals, who each need attention.’

In 2009 Van Gaal took the Bayern Munich job, leading them to the Double and the Champions League Final. ‘My team has a bond and a trust in me that I have never experienced before,’ he raved, and he attracted rare praise from Cruyff. But his old rival pointedly suggested that ‘Bayern Munich and Van Gaal is a particularly good match – the management and players at the club were prepared to accept his way of thinking and operating.’ Which, coming from Cruyff, was barely disguised criticism, an accusation that Van Gaal was more Bayern than Ajax, more German than Dutch.

Van Gaal later even linked himself with the German national team job. ‘I dream of winning the World Cup with a team that can do it, and Germany is one of them,’ he admitted. This fitted with constant complaints in the Dutch media that Van Gaal was simply not very Dutch, and was more typical of the joylessly efficient Germans, traditionally Holland’s biggest rivals. Van Gaal was repeatedly considered ‘a dictator’, and in an intriguing biography of the coach, Dutch journalist Hugo Borst entitled one of the chapters ‘Hitler’ and examined the similarity between the two men. It’s a slightly unsettling part of the book, featuring Geovanni, the former Barcelona playmaker, referring to Van Gaal as ‘sick’, ‘crazy’ and ‘a Hitler’, and containing the story that a Romanian newspaper once ran a headline simply reading ‘Van Hitler’, stating that this was a common nickname for Van Gaal in the Netherlands. It was completely false, yet the fact it seemed plausible speaks volumes about his reputation.

The last squabbling between the two old foes came in 2011, after Van Gaal was announced as Ajax’s general director. Cruyff, by this stage, was on Ajax’s board of directors but Van Gaal’s appointment was made when he was on holiday in Barcelona. He objected so strongly that the issue ended up in court, which ruled against him. Yet in a sense Cruyff won, because Van Gaal never started his job, instead taking charge of the Dutch national side for a second time, an appointment that led to another round of mudslinging between the two old foes.

‘Van Gaal has a good vision on football,’ accepted Cruyff. ‘But it’s not mine. He wants to gel winning teams and has a militaristic way of working with his tactics. I don’t. I want individuals to think for themselves, and take the best decision on the pitch that is best for the situation. He wants to control all these situations as a coach. We need to make the club successful, including the youth academy, and that means individual coaching and not straitjacket tactics. If Louis comes to Ajax, I won’t be around for long. We think differently about everything in life.’

Van Gaal was more pragmatic, although he couldn’t resist one final wind-up. ‘There is no more a “Cruyff line” than there is a “Van Gaal line,”’ he insisted. ‘There is only an Ajax line, and it has been in place for at least 25 years. I have contributed to that, just as Cruyff has – with the difference that I was there longer.’

2
Space

The Netherlands, by its very nature, is based around the concept of space. A country whose name literally means ‘lower countries’ is a remarkable construct, gradually reclaimed from the sea through the revolutionary use of dikes. Seventeen per cent of the Netherlands’ landmass should be underwater, and only around 50 per cent of the country is more than one metre above sea level.

The Netherlands is also Europe’s most densely populated major country (excluding small countries such as Malta, San Marino and Monaco) and worldwide of countries with similar-sized or larger populations only South Korea, Bangladesh and Taiwan boast higher population densities. The history of the Netherlands has therefore been about increasing the perimeters of the nation, and then desperately trying to find space within those perimeters.

This is, of course, reflected in Dutch football. It’s through the prism of the country’s geography that David Winner explains Total Football in his seminal book Brilliant Orange. ‘Total Football was built on a new theory of flexible space,’ he begins. ‘Just as Cornelis Lely in the nineteenth century conceived and exercised the idea of creating new polders, so Rinus Michels and Johan Cruyff exploited the capacities of a new breed of players to change the dimensions of the football pitch.’

It was Michels who introduced the ideas, and Cruyff who both epitomised them and explained them most poetically. He outlined the importance of space in two separate situations: with possession and without possession. ‘Michels left an indelible mark on how I understood the game,’ Cruyff said. ‘When you’ve got possession of the ball, you have to ensure that you have as much space as possible, and when you lose the ball you must minimise the space your opponent has. In fact, everything in football is a function of distance.’ This became the default Dutch footballing mentality, ensuring everything was considered in terms of positioning and shape. Some nations considered the characteristics of footballers most important (‘strong and fast’), some focused on specific type of events (‘win fifty–fifty balls’), others only considered what to do with the ball (‘get it forward quickly’). But, from the Total Football era onwards, Dutch football was about space, and gradually other European nations copied the Dutch approach.

Michels considered Total Football to be about two separate things: position-switching and pressing. At Ajax, the latter was inspired by Johan Neeskens’ aggressive man-marking of the opposition playmaker, combined with Velibor Vasović, the defensive leader, ordering the backline higher to catch the opposition offside. It became the defining feature of the Dutch side at the 1974 World Cup.

‘The main aim of pressure football, “the hunt”, was regaining possession as soon as possible after the ball was lost in the opponents’ half,’ Michels explained. ‘The “trapping” of the opponents is only possible when all the lines are pushed up and play close together.’ Holland’s offside trap under Michels was astounding, with the entire side charging at the opposition in one movement, catching five or six opponents offside simultaneously, before interpretations around who exactly was ‘interfering with play’ made such an extreme approach more dangerous in later years.

This tinkering with the offside law notwithstanding, pressing remained particularly important for Cruyff and Louis van Gaal during the era of Dutch dominance, with both managers encouraging their players to maintain an extremely aggressive defensive line and to close down from the front. Cruyff’s Barcelona and Van Gaal’s Ajax dictated the active playing area, boxing the opposition into their own half and using converted midfielders in defence because they spent the game close to the halfway line.

‘I like to turn traditional thinking on its head, by telling the striker that he’s the first defender,’ Cruyff outlined. ‘And by explaining to the defenders that they determine the length of the playing area, based on the understanding that the distances between the banks of players can never be more than 10–15 metres. And everyone had to be aware that space had to be created when they got possession, and that without the ball they had to play tighter.’

Van Gaal’s approach was similar, with speedy defenders playing a high defensive line, and intense pressing in the opposition half. ‘The Ajax number 10 is Jari Litmanen, and he has to set the example by pressuring his opponent. Just compare that with the playmaker of ten years ago!’

The best representation of the Dutch emphasis on space, however, was in terms of the formations used by Cruyff’s Barcelona, Van Gaal’s Ajax and the Dutch national team. The classic Dutch shape was 4–3–3, although in practice this took two very separate forms.

The modern interpretation of 4–3–3, epitomised by Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona, prescribes one holding midfielder behind two others, effectively a 4–1–2–3; the Dutch would often flip the triangle, creating a 4–2–1–3, but would still consider this a 4–3–3. Nowadays it seems curious that the two can be conflated, especially considering this is essentially the difference between 4–3–3 and 4–2–3–1 formations, the two dominant shapes of the 2010s. But during this earlier period, 4–3–3 was a philosophy as much as a system, and with other major European countries generally preferring boxy 4–4–2 systems or sometimes a defensive-minded 5–3–2, the concept of a three-man attack spread across the field was in itself audacious. The precise positioning of the midfielders was a minor detail.

But both Cruyff and Van Gaal became even bolder. Upon his appointment at Ajax, Cruyff reduced the four-man defence to a three-man defence, explaining that the majority of Eredivisie sides played two up front, and therefore a trio of defenders could cope. He effectively replaced a defender with a number 10, forming a diamond midfield between the three forwards and three defenders. This was the Dutch 3–4–3, which was very different from the Italian-style 3–4–3 with wing-backs that would later be popularised, for example, by Antonio Conte at Chelsea. Cruyff’s holding player would move between defence and midfield, and the number 10 would move between midfield and attack, with two box-to-box players either side. ‘Cruyff put up with the risks connected to this decision,’ Michels outlined. ‘The success of the 3–4–3 is dependent upon the individual excellence that serves this spectacular but risky style of play … it places high demands on the tactical cohesion of the central players, and it demands that they have a high level of football intelligence.’

Van Gaal disagreed with Cruyff on many topics, but he largely followed Cruyff’s basic formation, using 3–4–3 throughout his tenure at Ajax. Michels, Cruyff’s old mentor, was himself a convert and utilised the system when taking charge of the Dutch national side at Euro 92, although he considered 3–4–3 a mere variation on his old 4–3–3. At this tournament, the uniqueness and fluidity of the Dutch shape confused foreign observers, and the same system was described as, variously, 4–3–3, 3–4–3 and even 3–3–4, a notation that looks absolutely ludicrous on paper compared with the dominant 4–4–2 and 5–3–2 systems of the time, but shows how the Dutch were thinking about the game in an entirely different manner to German, Italian and Scandinavian sides.

The crucial, non-negotiable element of these systems was width. Regardless of the number of defenders, the tilt of the midfield or whether or not the centre-forward was supported by a number 10, Dutch coaches insisted on two touchline-hugging, chalk-on-the-boots wingers. Again, this was unfashionable at the time, with the 4–4–2 system requiring midfielders who tucked inside, and the 5–3–2 relying on overlapping runs from wing-backs to provide width. The Dutch, though, intrinsically believed in the importance of stretching play and prising the opposition defence apart to create gaps for others. Michels spoke about the importance of using ‘true flank players who have great speed and good skills … they must be selected and trained at a very young age,’ he said. ‘The Netherlands is one of few countries that actually develop this kind of player in the 4–3–3 system.’

Van Gaal’s 1992 UEFA Cup-winning side depended on right-winger John van ’t Schip, a classic old-school winger who boasted the three classic qualities: a turn of speed, a drop of the shoulder and a good cross. Van ’t Schip would never receive the ball between the lines, nor would he cut inside; he was a winger and stayed on the touchline. Left-sided Bryan Roy was similar, albeit quicker and less of a crosser. He was supposed to perform an identical task to Van ’t Schip, although he infuriated Van Gaal by drifting inside too frequently. The contrast in systems in their 1992 UEFA Cup Final victory against Torino was particularly stark: the Italian side played 5–3–2, the Dutch played 3–4–3.

Roy also played wide-left for Michels’ Netherlands side at Euro 92, although the right-winger was Ruud Gullit, an atypical player for this system, essentially a central player that had to be accommodated somewhere because he was too important to omit. By the 1994 World Cup the Dutch were coached by Dick Advocaat, who continued with Roy but also discovered the exciting Gaston Taument – and, more significantly, Ajax’s Marc Overmars.

Overmars was the most typical, and most accomplished, Dutch winger of this period. He offered searing acceleration, was happy on either flank because of his two-footedness, loved riding a tackle, and could cross and shoot excellently. He was exciting yet efficient, a winger based around end product rather than trickery, which made him perfect for Van Gaal.

‘I was a coach who wanted to attack with wingers – there aren’t a lot of good wingers around, and Overmars was one of the best,’ remembered Van Gaal. ‘He was a good dribbler who could beat people one-on-one and that was important for a winger in our system, but he also had a very good assist record and he could score goals. Every season he got 10–15 goals and they were nearly always important goals. We need his kind of player to maintain the game as an attractive spectacle.’ If Van Gaal could have fielded two Overmarses, one on either flank, he would have. Instead, he fielded him wide-left, and the speedy Nigerian Finidi George on the opposite flank.

The curious thing about Van Gaal’s use of wingers, however, was that they were almost decoys, part of the overall framework rather than star performers. Something similar can be observed of the centre-forwards: the likes of Stefan Pettersson and Ronald de Boer (who was also used as a midfielder) were tasked with leading the line rather than dominating the goalscoring, instructed to stretch play and occupy opposition centre-backs. Van Gaal’s reasoning was simple: if the wingers dragged the opposition full-backs wider, and the centre-forward forced the opposition centre-backs backwards, it would create more space for the star – the number 10.

For both Ajax and Holland during this period, that meant one man: Dennis Bergkamp. While not necessarily the best Dutch footballer of this period – Marco van Basten won the Ballon d’Or in 1992, while Bergkamp came third and then second in 1993 – he was certainly the most typically Dutch footballer of the 1990s, because his entire mentality was based around that familiar concept. ‘On the field, my greatest quality was seeing where the space was, and knowing where you can create space,’ he explained. Throughout his autobiography, Bergkamp explains everything about his game, and everything about his career path, with the same word: space. Why was he so obsessed with scoring chips? ‘It’s the best way – there’s a lot of space above the goalkeeper.’ Why did he struggle to connect with his Inter Milan teammates during his spell in Serie A? ‘There was a huge space between us, and it was dead space.’ Why did he transfer to the Premier League? ‘I knew you could get space in England.’ What was the key to his legendary 1998 World Cup winner against Argentina? ‘It was a question of creating that little space.’ And, even, what did he dislike so much about aeroplanes? ‘There was hardly any space – it was so cramped it made me claustrophobic.’

Bergkamp was an Amsterdammer who had risen through Ajax’s academy, although his journey to becoming the club’s number 10 was curious. As a teenager he was considered a pure centre-forward, and initially appeared under Cruyff in 1986/87 as a right-winger. ‘Wingers played a simpler game back then,’ Bergkamp recalled, confirming the accepted manner of wing play at the time. ‘You weren’t expected to get into the box and shoot – you had to stay wide, feel the chalk of the touchline under your boots. Your job was to stretch their defence, get past your man at speed and cross the ball.’

After Cruyff’s departure, Bergkamp was demoted to the B-team by Kurt Linder, a German coach who didn’t understand the Dutch mentality and preferred a rigid 4–4–2. In Ajax’s reserves, however, Bergkamp played under Van Gaal, who recognised his talent and fielded him as the number 10. When Linder was dismissed, Antoine Kohn became caretaker manager, but it was Van Gaal, now his assistant, who was in charge of tactics. Van Gaal insisted on fielding Bergkamp in the number 10 role, which prompted Bergkamp to set a new Eredivisie record by scoring in ten consecutive matches. When Leo Beenhakker was appointed first-team manager, however, he misused Bergkamp, deploying him up front or out wide again. It took the appointment of Van Gaal as manager, in 1991, for Bergkamp to regain his rightful position. The Dutch press were so captivated by Bergkamp’s performances in the number 10 role that they felt compelled to invent a new term for it: schaduwspits, the ‘shadow striker’.

In that role Bergkamp was sensational. At Ajax he developed an excellent partnership with Swedish centre-forward Pettersson, a more conventional forward who also made intelligent runs to create space for him. During this period Bergkamp won three consecutive Eredivisie top goalscorer awards, jointly with Romario in 1990/91, then outright in the following two seasons, despite not being a number 9 – or, in Dutch terms, precisely because he wasn’t a number 9. Cruyff is the obvious example of a prolific forward who dropped deep rather than remaining in the box, but the Eredivisie’s all-time top goalscorer – Willy van der Kuijlen – was also a second striker, not a number 9. Van der Kuijlen, who spent nearly his entire career with PSV, had the misfortunate to be playing in the same era as Cruyff, and squabbles between Ajax and PSV players meant he was underused at international level. But in the Eredivisie he was prolific, and formed a partnership with Swedish number 9 Ralf Edström that was identical in terms of nationalities and style to Bergkamp and Pettersson’s relationship two decades later: the Swede as the target man, the Dutchman as the deeper-lying but prolific second striker.

That was the Dutch way: the number 9 sacrificing himself for the number 10, and this arrangement continued at international level, despite the fact that Holland’s striker was the wonderful Van Basten. At Euro 92, when Holland sparkled before losing to Denmark in the semi-final, their best performance was a famous 3–1 thrashing of fierce rivals Germany. Their third goal was significant: midfielder Aron Winter attacked down the right and assessed his crossing options. Van Basten was charging into the penalty box, seemingly ready to convert a near-post cross. But when Winter looked up, Van Basten had just glanced over his shoulder, checking Bergkamp was in support. He was. So, while occupying both German centre-backs and sprinting frantically to get across the near post, Van Basten threw out his right arm and pointed behind him, towards his strike partner. Winter saw Van Basten’s signal and chipped a pull-back behind him, towards Bergkamp, who neatly headed into the far corner. It was the most fantastic example of the Dutch number 9 creating space for the Dutch number 10.

Bergkamp was the tournament’s joint-top goalscorer, while Van Basten finished goalless but was widely praised for his selflessness, and both were selected in UEFA’s XI of the tournament. Their partnership worked brilliantly. ‘Marco was a killer, a real goalscorer, always at the front of the attack – whereas I was more of an “incoming” striker,’ Bergkamp said. ‘If records had been kept they’d show how often Marco scored from ten yards or less. For me, it was from about 15 yards.’

Bergkamp had a curious relationship with Van Gaal, who had initially shown tremendous faith in him, ‘inventing’ his shadow striker role. When Bergkamp missed the second leg of Ajax’s victorious UEFA Cup Final against Torino because of flu, Ajax’s celebratory bus parade detoured to take the trophy past his apartment, and at the reception Van Gaal took the microphone and bellowed Bergkamp’s name from the balcony of the Stadsschouwburg Theatre to the assembled masses below, who responded with their biggest cheer of the day. But the two constantly quarrelled in Bergkamp’s final season at Ajax in 1992/93, before his move to Italy. Having already announced his intention to leave, Bergkamp’s performances were criticised by Van Gaal, who substituted him at crucial moments when Ajax needed goals to keep their title bid alive. In Van Gaal’s opinion, Bergkamp had become too big for his boots. By treating him harshly, he sent a message to Ajax’s emerging generation that superstars would not be tolerated – the team, and the overall system, were far more important.

Bergkamp endured two unhappy seasons at Inter, before becoming the catalyst for Arsenal’s evolution into the Premier League’s great entertainers. The reason for his failure in Italy, and his unquestionable success in England, was inevitably about the amount of space he was afforded. ‘English defences always played a back four, with one line, which meant they had to defend the space behind,’ he said. ‘In Italy they had the libero, but the English had two central defenders against two strikers, so they couldn’t really cover each other. As an attacker I liked that because it meant you could play between the lines.’ From that zone, Bergkamp became the Premier League’s most revered deep-lying forward, although he became more prolific in terms of assists than goals.

Ajax, however, didn’t desperately miss him. In Bergkamp’s three seasons as Eredivise top goalscorer, Ajax didn’t win the title – PSV triumphed twice and Feyenoord once – but in the three seasons after his departure, Ajax won three in a row, while winning the Champions League in 1995 and reaching the final the following year. This wasn’t solely down to Bergkamp’s departure, of course, and more about Ajax’s emerging generation of players. It helped, however, that Bergkamp was replaced by an equally wonderful talent, the Finnish number 10 Jari Litmanen. ‘Dennis Bergkamp was brilliant for Ajax, but the best number 10 we have ever had was Jari,’ said Frank Rijkaard. Litmanen was Finnish rather than Dutch, and therefore his qualities are less salient here, but he perfectly encapsulated the Ajax idea of a number 10. He was excellent at finding space, had a wonderful first touch and could play the ball expertly with either foot. Van Gaal said that whereas Bergkamp was a second striker, Litmanen was the fourth midfielder.

After his retirement, when asked to name his ‘perfect XI’ of past teammates by FourFourTwo magazine, Litmanen spent two days mulling over his options – Ballon d’Or winners like Luís Figo, Michael Owen and Rivaldo, and other world-class options like Michael Laudrup, Steven Gerrard, Zlatan Ibrahimović and Pep Guardiola – before simply naming the entire 1995 Ajax side. That underlined the harmony of Van Gaal’s Champions League winners; Litmanen didn’t want to upgrade in terms of individuals, because the collective might suffer.

1994/95 was an extraordinary campaign for Ajax; not only did they lift Europe’s most prestigious club trophy, they also won the Eredivisie undefeated. Van Gaal counted on a sensational generation of talent, but also created the most structured, organised side of this era.

Tactical organisation, at this point, was often only considered an important concept without the ball; teams defended as a unit, while attackers were allowed freedom to roam. But Van Gaal was obsessed with structure within possession, almost robbing his attacking weapons of any spontaneity. The crucial difference between Van Gaal’s system and the approach of his predecessors Michels and Cruyff was that Van Gaal effectively prohibited the classic position-switching up and down the flanks, the hallmark of Total Football. Previously, Ajax’s right-back, right-midfielder and right-winger, for example, would often appear in each other’s roles, but Van Gaal ordered his midfielders to stay behind the wingers; not because he didn’t subscribe to the concept of universality, but because it harmed the side’s structure. Ajax were supposed to occupy space evenly, efficiently and according to Van Gaal’s pre-determined directions. ‘Lots of coaches devote their time to wondering how their players can do a lot of running during a match,’ he guffawed. ‘Ajax trains its players to run as little as possible on the field, and that is why positional games are always central to Ajax’s training sessions.’

The classic starting XI featured Edwin van der Sar in goal, behind a three-man defence of Michael Reiziger, Danny Blind and Frank de Boer, three technical, ball-playing defenders. Ahead of them was Frank Rijkaard, an exceptional all-rounder who played partly in defence and partly in midfield, allowing Ajax to shift between a back three and a back four. The midfielders on either side of the diamond were the dreadlocked, Suriname-born duo of Clarence Seedorf and Edgar Davids. They were both technically excellent but also energetic enough to battle in midfield before pushing forward to support the central attackers rather than the wingers, Finidi George and Marc Overmars, who were left alone to isolate opposition full-backs. Then Litmanen would play between the lines, dropping deep to overload midfield before motoring into the box to support Ajax’s forward, generally Ronald de Boer, although he could play in midfield with Patrick Kluivert or Nwankwo Kanu up front.

Ajax’s 1995 side is certainly comparable to Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona side a decade and a half later – possession-based, tactically flexible, adept at pressing – but whereas Barca attempted to score following intricate passing combinations through the centre, many of Ajax’s goals were much simpler. The midfielders would service the wingers, who would dribble past the opposition full-backs and cross for the forwards. When Ajax were faced with a deep defence, the most fundamental part of their possession play involved building an attack on one flank, realising they were unable to get the nearest winger in a one-against-one situation, so quickly switching play to the opposite flank, where there would be more space, to try the other winger. This was generally achieved with two or three quick passes flowing through Davids, Rijkaard and Seedorf, rather than with a long crossfield ball. This way, opponents were momentarily drawn towards those central midfielders, which allowed the opposite winger a little extra space.

Ajax’s crowning moment was the 1995 Champions League Final victory over Fabio Capello’s AC Milan. While Capello almost always selected a 4–4–2 formation, for the final he narrowed his midfield quartet to help compete with Ajax’s diamond. Capello tasked his creative number 10, Zvonimir Boban, with nullifying Rijkaard before dropping back towards the left, while defensive midfielder Marcel Desailly performed a man-marking job on Litmanen. With hard-working forwards Marco Simone and Daniele Massaro cleverly positioning themselves to prevent Blind and De Boer enjoying time on the ball, and therefore directing passes to the less talented Reiziger, Ajax struggled before half-time.

After the break Van Gaal made three crucial changes that stretched the usually ultra-compact Milan, allowing Ajax extra space. First, Rijkaard was instructed to drop back into defence, in the knowledge that Milan’s midfielders wouldn’t advance high enough to close him down. Rijkaard started dictating play. Second, Van Gaal withdrew Seedorf, shifted centre-forward Ronald de Boer into a midfield role, and introduced Kanu, whose speed frightened Milan’s defence and forced them to drop deeper. Third, he added yet more speed up front by sacrificing Litmanen, widely considered Ajax’s best player, and introducing the extremely quick 18-year-old Patrick Kluivert.

In typical Dutch fashion, Ajax had increased the active playing area by tempting Milan’s attack higher and forcing their defence deeper, thereby giving themselves more space in midfield. The winner came five minutes from full-time, with substitute Kluivert exploiting Milan’s uncoordinated defensive line and poking home after Rijkaard had assisted him from the edge of the box. That might sound peculiar: Ajax’s holding midfielder, who had been told to drop into defence, playing the decisive pass from inside the final third. Defenders showcasing their technical skill, however, was another key feature of Dutch football during this period.

3
Playing Out from the Back

European football’s epochal moment in 1992 wasn’t about the formation of the Premier League nor the European Cup being rebranded as the Champions League, but about the back-pass law. Forced into action by the disastrously negative 1990 World Cup, and the increasing popularity of time wasting by knocking the ball around in defence before returning it to the goalkeeper, FIFA ruled that a goalkeeper could no longer handle the ball if deliberately kicked to him by a teammate. The final major tournament under the old rules was Euro 92, with Denmark triumphing courtesy of a defensive strategy that relied heavily on Peter Schmeichel picking up back passes.

The impact of the law change was overwhelmingly positive – goalkeepers and defenders, now forced to play their way out of danger, became more comfortable in possession and the speed of matches increased dramatically. The first major tournament under the new rules, incidentally, was the football tournament at the 1992 Olympics, a largely entertaining competition with the gold medal won at the Camp Nou by a Spain side featuring Pep Guardiola.

Initially, reaction to the law change was universally negative. World Soccer magazine launched a ‘Save Our Backpass’ campaign, while more surprising criticism came from Johan Cruyff, a man usually determined to promote technical, fast-paced football. ‘The law changes don’t make sense to me,’ he blasted. ‘All they’re doing is complicating life for officials, coaches and players. What’s been done is a typical product of people who play their football sitting behind desks in an office and have never been out on the pitch in their lives.’ But the biggest beneficiary would be the Dutch, and those who represented Cruyffian football. In most other European nations, goalkeepers suddenly needed to adjust and develop their kicking, while rudimentary old-school defenders quickly became extinct. The Dutch, however, were already producing technically gifted goalkeepers and defenders.

Cruyff, possibly more than anyone in the history of football, had very particular and influential ideas about goalkeepers, which is somewhat curious considering Cruyff was not a goalkeeper himself. Except for one thing – he was. Such was Cruyff’s all-round footballing ability, he kept goal for Ajax’s third team even after his first-team debut in 1964. Saving, catching and throwing were no problem for Cruyff, who had previously excelled at baseball as a youngster, showing potential as both pitcher and catcher. But for Cruyff, goalkeeping wasn’t about using your hands; it was ‘a question of vision’, and few could rival him in that respect. He believed the goalkeeper should act as an 11th outfielder, starting attacking moves and sweeping behind an advanced defensive line, and as a thoughtful and outspoken Dutch superstar Cruyff exerted a considerable influence on his managers’ tactical approach, acting as a catalyst for the development of the goalkeeper.

When Total Football changed the game at the 1974 World Cup, there was a perfect example of the Dutch goalkeeping approach. The incumbent number 1, PSV’s Jan van Beveren, was a fine shot-stopper revered across Europe, but he wasn’t a footballing goalkeeper. ‘I could not play football! I was a born goalkeeper: reflexes, jumping, strength,’ he admitted. But Cruyff was more concerned with speed, intelligence and passing, so he convinced manager Rinus Michels to drop Van Beveren and also overlook the highly rated Pieter Schrijvers of FC Twente. Holland instead fielded Jan Jongbloed, who played for the relatively obscure FC Amsterdam and had made a single appearance for the national team 12 years previously. Jongbloed was quick, comfortable sweeping behind his defence, good with his feet and therefore perfect for Total Football. The model for Dutch goalkeepers was thereby established, and upon the start of football’s modern era in 1992, the Dutch adjusted better than anyone. Dutch goalkeepers had always been, quite literally, several steps ahead of their European rivals.

In 1992 Ajax’s goalkeeper was Stanley Menzo, who was typical of many Ajax players during this period; he hailed from the former Dutch colony of Suriname, was a product of the club’s youth academy and was an all-round footballer rather than a specialist blessed with the traditional skillset for his position. Menzo was a footballing goalkeeper in Europe’s best footballing side, and was successful at Ajax because he was excellent with his feet. His spell as first-choice Ajax goalkeeper started under Johan Cruyff in 1985 and ended under Louis van Gaal in 1994 – he won the Eredivisie and European trophies under both, and unsurprisingly names them as the two greatest coaches he worked under. Both loved his footballing ability. Significantly, but not entirely unsurprisingly, Menzo offered plenty of experience in a different position. ‘I started as a sweeper, a central defender, but after less than a year I started to become a goalkeeper,’ he said. ‘Honestly, I could play goalkeeper but I could also play football. I was both, I could do both. And in the end … not I chose, but I became, a goalkeeper.’

This was in keeping with Ajax’s long-standing, forward-thinking goalkeeping approach introduced by Cruyff during his playing days, and when Cruyff was appointed Ajax manager in 1985, the athletic, speedy Menzo was promoted from back-up to succeed Hans Galjé as Ajax’s number 1. Menzo became renowned for his aggressive starting position and his excellent long throws, and was consistently showered with praise by Cruyff, who said he was Ajax’s most important player in the 1987 Cup Winners’ Cup because of his distribution. Menzo could play as an outfielder, Cruyff believed.

While Cruyff was stereotypically opinionated regarding the role of the goalkeeper, he also appreciated the requirement for a genuine specialist, and appointed the Netherlands’ first-ever goalkeeping coach, Frans Hoek, the most influential of the modern era. While also running a shop in the outskirts of Amsterdam that solely stocked goalkeeping paraphernalia, Hoek’s first pupil was Menzo, and the pair continued working together throughout the late 1980s and into Van Gaal’s reign as Ajax manager. The problem, however, was that Menzo was somewhat erratic in a traditional goalkeeping sense. The stubborn ideologist Cruyff was entirely forgiving of mistakes, declaring that Menzo’s footballing ability compensated for sporadic errors, but Van Gaal was more pragmatic. The final straw came when Ajax’s UEFA Cup defence was surprisingly ended by Auxerre in March 1993, with Menzo making a dreadful mistake, palming Pascal Vahirua’s inswinging corner into his own net. Van Gaal dropped Menzo and turned to Ajax’s back-up, the previously little-known Edwin van der Sar.

Van der Sar shared Menzo’s initial footballing experience – he originally played in defence, but when his youth team’s regular goalkeeper failed to turn up for a game, Van der Sar was handed the gloves purely because he was the tallest player in the side; he eventually grew to be 1.97 metres tall, enormous even by the standards of the Netherlands, the loftiest nation in the world. His early outfield experience ensured he became a significant goalkeeping revolutionary, as he adapted instinctively to the 1992 law changes. ‘The back-pass law changed my life, because I was already good with my feet,’ he recalled after his retirement.

‘We looked at what qualities an Ajax keeper should have, and Edwin already had most of them,’ said goalkeeping coach Hoek. ‘He had a good understanding of space around his goal and could play out to the defenders. That was difficult for many keepers, because most of them were “line-keepers” who stayed on their line and were primarily ball-stoppers. Also, he was tall and therefore had enormous range. He was calm, stable and a great foundation to build plays from. And importantly, he was ambitious and very coachable.’ As Jonathan Wilson outlines in his history of the goalkeeper, The Outsider, Van der Sar was ‘the first goalkeeper to operate as a genuine sweeper’.

That might surprise those who only witnessed the end of Van der Sar’s career, which continued into his 40s – by which point he’d split eight league titles and two Champions League successes between Ajax and Manchester United, and won a then-record 130 caps. Towards the end of his career, Van der Sar was less mobile and more of a classic goalkeeper; his brief, unhappy spell with Juventus saw him being encouraged to remain on his goal line, and at Manchester United he was also more conservative. But the early Ajax-era Van der Sar was renowned for his bravery and confidence in terms of positioning and distribution, and he became the obvious and outstanding role model for the following generation of goalkeepers. Indeed, Van der Sar was so influential that what was considered remarkable in his Ajax days became entirely commonplace by the time of his retirement.

‘One of the first to bring a new perspective was Edwin van der Sar, who played a lot with his feet and allowed the position to enter a new phase,’ Germany’s World Cup-winning goalkeeper Manuel Neuer later declared. ‘I was inspired by his style of play and enjoyed the philosophy of Ajax.’ Thibaut Courtois, David de Gea and Vincent Enyeama also cite him as a major inspiration. Of course, others attempted to play as a sweeper; at the 1990 World Cup, Colombia’s extravagant René Higuita was famously dispossessed well outside his area by Roger Milla, who converted into an empty net. But such goalkeepers were considered crazy, with Higuita, most notorious for his scorpion kick, famously nicknamed ‘El Loco’.

But Van der Sar wasn’t in any way loco. Van der Sar was boring, efficient and business-like. When he retired from playing, he didn’t choose coaching or punditry, but instead became Ajax’s CEO. When approached about writing an autobiography, he was worried he wouldn’t have enough material to fill the pages. ‘I’m sorry, I’m just not very rock and roll,’ he insisted. But his understated calmness was perfect for promoting the role of the ‘footballing goalkeeper’, demonstrating it was a logical, valuable undertaking rather than a self-indulgent experiment. When constructing passing moves, Ajax used their goalkeeper considerably more than other top-level European sides, because few teams were so committed to building from the back. A back pass to the goalkeeper was widely considered a last resort, especially as the goalkeeper would simply thump the ball downfield. But Ajax’s outfielders treated Van der Sar as one of their own, safe in the knowledge he would recycle possession.

Van der Sar was certainly better than his predecessor Menzo in a traditional goalkeeping sense, but he didn’t make many spectacular saves when compared with, for example, Peter Schmeichel or David de Gea, Manchester United’s other two most celebrated goalkeepers of the Premier League era. Van der Sar once explained his duty very simply as ‘stopping the balls that people expect you to save’. His only indulgence was taking a couple of penalties when Ajax were thrashing Eredivisie minnows – he had one saved against Sparta Rotterdam, then converted another against De Graafschap, although he was annoyed to subsequently lose his clean sheet in the final minute, making the score 8–1.

Van der Sar’s most impressive piece of ‘footballing’ skill came at the start of a famous goal Ajax scored away at MVV Maastricht in May 1995, shortly before their Champions League triumph. Defender Michael Reiziger found himself under pressure in the right-back zone, and his underhit back pass meant Van der Sar had to sprint laterally out of his goal, almost on the byline, to reach the ball. The accepted practice for goalkeepers in this situation is simple: smash the ball into the stands, shout obscenities at the appropriate defender and sprint back furiously towards goal. But not Van der Sar. Instead, he nipped in ahead of the opposition striker, sidestepping the challenge and playing a calm return pass to Reiziger, now beside the corner flag. What happened next demonstrated the importance of the goalkeeper’s coolness.

Reiziger dribbled past an opponent and passed forward to Litmanen, who fed Ronald de Boer. He evaded a tackle and passed left to Edgar Davids, who also slalomed past an opponent before knocking a through-ball into the path of the onrushing defender Danny Blind, who charged through on goal in the inside-right position, then knocked a square pass for left-winger Marc Overmars to convert at the far post. It was a remarkable team goal, the single greatest summary of Ajax’s footballing style under Van Gaal, and it all started with the composure of Van der Sar. Ajax’s attackers rushed to celebrate – but not with the goalscorer Overmars, who looked confused by the lack of teammates around him and awkwardly turned to hail the supporters on his own, but instead with the defensive section of the side, because they’d built the move from deep. A delighted Van Gaal emerged from his dugout with enthusiastic applause for a wonderful team goal. This was Ajax all over: forwards dropping deep, defenders running through on goal, rapid passing and, more than anything else, a footballing goalkeeper.

When Ajax won the Champions League, a watching Cruyff suggested that their key player was Van der Sar. Cruyff had been determined to introduce the Dutch goalkeeping model at Barcelona, but was frustrated with the performances of Andoni Zubizarreta. In terms of character, ‘Zubi’ could be likened to Van der Sar; he was hugely professional and statesmanlike, won a then-record 126 caps for Spain and later became Barca’s director of football. But in a goalkeeping sense Zubizarreta was distinctly old-school, happily remaining on his line, and Cruyff frequently criticised his lack of technical skills, which became a more obvious issue after the back-pass change. ‘Cruyff hasn’t changed me as a goalkeeper, but he’s changed my position,’ said Zubizarreta, which rather summed it up. Cruyff told him to act as a sweeper, yet at heart he was a pure shot-stopper, a ‘serious, reliable type of keeper’, in the Basque’s own words. Cruyff deployed him in midfield during training matches, desperate to improve his confidence in possession.

Zubizarreta lasted until 1994, before Cruyff turned to long-serving back-up Carles Busquets, father of future Barcelona midfielder Sergio. He was considerably more receptive to Cruyff’s tactics, playing miles off his line with typically mixed results. His first major appearance for Barcelona came when Zubizarreta was suspended for the 1991 European Cup Winners’ Cup Final, a 2–1 defeat to Manchester United, and was characterised by three major errors. First, Busquets raced outside his box towards a high ball, got nowhere near it and United’s Lee Sharpe volleyed narrowly wide of an empty net. Next, he was caught in no-man’s land for United’s opener, half-coming to claim a long free-kick before belatedly changing his mind. Steve Bruce headed over him, and former Barca striker Mark Hughes smashed in. Hughes doubled United’s lead seven minutes later, when he received a through-ball and immediately encountered Busquets 25 yards out of his goal, making a desperate sliding tackle. Hughes rounded him and again fired into an empty net.

Cruyff invested huge faith in Busquets. He was relatively short for a goalkeeper, at 1.81 metres, but was incredibly confident in possession and loved playing chipped passes over opposition attackers to his teammates. For most observers’ tastes, however, he was still incredibly haphazard. Shortly after replacing Zubizarreta as number 1, he made a characteristic error for the decisive goal in a shock 2–1 defeat at Gothenburg, charging off his line to intercept a long ball. Approaching the edge of his box, and unsure whether to head or punch, he did neither and Jesper Blomqvist, a winger hardly renowned for his aerial prowess, headed into the empty goal. This was typical of Busquets’ style, and the type of mistake the great Zubizarreta would never have made. More significantly, Busquets’ footballing skills were far from flawless and he was caught in possession rather too often. Even his attire prompted nerves, as he insisted on wearing long tracksuit bottoms, and when combined with the muddy goalmouths of this era, meant he looked too scruffy to inspire much confidence.

Journalists constantly linked Cruyff with a move for Van der Sar, to which Cruyff would diplomatically respond by pointing out that he didn’t have any slots left for foreign players. Besides, he forgave errors from footballing goalkeepers, believing that subtler positive contributions from sweeping and distributing compensated for the odd cheap concession. This became the mantra at Barcelona, and Busquets’ approach was considered so important that he later became the club’s goalkeeping coach, mentoring the likes of Pepe Reina and Víctor Valdés, and ensuring that Cruyff’s vision of a footballing goalkeeper remained integral to the Barcelona way.

There’s one final, forgotten Barcelona goalkeeper from this period who deserves belated recognition: Jesús Angoy. Another sweeper-keeper from Barcelona’s academy, he played just nine La Liga games between 1991 and 1996, largely without distinction, serving as back-up to Zubizarreta and then Busquets. But for two non-footballing reasons he is significant: first, he was married to Cruyff’s daughter Chantal, suggesting that the Cruyffian affection for footballing goalkeepers was somehow genetic. When Chantal gave birth, the beaming new grandfather Johan told the media that the newborn ‘has got big feet and big hands – the feet are for playing football and the hands are for picking up his wages’, with not even a passing thought that the hands might be useful for following his father into goalkeeping. Second, Angoy departed Barca in 1996 at the same time as Cruyff, but stayed in the city to continue his playing days over at the Olympic Stadium. Busquets didn’t move to Barca’s city rivals Espanyol, however; he switched sports and signed for NFL Europe side Barcelona Dragons. You might think this would be a natural transition for a goalkeeper, as American football is all about catching and throwing, but Angoy was actually the Dragons’ placekicker – and a very good one. He ended his second career as the second-highest points scorer in the history of NFL Europe, and turned down a transfer to the Denver Broncos because he wanted to remain in Barcelona with Chantal. Even in a sport that overwhelmingly involves using your hands, the former Barca goalkeeper specialised in the role that involves using your feet. His father-in-law presumably approved.

Playing out from the back was not, of course, solely about goalkeepers being comfortable in possession, and Dutch football placed great emphasis on defenders who offered, in Van Gaal’s words, ‘more than just defensive skills’. English football supporters were stunned when former Ballon d’Or winner Ruud Gullit, a world-class attacking midfielder, signed for Glenn Hoddle’s Chelsea in 1995 and promptly declared his intention to play as a sweeper, the position he’d played in his teenage years. ‘As a central defender I could move into midfield and would dash from there into an attacking position,’ he said. But the experiment lasted only a couple of months at Chelsea, because Gullit’s teammates simply weren’t on the same wavelength. ‘I would take a difficult ball, control it, make space and play a good ball in front of the right-back,’ Gullit recalled. ‘Except, he didn’t want that pass. Eventually, Glenn said to me, “Ruud, it would be better if you do these things in midfield.”’ The Dutch were well ahead of the game.

This had been a crucial feature of Total Football in the 1970s: defenders bursting forward when opportunities arose, with midfielders and attackers providing cover by dropping back. To make this worthwhile, however, the Ajax and Holland sides of the 1970s required defenders to be genuinely good footballers, capable of using their freedom to provide decisive contributions in the final third. Because of the importance of pressing, meanwhile, they also needed to offer speed, to play in a high defensive line and cover the space in behind.

When the Dutch adopted this policy during the 1970s it was genuinely revolutionary. Their defensive leader was Ajax’s Ruud Krol, a gloriously complete footballer who possessed the three qualities Dutch defenders would come to be renowned for – intelligence, speed and ball-playing ability. He read the game beautifully, swept up behind his fellow defenders and knocked long, diagonal balls to the wingers, sometimes doing all three in the same move. He was the only defender aside from the legendary Bobby Moore and Franz Beckenbauer to be voted into the top three of the Ballon d’Or in the 1970s, such was his impact on club and country, and he also provided the most concise summary of the Dutch approach to defending. ‘We looked to keep our opponent on the halfway line,’ he said. ‘Our standpoint was that we were not protecting our own goal – we were attacking the halfway line.’

Krol played left-back during Holland’s run to the 1974 World Cup Final, and his three defensive colleagues were also particularly attack-minded. Right-back Wim Suurbier, also of Ajax, was renowned more for his speed and stamina than his defensive ability, and constantly charged up the wing. In the middle, Holland converted Feyenoord’s Wim Rijsbergen from a right-back into a centre-back, and most significantly redeployed Ajax’s Arie Haan, a reliable midfielder, as the side’s fourth defender, although he had never previously played in defence. It’s also telling that the only two significant foreigners who turned out for Ajax during this period, Yugoslavian Velibor Vasović and German Horst Blankenburg, both played the physical, old-school hardman role, because Ajax simply didn’t produce that kind of defender themselves. ‘The foreign players brought something different,’ Cruyff acknowledged of the 1970s Ajax side. That kind of statement in England or Italy would be about foreigners bringing flair, but in the Netherlands it was about foreigners bringing fight.

By the time Cruyff’s and Van Gaal’s sides were dominating Europe in the 1990s, both were determined to promote the concept of the ball-playing defender, helped by the back-pass reform. Cruyff continued to talk about the importance of attacking the halfway line rather than defending the goal even after his retirement, complaining about ‘defenders running back towards their own goal when they lose the ball, rather than moving forward to put pressure on the players in possession’. His Barcelona side, more than any other team of the 1990s, attempted to play in the opposition half.

Such was the emphasis on ball-playing defenders, Van Gaal referred to them using a word previously reserved for attacking midfielders. ‘In modern soccer the players in the middle of the back four – the numbers 3 and 4 – have really become the playmakers,’ he said. ‘That’s why Danny Blind and Frank Rijkaard were so important to Ajax. The number 10 certainly can’t be called a playmaker because the space in which he operates is too restricted … today’s playmakers are to be found in the centre of the back four. This means, of course, you can no longer deploy the old-fashioned, solid type of player in these positions. You have to use technically and tactically gifted players like Blind and Rijkaard.’ Blind, Ajax’s captain, had played alongside Van Gaal for seven years at Sparta Rotterdam and was a calm, technically gifted footballer. But his defensive partner Rijkaard was the real star, hailed by Cruyff in his autobiography as ‘one of the best all-round footballers I’ve ever seen – he could defend with the best of them, he organised the midfield and he still had scoring potential. All of that in one person, who also had the right mentality and a good set of brains.’

Rijkaard was a curious, reserved figure constantly suffering some form of identity crisis. He was considered a thug by many for his quite literal 1990 World Cup spat with Rudi Völler, but was actually among the most amiable footballers around. He appeared a natural leader, but when Ajax manager Cruyff wanted him to become more involved in off-field duties, Rijkaard stormed out and refused to play under him again. He became a celebrity by virtue of his footballing ability, yet he found fame suffocating. He later became a successful coach, winning the Champions League with Barcelona in 2006, but walked away from management at 50, saying, ‘I don’t see myself as an authentic coach. I’ve done something for about 16 years which isn’t a match for me.’ But, most crucially in this context, Rijkaard was an outstanding defender who didn’t just want to defend.

This was nothing new for Dutch defenders, of course, but Rijkaard’s case was particularly extreme. He emerged from Ajax’s academy and became an outstanding, forward-thinking defender, partnering Ronald Koeman at Euro 88 and finishing third in that year’s Ballon d’Or voting. While Dutchmen were accustomed to Rijkaard’s attacking quality, other managers appeared surprised. ‘This is the best central defender I’ve seen in the last few years,’ raved Argentina manager Carlos Bilardo. ‘He wins everything in the air, he marks perfectly, reads the game well, has a great long pass and a great shot. He is the perfect defender, born for today’s game.’ Ireland boss Jack Charlton repeated the praise. ‘He can do everything! In England he would be worth gold. We hardly have any like him, a player who can defend and attack brilliantly.’

Rijkaard moved to AC Milan in 1988, and because Arrigo Sacchi had created the most formidable defensive quartet of that era – Mauro Tassotti, Franco Baresi, Alessandro Costacurta and Paolo Maldini – Rijkaard was deployed in midfield alongside another future Champions League-winning manager, Carlo Ancelotti. This came to be Rijkaard’s established position; he won the 1989 European Cup from midfield and was again voted third in the Ballon d’Or, and then helped Milan retain the European Cup by scoring the only goal in the final, breaking forward from midfield, receiving a through-ball from Marco van Basten and finishing coolly. Rijkaard was now a box-to-box midfielder. But for Holland he was fielded as a central defender at the 1990 World Cup, with the midfield based around the underperforming Ruud Gullit, his Milan teammate and childhood friend. Being deployed at centre-back frustrated Rijkaard and contributed to his decision to quit the national side. He wanted to be the playmaker, not a man-marker, and only returned to international duty when promised a midfield role.

Upon his return to Ajax in 1993, Rijkaard was less mobile, more mature and happier playing defensively – so the position Van Gaal had earmarked for him was perfect. In Ajax’s 3–4–3, he played as the number 4, essentially anchoring the midfield ahead of captain Blind but dropping back to become a defender when necessary. But crucially, for a player who always wanted to be a playmaker, that’s precisely what Van Gaal demanded from him, and although asked to track opposition forwards, Rijkaard was also free to join the attack.

Rijkaard played a crucial role in Ajax’s 1995 European Cup Final win against Milan with his assist for Patrick Kluivert, but arguably more significant was the fact that he had taken control in the Ajax dressing room at half-time, laying into Clarence Seedorf and rallying his teammates, a moment Van Gaal would repeatedly cite as an example of a teammate stepping up and assuming responsibility. Rijkaard retired from football immediately after the triumphant final – which meant that his first departure from Ajax, in 1987, came after his manager Cruyff complained about his lack of leadership skills, and his second departure, in 1995, came after his manager Van Gaal was delighted with them.

Alongside Blind and Rijkaard was Frank de Boer, capable of playing left-back or left-sided centre-back, and therefore ideal for the flexible nature of Ajax’s defence. He was a wonderful distributor, particularly when spraying long, diagonal passes to a centre-forward who had drifted into the opposite channel. The classic example was the most famous Dutch pass of the 1990s, the pinpoint 60-yard diagonal to Dennis Bergkamp in the dying seconds of the 1998 World Cup quarter-final against Argentina. It was a good ball, made into a great one by Bergkamp’s extraordinary feat of bringing the ball down, beating Roberto Ayala and lifting the ball into the net with three quick touches. But Bergkamp’s favourite goal owed everything to his existing relationship with De Boer, as he explained when outlining how he received the pass. ‘You’ve had the eye contact … Frank knows exactly what he’s going to do. There’s contact, you’re watching him. He’s looking at you, you know his body language: he’s going to give the ball.’

Bergkamp knew, because De Boer had played that pass to him so often at club level, the best instance coming on Valentine’s Day 1993 at PSV. De Boer moved forward on the left of the Ajax defence and thumped a perfect curling ball into the right-hand channel for Bergkamp, who responded with a typical three-card trick: controlling the ball with his right thigh, then knocking the ball past the defender with his left foot, before chipping the ball over the goalkeeper with his right. Stripping away the context and looking purely at the technical skill involved, it was arguably more impressive than the Argentina strike. ‘It wasn’t a simple thing to do, but I’d done it so often with Dennis when we’d played together at Ajax,’ De Boer recalled when speaking of the Argentina goal. ‘When you watch the footage of Dennis at Ajax, I must have given him assists like that three or four times. We felt good together – when he went forward, I knew he wanted to go deep, and vice-versa … everything went right, and the pass was beautiful. But that was one of my strengths, and the chances of the pass getting there are higher for me than for other players.’ That’s because De Boer was simply an excellent passer, and that specific diagonal ball, from De Boer to the centre-forward, became a familiar part of Ajax’s attacking under Van Gaal.

Ajax’s final defender, right-sided Michael Reiziger, was a different type of footballer entirely: less creative but extremely quick, which meant he was the most effective defender at covering the space in behind, and lithe and tricky when bursting forward. Reiziger was another academy product, and when loaned out to Groningen was deployed as a right-winger, such were his attacking skills. ‘He’s quick, has good anticipation and sufficient ability to participate in build-up play,’ said Van Gaal, with ‘sufficient’ a telling choice of word. ‘Initially his defensive play was not so good, but this is an aspect which can be taught quickly – I give a player like him more time to play himself into the team. It’s not such a big gamble, we play near the halfway line, so Reiziger has time to use his basic speed to correct any mistakes.’

It’s crucial that Van Gaal suggested defending could be ‘taught quickly’, whereas Ajax’s passing patterns took longer to master. It was therefore much easier to convert an attacker into a defender than the other way round. In truth, Reiziger sometimes appeared to be Ajax’s weak link, but the importance of his speed shouldn’t be underestimated in combination with the guile of his defensive colleagues, and athleticism and adaptability meant that Van Gaal once declared him ‘the symbol of this Ajax side’. In all, this was the most technically gifted four-man defence football had witnessed. Significantly, three would later head to Barcelona: Reiziger in 1997, De Boer in 1999 and Rijkaard, as coach, in 2003.

But the Dutch defensive style had already been imposed at the Camp Nou by Cruyff in the early 1990s, and was naturally best epitomised by a Dutchman, the magnificent Ronald Koeman, who demonstrated a determination to attack like few other centre-backs in history. The most notable feature of his career – among eight league titles, two European Cups, the European Championship and 78 Dutch caps – is his extraordinary goalscoring tally at club level, 239 in all. He even finished joint-top goalscorer in the 1993/94 Champions League, with eight goals. Three were penalties, and Koeman also scored a number of free-kicks throughout his career – the 1992 European Cup Final winner against Sampdoria the most significant – but 239 remains a staggering figure for a player in his position. It’s 39 more than Kluivert and only 25 behind Bergkamp. Koeman is regarded as the most prolific central defender of all time.

‘I was a defender who wasn’t really a defender,’ Koeman explained. ‘I scored so many goals because I used to step forward out of defence a lot, and my coaches asked and expected me to do that. My set-pieces were a big strength too, but even in general play, I would be in those kind of positions, able to take long-range shots.’ His greatest mentor was clearly Cruyff, whom he’d played under at Ajax in 1985/86 and then, after a controversial switch to PSV, rejoined at Barcelona in 1989. His booming diagonal balls became a regular feature of Barca’s play, particularly when switching the ball out to left-winger Hristo Stoichkov, and Cruyff had a very special trust in Koeman, perhaps only rivalled by his affection for Pep Guardiola. ‘Koeman likes the football that I preach about,’ said Cruyff. ‘He’s the ideal man at the back, a defender who is good for 15 goals a season. He can live in that position because I want players like him, who can make decisive moves in tiny spaces.’

‘Koeman was one of the first central defenders with the quality not just to defend,’ said Guardiola, who Koeman took under his wing at Barca. ‘I think Johan Cruyff bought Ronald Koeman to show us, to teach us, why we need a central defender like Ronald … most of the quality was his build-up, amazing long balls, forty metres, quick balls. He is one of the best central defenders I’ve ever seen in my life.’ Koeman’s regular forward charges rarely exposed Barcelona in a defensive sense because they could rely on Guardiola’s selfless, intelligent play in the holding midfield position. This was particularly crucial when Cruyff played the 3–4–3, with Koeman the centre-back and Guardiola the holding midfielder. Guardiola, often wearing number 3 at this stage, would effectively become Barcelona’s main defender, covering for his attack-minded teammate in the original manner of Total Football.

While Guardiola is widely considered a deep midfielder, Cruyff often referred to him as a defender. ‘As a player he was tactically perfect but he said he couldn’t defend,’ said Cruyff. ‘I said: “I agree – in a limited way. You’re a bad defender if you have to cover this whole area. But if you have to defend this one small area, then you’re the best. Make sure that there are people to cover the other areas. As long as you do that, you can be a very good defender.” And he did become very good.’ Cruyff sometimes deployed Guardiola as a conventional centre-back; in late 1991 Cruyff even handed him the job of man-marking Real Madrid’s outstanding striker Emilio Butragueño, the reigning Pichichi. Perhaps the most significant example came in a 2–2 UEFA Cup draw away at Bayern Munich in April 1996; the idea of Guardiola, a midfielder, being deployed in defence would prove particularly prescient considering his own use of Javier Mascherano and Javi Martínez when later coaching these two clubs.

Cruyff insisted that Koeman and Guardiola, two players he praised primarily for their passing, were a perfectly functional pairing because of their positional strength and intelligence. ‘As the central defensive duo, they weren’t fast and they weren’t defenders,’ Cruyff admitted. But he believed there were only three passes that Barca needed to worry about: balls over the top would be intercepted by his goalkeeper, the aggressive Busquets; crossfield balls would be dealt with by his speedy full-backs Albert Ferrer and Sergi Barjuán, academy products and converted wingers; balls down the centre, meanwhile, wouldn’t be a problem because Cruyff was confident Koeman and Guardiola communicated well, and were flawless in a positional sense. Sometimes he referred to the duo as both ‘midfielder-defenders’, which summarised the Dutch interpretation of defenders – they aren’t really defenders at all.

Transition: Netherlands–Italy

Juventus required a penalty shoot-out to confirm their triumph over Ajax in the 1996 Champions League Final, but this nevertheless felt like a turning point in European football, the moment when Dutch dominance gave way to Italian ascendency. Ajax, the previous season’s Champions League winners, found themselves unable to cope with the speed and power of Juve’s forwards, and the Italian side should have killed the game before half-time.

For Ajax, the problem wasn’t simply defeat and the failure to retain their trophy, but the knowledge it was the end of an era. Midway through 1995/96 European football had been shaken by the Bosman ruling, which had two major impacts. First, players could run down their contracts and transfer elsewhere for free. Second, the three-foreigner rule was now illegal, and European clubs could field as many EU nationals as they liked.

No club suffered as much as Ajax. At the end of 1995/96 Edgar Davids, arguably Europe’s most coveted midfielder, left for AC Milan on a free transfer – previously, Ajax would have received a fee and reinvested the proceeds. Meanwhile, the liberalisation of the rules regarding the number of foreign players permitted meant there was now extra overseas demand for Ajax’s other stars, and within three years they found almost their entire Champions League-winning side had departed. Davids, Winston Bogarde, Edwin van der Sar, Michael Reiziger, Nwankwo Kanu and Patrick Kluivert all headed to Serie A, mirroring the shift in power. Bosman had made players, and Europe’s major leagues, considerably more powerful, and Ajax were no longer among Europe’s elite.

1996 also saw Ajax depart their much-loved De Meer Stadion, moving to the Amsterdam Arena – later renamed the Johan Cruyff Arena – in the south of the city. They encountered serious problems with the new stadium, which wasn’t simply a football ground, but a multipurpose arena also used for concerts. Grass didn’t grow properly, which hampered Ajax’s passing football, and to many supporters it just didn’t feel like home. Louis van Gaal initially intended to leave in 1996, but stuck around one more year for personal reasons. Cruyff, meanwhile, left Barcelona in 1996 and would never coach again, while Holland were hugely disappointing at Euro 96, thrashed 4–1 in the group stage by England, and exiting after a quarter-final penalty shoot-out defeat to France. Holland’s customary tournament arguments seemed particularly serious, too, with various suggestions of a divide between black and white players.

With Dutch football’s reputation taking a battering, then, Italy became the centre of European football. Serie A had been Europe’s strongest league throughout the 1990s, evidenced by their clubs’ dominance of the European competitions, but only now, with the sexier, more forward-thinking Ajax out of the picture, was its superiority unquestionable.

Whereas Ajax focused on youth development, Italian clubs depended on financial clout. The country’s major clubs were owned by absurdly wealthy businessmen – at least in theory, as many later found themselves financially ruined – who competed to sign the world’s greatest talents. The so-called ‘seven sisters’ of Italian football had emerged: Juventus, Milan, Inter, Roma, Lazio, Parma and Fiorentina all boasted world-class players, and all seven started each season with a genuine chance of glory. In terms of overall strength and competitiveness, there has probably never been a better league than Serie A during the mid- to late-1990s.

Stylistically, Serie A was in a peculiar place. Italian football had always been considered defensive, with its infamous catenaccio of the 1960s still influencing tactical thought. While the attack-minded Milan boss Arrigo Sacchi had revolutionised football in the late 1980s by overhauling catenaccio and introducing the pressing game, he’d been inspired by Ajax’s Total Football, and his approach was atypical for an Italian coach.

During this period Italian football’s major tactical themes were essentially debates between coaches who were pro-Sacchi and those who were Italian traditionalists. Sacchi promoted a proactive style of football in an inflexible 4–4–2 system, which featured no trequartista (the number 10) or libero (the sweeper). But, by nature, Italian coaches adapted their system to the opposition’s approach, most loved their 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

4
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.

Late in the game, however, Torricelli started to struggle with cramp, so for extra-time Van Gaal introduced Nordin Wooter, another speedy winger, to attack Torricelli, testing the right-back’s mobility. Juventus boss Marcello Lippi had already used his three substitutes, and therefore devised a novel solution: he switched his full-backs. Pessotto had played 90 minutes at left-back, but played extra-time at right-back, and stopped Wooter. Torricelli made the reverse switch, and was less troubled by the fatigued Finidi.

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.’

This quartet of players were workers rather than geniuses, with a single year of Serie A experience between them upon their arrival at Juventus. Torricelli was plucked straight from amateur football at a cost of just £20,000; Pessotto had played five of his six full campaigns in the lower leagues; Di Livio had played eight seasons without any Serie A experience; and Birindelli had played more in Serie C than Serie B, never mind in Serie A. ‘It’s not just the real quality players like Zinedine Zidane or Del Piero that captured everyone’s attention,’ observed Roy Keane, whose Manchester United side regularly faced Juventus in the Champions League during this era. ‘But tough, wily defenders, guys nobody’s ever heard of, who closed space down, timed their tackles to perfection, were instinctively in the right cover positions and read the game superbly.’

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.

The rest of Juventus’s backbone were similarly versatile. Ciro Ferrara and Mark Iuliano were centre-backs, but when Juventus defeated Ajax again the following season, this time in the semi-finals, both were deployed in the full-back positions and performed excellently, while Alessio Tacchinardi, usually a holding midfielder, filled in at centre-back. Meanwhile, Antonio Conte was the epitome of the Italian midfielder: a dependable general capable of performing equally well in the centre or out wide. These players could seemingly be deployed anywhere within the defensive section of the side, which allowed their manager, Lippi, to become Europe’s most revered tactician, changing formations regularly, between games and within games. ‘If you have smart players who understand tactics and are comfortable in big systems, then making frequent changes can be a big plus,’ Lippi believed. So did his compatriots.

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.

In all, graduating from Coverciano involved over 550 hours of study, and because it is mandatory for coaching in Serie A, Italian coaches were furious when Sampdoria circumvented the rules and appointed the underqualified David Platt, although technically he was only an assistant because he lacked the requisite certificates. ‘It’s like a student nurse conducting a heart operation,’ blasted Bari manager Eugenio Fascetti. There was widespread glee when Platt departed after an unsuccessful two-month tenure. Luciano Spalletti unexpectedly found himself as a manager in Serie A without the necessary qualifications after back-to-back promotions with Empoli and, after publicly questioning whether he was good enough for the top flight, juggled coaching with studying, regularly making the trip across Tuscany to Coverciano. The academic approach has proved invaluable to numerous Italian coaches. With modules on ‘Football technique’, ‘Training theory’, ‘Medicine’, ‘Communication’, ‘Psychology’ and ‘Data’, they are thoroughly prepared for the rigours of Serie A. Before graduation, students are obliged to write a dissertation. Carlo Ancelotti wrote about ‘Attacking Movements in the 4–4–2 Formation’, Alberto Zaccheroni’s was concisely titled ‘The Zone’ and Alberto Malesani offered ‘General Considerations from Euro 96’. These documents are stored in Coverciano’s library, which boasts 5,000 such papers.

Lippi is among the greatest advocates of Coverciano. ‘I started to understand why, as players, you were asked to do certain things,’ he explained in Vialli’s book The Italian Job. ‘It was an eye-opener because it encouraged me to question and evaluate everything we take for granted in football. That’s what I truly found important about Coverciano, the exchange of ideas between myself and my colleagues. The more I think about it, what I hold dear is not just the course in itself, it’s the atmosphere around it, that challenging, thought-provoking environment … Coverciano does not give you truths, it gives you possibilities.’

That sense of openness was echoed by Gianni Leali, head of Coverciano during the mid-1990s. ‘We don’t teach one system,’ he said. ‘We teach them all, and then show the advantages and disadvantages of each one. There’s a variety here, and that makes Serie A a lot more interesting.’ Whereas Dutch football was fixated on 4–3–3 or 3–4–3, Italian football featured almost every possible formation, and just as Juventus’s versatile defensive players had no defined position, Lippi and other Italian coaches had no defined system. They reacted to the opposition’s tactics to a greater extent than coaches elsewhere, and they routinely substituted star forwards to introduce defensive reinforcements.

Lippi’s Juventus defined Italian football during this period. They became European and World champions in 1996, won Lo Scudetto in the next two campaigns, while reaching the Champions League Final in both years too, being beaten by Borussia Dortmund and Real Madrid in turn. Juve had long maintained a reputation for losing superstars yet continuing to prosper, sacrificing World Cup winners like Paolo Rossi and Marco Tardelli in the 1980s without suffering, while the players themselves declined after departing Turin. After the 1996 final it wasn’t just their defeated opponents Ajax who suffered because of the Bosman ruling; Juve lost Ravanelli and Vialli to newly monied Premier League clubs. Ravanelli had finished as Juventus’s top goalscorer that season, while Vialli had been named Player of the Year by World Soccer magazine, who commended him for being ‘equally at home on the right, the left or the centre of the attack – he defends like a tiger and attacks like a lion’. In other words, in keeping with the Juventus ethos, he could do whatever job Lippi demanded.

Juve still had Alessandro Del Piero, their golden boy, and replaced the outgoing duo with three players: Alen Bokšić, who led the line effectively but rarely scored; Christian Vieri, a complete striker who changed clubs every summer; and youngster Nicola Amoruso, who didn’t quite fulfil his potential, although his arrival was certainly appreciated by Del Piero, who married Amoruso’s sister. Veteran Michele Padovano was still around too, and proved a useful supersub.

Lippi therefore had five good options up front, and the nature of Juventus’s goalscoring throughout their 1996/97 title-winning campaign underlined how he used different strikers in different situations. Bizarrely, for champions, none of the five strikers recorded more than eight goals: half as many as Sandro Tovalieri, who played half the season for Reggiana and half for Cagliari, both of whom were relegated. Lippi had fully embraced rotation, and his five centre-forwards all played a similar amount: Bokšić scored just three goals from 51 per cent of Serie A minutes, an injury-affected Del Piero managed eight from 48 per cent, Vieri eight from 43 per cent, Padovano eight from 39 per cent and Amoruso four from 36 per cent. There was no grand hierarchy, no divide between untouchable first-teamers and frustrated back-ups, and everyone provided different qualities. Bokšić offered hold-up play, Del Piero provided invention, Vieri lent his aerial power, Padovano was a good poacher and Amoroso brought speed.

Significantly, Bokšić was the least prolific striker and yet also the most used, because he consistently worked hard and brought the best out of others. ‘No prima donnas, no privileges,’ declared Lippi. ‘If a player doesn’t agree with that, he can walk. You might like the antics and the eccentricities of a champion, but I believe people appreciate things like humility and intelligence.’ Lippi’s tendency to rotate forwards by using them tactically remained one of his trademarks throughout a long coaching career. When leading Italy to World Cup success in 2006, Lippi named six forwards in his 23-man squad: Francesco Totti, Pippo Inzaghi, Luca Toni, Alberto Gilardino, Vincenzo Iaquinta and his old favourite Del Piero. All six found themselves on the scoresheet.

When Ronaldo, the world’s most exciting striker, was destined to leave Barcelona and move to Serie A, Juventus declined to become involved in a bidding war, not because the sums of money were too vast, but because Umberto Agnelli, the club chairman, believed such an overt superstar would ruin the club’s spirit. Even Zinedine Zidane, who joined in 1996 and soon became Europe’s most celebrated player, was diligent, introverted and hard-working, a world away from the self-indulgent galáctico that he would later become at Real Madrid.

Zidane was shocked by the intensity of Juventus’s fitness sessions, led by the notorious Giampiero Ventrone. ‘Didier Deschamps told me about the training sessions but I didn’t believe they could be as bad as all that,’ he gasped. ‘Often I would be at the point of vomiting by the end, because I was so tired.’ Ventrone was nicknamed ‘The Marine’ by the Juventus players, and he had three terrifying mottos: ‘Work today to run tomorrow’; ‘Die but finish’; and ‘Victory belongs to the strong’. The players had a love–hate relationship with him; Ravanelli said he couldn’t cope without him, while Vialli once became so incensed by Ventrone’s approach that he locked him in a cupboard and called the police, not the last time the Carabinieri would take an interest in Juve’s methods of physical conditioning. It was Lippi, however, who remained Juventus’s most important asset. ‘He was like a light switch for me,’ Zidane said. ‘He switched me on and I understood what it meant to work for something that mattered. Before I arrived in Italy, football was a job, sure, but most of all it was about enjoying myself. After I arrived in Turin, the desire to win things took over.’

This is essentially what defines Italian football: the absolute primacy of winning. In other major footballing nations, to varying extents, emphasis is placed on the spectacle; attacking football is respected and sometimes considered an end in itself. But in Italy the result is paramount and the end justifies the means, which largely explains why Italian sides are content to win tactically rather than through finesse and panache. There’s certainly a reverence towards certain types of stylish player, particularly classy liberos and gifted trequartisti, but teams are under little pressure to provide dazzling collective performances like Ajax or Barcelona. Italian football therefore places huge emphasis on workmanlike players performing functional roles.

‘To Italian players, it’s a job. It’s not fun, not a game,’ said Fabio Capello. ‘When I was coaching Real Madrid, training would end and everyone would stay and eat, get a massage, go to the gym together … in Italy, they’ll stay as long as they have to, then they’ll go. We don’t have this joy inside us. It’s almost as if they don’t like being footballers.’ Capello was another celebrated Italian tactician, and his experience at Real Madrid during 1996/97 was particularly enlightening.

Capello had succeeded Arrigo Sacchi at Milan in 1992 and won four Serie A titles in five seasons, strung together an unprecedented 58-game unbeaten run and won the Champions League in 1994 with a memorable 4–0 thrashing of Barcelona. Capello was less ideologically attack-minded than the revolutionary Sacchi, but he provided creative players with more licence to express themselves, usually from wide roles in a 4–4–2. After Real Madrid slumped to sixth place in 1995/96, their worst season in nearly two decades, they turned to Capello. President Lorenzo Sanz declared him ‘the greatest manager in the world’ upon his appointment. Capello won the league in his first season. He then promptly returned to Italy.

While Capello brought success to the Bernabéu, that wasn’t enough for Real’s supporters and president, none of whom appreciated Real’s style – or lack of it – under Capello. While Barcelona showcased speed and trickery courtesy of Ronaldo’s legendary single season at the Camp Nou, Real were boring, functional and tactical; essentially, Capello had made them Italian. Raúl González, Spanish football’s new superstar forward, was asked to play from the left, with new signings Davor Šuker and Predrag Mijatović preferred up front. Real’s most common tactic involved centre-back Fernando Hierro launching long balls for overlapping left-back Roberto Carlos, a perfectly legitimate tactic that Real supporters nevertheless considered too direct, too brutal. Real insisted on inserting a clause in Capello’s contract that prevented him from joining Barcelona for three years after leaving Madrid, but if Real were so determined to compete with Barcelona in terms of attractive football, Capello heading for Catalonia would have helped redress the balance. ‘I believe the most important thing is to win,’ Capello once said. ‘Nothing else matters.’

‘In Spain, everything that comes from Italy is seen in a negative light,’ said defender José Amavisca, quoted in Gabriele Marcotti’s biography of Capello. ‘Because he’s Italian, everything Capello did was seen as ugly, dirty, nasty or boring.’ Capello’s training sessions were typically Italian: long periods spent drilling the back four into the correct shape, and a strong emphasis on hardcore fitness work. He spent much of the season squabbling with Sanz, the Real president, partly because Capello consistently refused to select his son Fernando, a graduate of the club’s academy. He also encountered problems with forwards Mijatović and Šuker, who were frequently substituted when Capello summoned defensive reinforcements. ‘My matches only ever last 75 minutes,’ complained Šuker. More than half of the Croatian’s La Liga starts ended with his withdrawal, a stark contrast to the star treatment Real Madrid forwards are usually afforded. His replacement was always a defender or defensive midfielder.

Capello was justified in sacrificing big names, because his tactical acumen was outstanding. During 1996/97 Real Madrid regularly started poorly and found themselves a goal behind, before Capello’s instructions enabled them to readjust and clinch victory. Real came from behind to win with incredible regularity: against Real Sociedad, Valencia, Atlético Madrid, Deportivo de La Coruña, Hércules, Racing Santander, Sevilla and Sporting Gijón.

The Sevilla comeback, in mid-April, was most significant. Capello started with his usual 4–4–2, with Raúl drifting inside from the left, but Real were absolutely battered by a rampant Sevilla, particularly down the flanks. Tarik Oulida, the Ajax-schooled left-winger, crossed for right-winger José Mari to head home in the first minute, then Oulida made it 2–0. Real could have easily been 4–0 down. Therefore, Capello made two tactical changes midway through the first half. Veteran defender Manuel Sanchís replaced beleaguered right-back Chendo. Next, Capello sacrificed Šuker and introduced defensive midfielder Zé Roberto. The home supporters were understandably bemused; at 2–0 down Real needed goals, and Capello had taken off a striker.

First, though, Capello knew Real required defensive solidity. Raúl pushed up front, Zé Roberto played on the left of a midfield diamond and screened Roberto Carlos. Real now coped down the flanks and could work their way into the game. On the stroke of half-time, Clarence Seedorf got a goal back, then Raúl scored the equaliser in the second half. Hierro headed home seven minutes from time, and then Seedorf teed up Mijatović. Real had been 2–0 down, Capello had made two first-half substitutions purely for tactical reasons, including substituting his top scorer, and they ended up winning 4–2.

Winning in this fashion would have been celebrated in Capello’s home country, but Real demanded more spectacular performances, and despite the title success, this was a loveless marriage that lasted just a year. Curiously, a decade later Capello returned for a second spell at the Bernabéu, with somewhat familiar consequences; he won the league, then he was sacked. ‘We have to find a coach who gives us a bit more,’ said Real’s sporting director, after Capello’s second departure. ‘We need a coach who, as well as getting results – which are very important – can help us enjoy our football again.’ The identity of the sporting director? Mijatović, the frequently substituted forward from Capello’s first stint. Two seasons, two titles, two acrimonious departures. Italian methods were not popular outside Italy.

But they were clearly conducive to success, because the three most respected Italian coaches of this era completed an extraordinary treble in 1996/97. Lippi triumphed in Serie A with Juventus, Capello was victorious in La Liga with Real Madrid, while Giovanni Trapattoni won the Bundesliga with Bayern Munich.

This was Trapattoni’s second spell with Bayern, after a disappointing 1994/95 campaign that he blamed on not mastering German properly, although upon his return his communication skills had only improved slightly. Trapattoni initially attempted to use a four-man defence, before reverting to the sweeper system that was more typically German, and indeed more typically Trapattoni, after some disappointing early results, including a 3–1 aggregate UEFA Cup defeat to Valencia. ‘Too many changes have upset their rhythm,’ claimed Trapattoni’s predecessor Otto Rehhagel after that European exit. ‘Bayern are paying for the mistakes in signing the wrong players and not sticking to a definite tactical system.’ Not sticking to a definite tactical system, though, was entirely Trapattoni’s plan.

His tactical tinkering continued to frustrate and caused problems among his key players. In late November Bayern were 2–0 up at half-time against relegation strugglers Hansa Rostock, so Trapattoni ordered his players to concentrate on keeping a clean sheet. But centre-forward Jürgen Klinsmann encouraged his teammates to continue attacking. The players were caught in two minds, conceded 20 minutes into the second half and limped to a 2–1 victory. ‘That’s why we lost our shape,’ complained left-wing-back Christian Ziege. ‘One defensive player would make a forward run, and everyone else would stay back and watch him disappear into the distance. Very confusing.’ But Trapattoni’s focus on tactical discipline, and his refusal to indulge FC Hollywood’s superstars, proved successful; compared with the previous campaign, Bayern only scored two more goals, but they conceded 12 fewer. ‘Under him, I learned how to defend,’ explained midfielder Mehmet Scholl. ‘But I also learned that if I played a bad pass, I would be substituted.’

Just like Capello in Madrid, Trapattoni’s substitutions proved particularly controversial in Munich, particularly with Klinsmann, who took a break from squabbling with long-time foe Lothar Matthäus to row with Trapattoni instead. Klinsmann knew exactly what to expect, having previously played under Trapattoni at Inter, but he frequently complained about the Italian’s defensive tactics and about being hauled off midway through the second half, generally so Trapattoni could introduce a defensive player. The final straw came three games from the end of the campaign, in a 0–0 home draw with Freiburg. Trapattoni summoned youngster Carsten Lakies for his first – and last – Bundesliga appearance, in place of Klinsmann, who screamed at Trapattoni on his way off, made an ‘It’s over’ hand gesture and then furiously booted a large, battery-shaped advertising hoarding, momentarily getting his foot stuck. ‘I was just trying to open the game up a bit,’ explained Trapattoni afterwards, gesturing as if he wanted more runs from wider positions.

The advertising hoarding later found its way into Bayern’s museum, a monument to Klinsmann’s rage and Trapattoni’s ultra-Italian tendency to sacrifice stars when tactically necessary. Bayern won the league and, after the celebratory parade, Trapattoni, in traditional Bavarian dress, treated Bayern’s supporters to some Italian songs from the balcony of Munich’s town hall. It was indeed over for Klinsmann after winning his only league title – he returned to Serie A, joining Sampdoria. ‘I wanted a club where the philosophy of football was right for me,’ he announced. ‘Sampdoria is that club and César Menotti is that sort of coach.’ It was a pointed dig at Trapattoni.

‘As an Italian coach in Germany, I was trying to change their mindset,’ remembered Trapattoni. ‘I was met with resistance, because you don’t change a mentality in two or three months. I wanted them to get accustomed to thinking tactically, developing the play and seeking options. I had to let them play their way and gradually blend in my tactics. After my first year, they began to change a little, but it was a cultural clash. In Germany, they follow a fixed plan. In Italy, we are more flexible.’

Trapattoni’s second campaign was less successful, and was most notable for his infamous press-conference rant in broken German, during which he screamed into the microphone, justifying his decision to omit Scholl, a classy playmaker, and Mario Basler, an unpredictable winger, neither of whom had been pulling their weight defensively. Trapattoni was keen to stress that Bayern played positive football in his diatribe. ‘No team in Germany plays attacking football like Bayern,’ he declared. ‘In the last game, on the pitch we had three strikers – Giovane Élber, Carsten Jancker and Alexander Zickler. We mustn’t forget Zickler! Zickler is a striker, more than Scholl, more than Basler!’ Even in this irritated state, Trapattoni felt compelled to underline that his selection wasn’t too defensive, too Italian.

In Italy itself, of course, no one had a problem with defensive football, and Lippi’s Juventus won the 1996/97 Serie A title in stereotypically unspectacular fashion. In their 34 matches they only scored the joint-fourth highest number of goals, but they conceded the fewest. They won fewer matches than second-placed Parma, but Parma lost four more. Juventus weren’t about scoring goals and winning matches, they were about not conceding goals, and therefore not losing matches.

Juve’s centre-back duo of Ciro Ferrara and Paolo Montero were hugely dominant, although both found themselves in trouble with referees. Montero was sent off away at Napoli and Cagliari, and both were suspended for the home contest with Milan in mid-November, a furiously contested game, delayed because of heavy downpour in Turin, with the touchlines needing to be repainted beforehand. Juventus, as ever, coped without key players, and the makeshift partnership of Sergio Porrini and Alessio Tacchinardi, a right-back and a central midfielder respectively, excelled against Roberto Baggio and George Weah. It finished goalless.

There were starring performances from Zidane, who recovered from a slow start to dominate Juve’s attacking play, and Del Piero, who suffered from injuries but also netted some crucial goals, including the winner in the Intercontinental Cup victory over River Plate. Lippi evolved his default system from the previous season, shifting from 4–3–3 to 4–4–2, which became 4–3–1–2 with Zidane shifting forward into the number 10 position. As always, Lippi used his functional players excellently. The wider midfielders, often Di Livio and Vladimir Jugović, played busy roles, tucking inside to support Didier Deschamps, who became Juve’s primary holding midfielder after Paulo Sousa’s move to Dortmund. Genuine width came from the left-back, usually Pessotto, and Juve shifted towards a three-man defence in possession with the right-back – Porrini or Torricelli – tucking inside, a trademark move from Italy’s old catenaccio system.

Lippi’s policy of switching full-backs, as witnessed in the Champions League Final against Ajax, was again used after 20 minutes in a 2–1 victory over Perugia in February. Porrini, playing as a right-sided centre-back alongside Ferrara, departed through injury but was replaced by Iuliano, who was left-footed and therefore played to the other side of Ferrara. Lippi decided Iuliano needed more protection, so switched Torricelli from right-back to left-back, and Pessotto made the opposite move. Again, only an Italian side would switch their full-backs so readily.

Lippi was never afraid to make early defensive changes, sacrificing Pessotto after 30 minutes against a rampant Udinese because he needed extra pace. Di Livio, a right-midfielder in the previous game, came on at left-back. Converting energetic right-sided midfielders into rampaging left-backs became something of a Lippi speciality; in a second stint with Juventus he did something similar with Gianluca Zambrotta, who became the world’s best in that position, and played both right-back and left-back under Lippi during the World Cup triumph in 2006.

Even when Lippi’s Juventus thrashed the opposition, they often did so efficiently rather than joyfully. In the 6–1 battering of PSG in the European Supercup first leg at a snowy Parc des Princes, Juve’s first four goals came from set-pieces. In fairness, they also defeated a shambolic Milan side by the same scoreline at San Siro in an incredibly dominant display, while the season’s most impressive victory was the 4–1 Champions League semi-final victory over familiar foes Ajax.

In the previous year’s final, Juventus were superior but only won after a shoot-out. This time they were rampant, underlining Italy’s dominance over Holland. Lippi, typically, sprung a tactical surprise in his 4–3–1–2 by using Ferrara and Iuliano, two centre-backs, in the full-back positions either side of Montero and Tacchinardi, forming a formidable, physically dominant defensive quartet. Up front, Juve pressed energetically, with Zidane joining Bokšić and Vieri in shutting down Danny Blind, Mario Melchiot and Frank de Boer. Ajax’s build-up play was disrupted and they uncharacteristically resorted to long balls, which played into the hands of Juve’s four centre-backs. Juventus, meanwhile, played direct football excellently, constantly launching the ball for Vieri and Bokšić, their strongest forward partnership, to batter Ajax’s defenders.

Zidane, meanwhile, ran the show. Supported by the positional discipline of Deschamps, and the energy of Di Livio and Attilio Lombardo – who switched flanks midway through the first half – the Frenchman was superb. In the first half he collected possession 40 yards from goal, advanced with the ball then slowed his dribble, before jinking past three challenges towards the left flank. He then crossed for Vieri, whose shot was deflected wide. Zidane swung in the corner, and Lombardo headed home. The Frenchman was involved in the build-up to the second, scored by Vieri. For the third, Zidane’s speed allowed him to intercept the ball in midfield and he launched a counter-attack, wrongfooted Danny Blind with a stepover and allowed substitute Amoroso to tap into an empty goal. Zidane scored the fourth himself, receiving a pass from Didier Deschamps and faking a shot to leave Edwin van der Sar on the ground, before finishing into an open goal. ‘He is, without a doubt, the greatest player I ever coached,’ said Lippi. ‘And I also think he’s the greatest player of the next 20 years. The previous 20 it was Maradona, and the next twenty, Zidane. I am convinced of that.’

The Ajax victory was arguably Juventus’s greatest under Lippi, and highlighted the three areas in which Italian football had an advantage over Dutch football: tactical flexibility, physical power and a standout individual performance from a world-class talent. ‘Zidane was different class, even in such a remarkable team,’ declared a defeated Louis van Gaal. ‘They are a great team with great skills, a pleasure to watch. I’ll repeat what I said after the first leg: I have never met opponents who beat us like Juventus did.’

Juve were surprisingly defeated 3–1 in the final by Dortmund, who were better prepared for Juventus’s physicality and nullified Zidane through Paul Lambert’s excellent marking. Yet the game could have been very different; Juventus created the better chances, twice hit the woodwork and Bokšić had a goal controversially disallowed. After Juve found themselves 2–0 down at half-time, they switched from 4–3–1–2 to 4–3–3, with Del Piero on for Di Livio. This forced Dortmund to retreat, and Del Piero’s backheeled goal from Bokšić’s cross seemed set to launch a comeback. Soon afterwards, however, 20-year-old Dortmund youth product Lars Ricken was summoned in place of Stéphane Chapuisat, and took all of 16 seconds to make it 3–1, scoring with his first touch after streaking away on a counter-attack and producing a remarkable long-range shot that curled around Angelo Peruzzi. It was a shock win. ‘Having watched that final as a spectator, the only sentiment I have is anger,’ said the injured Conte. ‘Because the weaker side won, and because there’s nothing you can do to set it straight – nothing except turn out again in next season’s Champions League, and win it.’

1997/98 marked a shift in Lippi’s approach up front. Vieri had departed for Atlético Madrid, and the arrival of Pippo Inzaghi, Italian football’s brightest young goalscorer, meant Juventus now had a solid first-choice centre-forward. Lippi rotated less, and there was more combination play between the front three. ‘Now, we have to keep the ball on the ground, rather than trying to knock it onto Vieri’s head as we did last season,’ explained Del Piero. Zidane, Del Piero and Inzaghi were largely allowed freedom from defensive responsibilities, and there was a clear split in Juventus’s system: the back seven players were functional, the forward trio were allowed freedom to express themselves. ‘This time, we have the best defence and the best attack,’ bragged Lippi.

Juventus regularly played a 4–3–1–2, taking advantage of their attackers’ natural qualities, but versatility in defensive positions meant plenty of switches to 3–4–1–2, particularly when playing against two strikers. On occasion, Lippi would ask Zidane and Del Piero to drift inside from the flanks in a 3–4–3. ‘There’s not a lot between 4–3–3 and 3–4–3,’ Lippi explained. ‘I want a foundation of seven players who make up a block between defence and midfield, and then in attack I need another three players who don’t need to worry about chasing back. They should have freedom to create chances.’ There was a major change from the previous season’s goalscoring figures, when no one had managed more than eight league goals; now Del Piero managed 21 and Inzaghi 18.

Juventus, and Lippi, excelled during the run-in. In mid-March, Juventus were 2–0 down at half-time to Parma. Lippi made two changes at the break, introducing Di Livio and Tacchinardi for Deschamps and Birindelli, then sacrificed Zidane for a third striker, Marcelo Zalayeta. Juve went from 4–3–1–2 to 3–4–3, and brought the game back to 2–2. The next weekend, with Zidane on the bench, Juve demolished Milan 4–1. Del Piero scored a penalty and a free-kick, Inzaghi finished a couple of one-on-ones.

But the most famous win came over Inter – their major title rivals – in April, when Juventus triumphed courtesy of a classic Italian combination: tactical thinking from the coach, magic from the number 10 and a hugely controversial decision from the referee.

Juventus’s tactics focused on hitting long balls into the space on the outside of Inter’s three-man defence for Del Piero and Inzaghi, and when Inter defender Taribo West advanced dangerously upfield and lost possession, Juve immediately broke into the space behind him. Edgar Davids slipped in Del Piero, dribbling forward in his classic inside-left position against Salvatore Fresi, the sweeper who had been dragged across to cover for West. Juve’s number 10 produced an extraordinary goal, pretending to change direction twice, courtesy of a stepover and then a feint, before attempting to cut the ball into the six-yard box and getting it stuck under his foot, then pivoting and somehow steering a shot into the far corner.

In response, Inter pushed forward in numbers. The intensity was increasing, with various skirmishes between players, and then came the infamous 69th minute. Inter played a long ball that bounced kindly for Iván Zamorano, who was held up by Birindelli’s desperate lunge on the edge of the box. Zamorano’s strike partner Ronaldo quickly raced on to the second ball, knocked it into a favourable shooting position, but was flattened by a body-check from Juve defender Iuliano. To the fury of Inter’s players, referee Piero Ceccarini waved play on. Juve launched an immediate counter-attack through Davids and Zidane. The Frenchman played the ball on to Del Piero, who was clumsily fouled by West. Ceccarini pointed to the spot.

Even by the standards of 1990s Serie A, when players weren’t afraid of confronting referees, the subsequent reaction was unprecedented. Within seconds Ceccarini was surrounded by ten furious Inter players, which eventually became 11 once Ronaldo had picked himself up from the opposition’s penalty box. Inter’s usually placid coach Gigi Simoni was sent to the stands, restrained on his way by a policeman, while shouting ‘Shameful!’ towards the officials. West’s tackle on Del Piero was definitely a penalty, his challenge so wild that his boot made contact with Del Piero’s shoulder. Iuliano’s challenge on Ronaldo was arguably also a penalty, but it was the type of coming-together that, in real-time, could be wrongly called by a referee making an honest mistake, especially just two seconds after Birindelli’s challenge on Zamorano.

But Italians don’t believe in honest mistakes when it comes to favourable decisions towards Juventus, and this decision prompted years of conspiracy theories. The debate peaked three days after the game inside Italy’s Chamber of Deputies. Parliament was suspended after an extraordinary row between far-right politician Domenico Gramazio, who pointedly declared that ‘a lot of Italian referees drive Fiats’ – Fiat being Juventus’s parent company – and Massimo Mauro, a former Juventus player turned politician, who repeatedly chanted ‘Clown’ at him, with ushers being forced to physically restrain Gramazio, who was attempting to punch Mauro. Del Piero, for the record, had his penalty saved by Gianluca Pagliuca, but his earlier piece of brilliance meant Juventus still won 1–0.

Juve wrapped up the title with a 3–2 victory over Bologna, courtesy of an Inzaghi hat-trick, including two trademark goals from inside the six-yard box, and a fine finish after brilliant interplay between Zidane and Del Piero between the lines. The target, though, was recapturing the Champions League, and Juventus fell at the final hurdle for the second year running, losing 1–0 to Real Madrid, courtesy of a Predrag Mijatović goal.

Lippi appeared unable to explain the defeat. ‘It was one of those evenings where a large part of the team played well below the level they are capable of,’ he said. ‘The reality is that over the whole 90 minutes, we were never dangerous.’ That sole Champions League victory in 1996 doesn’t adequately represent Juventus’s dominance of European football during this period – it probably should have been three in a row.

5
The Third Attacker

During the mid-1990s, Serie A boasted the most staggering collection of world-class attackers ever assembled in one country. With billionaire owners investing vast sums in various top clubs, moving to Serie A was an inevitability for the world’s best footballers. Yet among so much individual talent, one particular forward represented Italian football perfectly.

Roberto Baggio was a legendary footballer, an all-round attacker who could do almost anything with the ball: weave past opponents, play delicate through-balls, score from impossible angles. His brilliance on home soil at the 1990 World Cup planted an Italian flag in the footballing landscape, signifying that Italy would be the home of football for the coming decade, with his mazy dribble against Czechoslovakia the goal of the tournament. His performances had prompted Juventus to pay a world-record fee to Fiorentina, their bitter rivals, to secure Baggio’s services, a transfer that prompted full-scale riots in Florence, leaving dozens injured. Baggio supposedly objected to the transfer, and the following season famously refused to take a penalty against Fiorentina on his return to the Stadio Artemio Franchi. When substituted, a Fiorentina fan threw a purple scarf towards him. Baggio picked it up and took it into the dugout, a move that infuriated Juventus fans, who never entirely took to him. After leaving Fiorentina, he always felt more like an Italy player who happened to play club football, rather than a club footballer who occasionally played for his country; worshipped by the country overall rather than by supporters of his club.

Baggio was neither an attacking midfielder nor a conventional forward; he was the archetypal number 10 who thrived when deployed behind two strikers, orchestrating play and providing moments of magic. He was the type of player that demanded, and justified, the side being built around him, the type Italian football adores. However, the classic Italian trequartista role, which generally refers to a number 10 playing behind two strikers, was under threat. Arrigo Sacchi’s emphasis on a heavy pressing 4–4–2 left no place for a languid trequartista, and therefore players like Baggio were having to prove their worth.

Baggio was a reclusive, amiable character who nevertheless constantly talked himself into trouble. ‘I’m a ball-player, and I think it’s better to have ten disorganised footballers than ten organised runners,’ he declared, which couldn’t have been a more obvious put-down of Sacchi’s methods. Ahead of the 1994 World Cup, Sacchi couldn’t ignore Baggio’s talent, considering he was the reigning European Footballer of the Year, but Sacchi always deployed him as a forward in a 4–4–2, rather than in Baggio’s preferred role behind two strikers. Their most famous dispute came in the group stage match against Norway, when goalkeeper Gianluca Pagliuca was sent off in the opening stages. Italy needed a replacement, and Sacchi elected to substitute Baggio, who trudged off while calling his manager ‘crazy’. Supporters sided with the footballing genius rather than the totalitarian coach, but it was probably the right decision, and Italy won 1–0 with a goal from a Baggio – Dino, no relation. Sacchi’s Italy eventually reached the final, losing to Brazil in a penalty shootout with Roberto Baggio the unfortunate fall guy, blasting the decisive penalty over the crossbar. Nevertheless, the general feeling amongst Italian supporters was that their country had reached the final because of Baggio’s brilliance rather than Sacchi’s tactics. He was omitted from Italy’s disastrous Euro 96 campaign, with Sacchi citing fitness concerns. Nevertheless, his absence supported the growing public feeling that Italian managers were placing too much prominence on the system, and not enough on creative geniuses.

Baggio started 1996/97 at Óscar Tabárez’s AC Milan, playing as a number 10 behind Marco Simone and George Weah. But after disappointing results, Milan made two decisions that hampered Baggio. First, they reverted to their tried-and-tested 4–4–2 and then, even worse, they re-appointed Sacchi after he was sacked by Italy. ‘He’s two-faced. He tells me that I’m playing well during the week, but come Sunday he leaves me on the bench,’ blasted Baggio after a couple of months. ‘I feel like a Ferrari being driven by a traffic warden. A coach must, above all, be a good psychologist. If he imposes his demands harshly, he suffocates the personalities and creativity of his players.’ Baggio started searching for a new club ahead of 1997/98.

That club should have been Parma, who emerged as a serious title challenger thanks to the apparent wealth of Calisto Tanzi, founder and CEO of Parmalat, a locally based multinational dairy producer. As with various Serie A owners of the time, Tanzi’s wealth later proved to have been acquired by fraud, and Parmalat later collapsed in Europe’s biggest-ever bankruptcy; the club went bust too, and Tanzi was imprisoned. But during the mid-1990s, Tanzi’s beneficiary attracted a variety of superstars.

Not every coach, however, wanted superstars, and in 1996 Tanzi appointed an up-and-coming manager by the name of Carlo Ancelotti. He only had one season of Serie B experience, coaching Reggiana, but had previously been Sacchi’s assistant for the national side. Ancelotti was considered the next great Italian manager, and from the outset he followed Sacchi’s template perfectly, insisting on a compact side, aggressive pressing and, crucially, a 4–4–2.

This proved controversial at Parma, for two reasons. First, he’d inherited the wonderful Gianfranco Zola, a classic number 10 who had finished sixth in the previous year’s Ballon d’Or voting. But Ancelotti refused to change his system to incorporate Zola in his best position, and didn’t believe he could play as one of the two strikers, who were instructed to stretch the play and run in behind. Ancelotti instead deployed Zola awkwardly on the left of a 4–4–2. ‘We are no longer wanted,’ complained Zola, speaking about the plight of trequartisti. ‘At the moment everything is about pressing, doubling up as a marker and work rate.’ He fled to Chelsea, pointedly remarking that he would ‘be able to play in my proper role in England’, and made an instant impact in the Premier League, winning the 1996/97 Football Writers’ Player of the Year award despite only joining in November. His form attracted the attention of new Italy boss Cesare Maldini, who briefly based his Italy side around him, and he also received praise from Baggio, a kindred spirit. ‘I admire Zola, he’s taking brilliant revenge on all his doubters,’ he said. ‘That’s the beauty of football. When you have been written off, you can just as easily rise up again.’

In the summer of 1997, Tanzi was desperate to sign Baggio for Parma, and a contract had been agreed, but Ancelotti vetoed the deal at the last minute. ‘He wanted a regular starting position, and wanted to play behind the strikers, a role that didn’t exist in 4–4–2,’ explained Ancelotti. ‘I’d had just got the team into the Champions League and I had no intention of changing my system of play. I called him up and said, “I’d be delighted to have you on the team, but I have no plans for fielding you regularly. You’d be competing against Enrico Chiesa and Hernán Crespo.”’ Baggio instead signed for Bologna. Ancelotti clearly wasn’t against the idea of signing unpredictable geniuses; he sanctioned the return of Faustino Asprilla, explaining that the difference was because the fiery Colombian was happy to play up front, whereas Baggio and Zola would have demanded a withdrawn role. Ancelotti simply didn’t want a trequartista. It wasn’t merely a very public snub to the country’s most popular footballer; it also cast Ancelotti as an inflexible coach who favoured the system over individuals. ‘I was considered “Ancelotti, the anti-imagination”, give me anything but another number 10!’ he self-deprecatingly remembered. ‘At Parma, I still thought that 4–4–2 was the ideal formation in every case, but that’s not true, and if I had a time machine I’d go back. And I’d take Baggio.’

At this stage, Italian formation notation was slightly confusing. The determination to keep a compact team meant a number 10 was generally considered a third attacker, rather than deserving of his own ‘band’ in the system, and therefore what would be considered a 4–3–1–2 elsewhere was a 4–3–3 in Italy. ‘There are several types of 4–3–3 formation,’ outlined Marcello Lippi. ‘There’s the 4–3–3 formation with a centre-forward and two wingers, the 4–3–3 with two forwards and a player behind, and the 4–3–3 with three proper forwards.’ Lippi considered his later Juventus side, with Zinedine Zidane in support of Alessando Del Piero and Pippo Inzaghi, a 4–3–3 rather than a 4–3–1–2. Therefore, the debate was not necessarily about whether managers would deploy a number 10, but whether they’d deploy any kind of third attacker. Luckily, a couple of managers remained committed to fielding a front three.

An extreme example was Zdenĕk Zeman, Serie A’s most eccentric coach. Zeman was born in Czechoslovakia but as a teenager moved to live with his uncle, Čestmír Vycpálek, who would coach Juventus to two Scudettos in the 1970s. Zeman therefore grew up surrounded by Italian football culture, but he never played professionally, drew inspiration from handball and remained a mysterious outsider. He was a contemporary of Sacchi at Coverciano and the two became kindred spirits, determined to demonstrate that other Italian coaches placed too much emphasis on results. Zeman said he preferred to lose 5–4 than draw 0–0, because that way the supporters had been entertained. It wasn’t a philosophy shared by his contemporaries.

Zeman focused on short passing, zonal defending and developing youngsters. His idol was Ştefan Kovács, who had won two European Cups with Ajax in the early 1970s, and he remained committed to the classic Ajax 4–3–3. But whereas Dutch coaches prescribed touchline-hugging wingers, Zeman’s three-man attack generally comprised three goalscorers, dragging the opposition narrow and opening up space for rampaging full-backs. It was all-out attack.

Zeman performed impressively at Foggia in the early 1990s, before moving to Lazio in 1994, taking the club to second in 1994/95 and third in 1995/96, when his forward trio featured three proper strikers: Alen Bokšić, Pierluigi Casiraghi and the wonderful Giuseppe Signori, who won the Capocannoniere – the title given to Serie A’s top scorer – jointly in 1995/96 with Bari’s Igor Protti. Bokšić then departed for Juventus, so Zeman signed a replacement: Protti, of course. His forward trio now included the two top goalscorers from the previous campaign, although he only lasted midway through 1996/97 before being dismissed. What happened next was somewhat unexpected; Zeman spent the rest of the campaign attending Lazio matches at the Stadio Olimpico, joking that, having frequently been criticised for overseeing a leaky defence, he was assessing how his successor Dino Zoff would fix things. The following season, he was again regularly at the Olimpico, for a very different reason. Now he was coaching Roma.

At Roma, Zeman’s attacking trio offered greater balance. Rather than a trio of outright strikers, Zeman deployed just one, Abel Balbo, flanked by the speedy Paulo Sérgio and a young Francesco Totti, who drifted inside from the left into clever positions between the lines. Zeman’s 4–3–3 became more of a 4–3–1–2, with Totti the number 10.

‘Zemanlandia’, as his style of football became known, exploded into life with Roma’s 6–2 victory over Napoli in early October 1997, an extraordinarily dominant display in which Roma could have reached double figures. Balbo helped himself to a hat-trick, but Roma players were queueing up to provide finishes to their direct passing moves. They subsequently beat Empoli 4–3, Fiorentina 4–1, and both Milan and Brescia 5–0, although their defeats were often heavy too, and traditional Italian coaches particularly enjoyed putting Zeman in his place.

In December Roma lost 3–0 away at a Marco Branca-inspired Inter. ‘Some managers like to play possession football,’ Inter boss Gigi Simoni grinned afterwards. ‘I like to counter-attack. Everyone’s right, so long as they win.’ Zeman, however, insisted he was right even when Roma lost. His team became increasingly attack-minded as the season unfolded, scoring 17 goals in their final five matches to finish fourth, as joint-top scorers alongside champions Juventus. Zeman’s attacking trio provided balance in terms of style and goalscoring contribution: Balbo netted 14 times, Totti 13 and Sérgio 12. Totti also recorded ten assists; this proved to be his breakthrough campaign, and he would dominate Roma for the next two decades.

Roma slipped to sixth place in 1998/99, but again Zeman’s front three sparkled. Balbo had left for Parma, so Zeman promoted the tall, slightly awkward Marco Delvecchio, who managed 18 league goals with Totti and Paulo Sérgio chipping in with 12 apiece from either side. But Zemanlandia became a parody of itself; Roma scored the most goals in Serie A, 65, but conceded 49, more than relegated Vicenza.

The match that summed everything up came four games from the end of the campaign, when Roma hosted an Inter side that hadn’t scored away from home in open play for 700 minutes and had just appointed their fourth manager of the season, the returning, perennially cautious Roy Hodgson. Roma hit four goals, with Totti, Sérgio, Delvecchio and Eusebio Di Francesco all on the scoresheet. But they conceded five. Inter forwards Ronaldo and Iván Zamorano constantly breached Roma’s high defensive line to score two apiece, and then Diego Simeone headed a late winner. Defensive horror shows like this, and the 3–2 loss to Milan, the 3–2 loss to Perugia and the 4–3 loss to Cagliari, meant that Zeman wasn’t considered pragmatic enough to win a title.

Zeman also cemented his outsider status by dramatically accusing Juventus of taking performance-enhancing drugs. Juve doctor Riccardo Agricola was initially given a suspended prison sentence in 2004, then later acquitted. Zeman believes his determination to highlight Serie A’s dark practices hampered him in terms of future employment, and he’s probably right: he spent the next two decades managing the likes of Salernitana, Avellino, Lecce, Brescia, Foggia and Pescara, a succession of modest clubs for a coach who had significantly improved the fortunes of Lazio and Roma, regularly finished in the top five, and helped launch the careers of Alessandro Nesta and Francesco Totti. For all Zeman’s popularity with neutrals, his influence on managerial colleagues was negligible. He remained a cult figure.

Instead, the manager most instrumental in promoting the third attacker was Alberto Zaccheroni. He’d toiled his way up through Italy’s lower divisions, winning promotion from the fourth and third tiers, before working in Serie B and then landing his first Serie A job with newly promoted Udinese, finishing 11th in 1995/96. He was originally a disciple of Sacchi, a 4–4–2 man, so when he found himself with three quality centre-forwards throughout 1996/97, he played only two. He could pick from Oliver Bierhoff, the prolific old-school German target man whose two goals as a substitute had won the Euro 96 final; Paolo Poggi, a hard-working forward who made good runs into the channels; and Márcio Amoroso – a shaven-headed, explosive Brazilian who was inevitably compared to Ronaldo and who topped the goalscoring charts in Brazil, Italy and Germany. Bierhoff and Poggi started the season up front, with Amoroso playing when Bierhoff was injured. With a couple of months remaining in 1996/97, Udinese found themselves three places clear of the relegation zone in Serie A, with tricky trips to Juventus and Parma, first and second in the table, in their next two games.

These contests proved significant. Udinese’s trip to Juventus, defending champions and on their way to another title, produced an unthinkable 3–0 away victory, despite Zaccheroni’s side going down to ten men inside three minutes. Zaccheroni switched to a 3–4–2, and somehow his forwards ran riot: Amoroso scored a penalty, Bierhoff scored a header, then Bierhoff’s flick-on found Amoroso running in behind to make it three. It was perhaps the most surprising Serie A victory of the decade. After Udinese recorded such an extraordinary win with three defenders and four midfielders, Zaccheroni retained that defensive structure for the trip to Parma, introducing Poggi as the third forward. Udinese again recorded a shock victory, 2–0, and the 3–4–3 was here to stay. The new formation helped Udinese surge up the table – having been battling relegation, they finished fifth and secured European qualification for the first time in the club’s history.

Zaccheroni continued with 3–4–3 for 1997/98, taking Udinese to a historic third-placed finish. Bierhoff led the line, flanked by Poggi and Amoroso running into space. Udinese scored in every game that season, and Zaccheroni constantly pointed to his side’s goalscoring figures to underline his belief in open, expansive football. Udinese beat Lecce 6–0, Brescia 4–0, Bologna 4–3 and Zeman’s Roma 4–2. ‘My system was not the 3–5–2, which you could observe elsewhere, but a system that included four midfielders,’ Zaccheroni later recalled. ‘And there’s a big difference. I looked around, I studied and I observed things that I didn’t like. Often there were five across the midfield, which I don’t like at all because eventually it becomes a 5–3–2 and you lack an attacking threat. I observed Cruyff’s Barcelona and Zeman’s Foggia, but these weren’t the solutions I was looking for; I didn’t want three in midfield [in a 4–3–3], which inevitably forced you to defend in a 4–5–1. A midfield four, however, can effectively support the attack and defence simultaneously. My target was to keep three up front, so they didn’t have to retreat all the time, so I started working on it, first with pen and paper, and then on the pitch.’

Zaccheroni became defined by 3–4–3, and beyond the simple numbers game, Udinese were demonstrating that underdogs could attack. ‘Once, when coaches took their teams to, say, San Siro to play Milan or Inter, they had to pray for a result,’ said Zaccheroni. ‘Now the mentality is different. We can go there with our own ideas and our own style of play.’

Zaccheroni took his style to San Siro somewhat literally, by becoming the Milan coach in 1998. This was, theoretically at least, a dramatic step down. Zaccheroni’s Udinese had finished fifth and third in the previous two campaigns, while Milan had endured two disastrous campaigns, finishing 11th and 10th. Zaccheroni was a highly promising coach, but the prospect of implementing a 3–4–3 at the club which had dominated Italian football with Sacchi’s 4–4–2, and largely stuck to that system since, seemed daunting. ‘Don’t expect an Udinese photocopy,’ he declared, despite the fact he’d brought both striker Bierhoff and right-wing-back Thomas Helveg with him from Udine. ‘Milan will play with three defenders, four midfield players and three forwards, but that doesn’t mean that it will be the same as Udinese’s play. Anyway, 3–4–3 is not a magical formula. Perhaps it will be a new interpretation of 3–4–3.’

That proved prescient. Zaccheroni commenced the campaign with his usual system, although there was only one guaranteed starter up front. His old favourite Bierhoff began all 34 games and managed 19 goals: two penalties, three from open play with his feet, and 14 headers. Out wide, Zaccheroni struggled to find the right balance. George Weah wasn’t suited to the left-sided role, and despite his unquestionable talent, the 1995 Ballon d’Or winner wasn’t prolific, never finishing within ten goals of Serie A’s top goalscorer. Meanwhile, Maurizio Ganz scored some crucial late goals, but was workmanlike rather than explosive. Zaccheroni tried deploying playmakers rather than forwards in his front three. The magical Brazilian Leonardo showed flashes of brilliance, but was more effective coming off the bench.

Milan, Lazio and Fiorentina emerged as the three title contenders that season. Fiorentina were briefly favourites, but slumped after Gabriel Batistuta injured his knee in a goalless draw with Milan, and then his strike partner Edmundo allowed himself a mid-season break because he fancied heading to the carnival in Rio. Milan’s goalless draw at Lazio in early April, with eight games remaining, meant Lazio were nailed-on title favourites. But then came a major tactical shift.

Throughout the season Zaccheroni had only ever deployed Zvonimir Boban, the wonderfully gifted, tempestuous Croatian number 10, as one of his two central midfielders. Boban’s two dismissals in the first half of the campaign, meanwhile, meant two suspensions, two dressing-downs from Zaccheroni and widespread speculation that he would leave in January. However, a week after that goalless draw with Lazio, Milan welcomed Parma to San Siro and, for the first time, Zaccheroni deployed Boban as a number 10, floating behind Bierhoff and Weah in a 3–4–1–2, in a tactical change supposedly suggested by Demetrio Albertini and Alessandro Costacurta, two dressing-room leaders. Milan started nervously, and went behind. But Boban took control, and after Paolo Maldini smashed a brilliant right-footed equaliser past Gianluigi Buffon from outside the box, Milan piled on the pressure.

Boban, a tall, swaggering figure and the only Milan player to wear his shirt untucked, provided the game’s pivotal moment. Collecting the ball in the left-back position under pressure, he nonchalantly poked it past Parma’s Diego Fuser with the outside of his boot, charging onto it before teammate Guly could get in his way. Then, from just inside his own half, Boban launched a long pass over the top of the Parma defence with such perfect weight that it tempted Buffon to advance, but also enabled Milan striker Ganz to prod it past the Parma goalkeeper on the volley, before he outpaced the recovering Fabio Cannavaro to slide it into an empty net. 2–1. Boban was magnificent, and received a standing ovation from the Milan supporters as he was substituted. Later that day Lazio lost the Rome derby 3–1 to a Francesco Totti-inspired Roma. Suddenly, the title race was on. More importantly, number 10s were now sexy again.

The following weekend Zaccheroni and Bierhoff returned to Udinese. Both received a rapturous reception upon emerging from the tunnel; Zaccheroni put on his sunglasses as if trying to hide the tears, while Bierhoff, strangely, was presented with Udinese’s Player of the Year award ten months after he’d departed the Stadio Friuli. But neither were in the mood for niceties. Milan won 5–1, their most dominant performance of the campaign and a perfect demonstration of their new attacking trident’s powers. Boban scored the first two, Bierhoff added the next two – both headers, of course – and then came the most telling goal of Milan’s run-in. Boban received the ball in the number 10 position, casually sidestepped a dreadful two-footed lunge from Udinese defender Valerio Bertotto, and found himself with Weah running into the left-hand channel and Bierhoff running into the right-hand channel. Boban glanced towards Weah but slipped in Bierhoff, who chipped a cross over goalkeeper Luigi Turci, allowing Weah to nod into an empty net. Milan were rampant, and now top for the first time, having suddenly stumbled on this system. It was the perfect trio: Boban offered the invention, Weah the speed and Bierhoff the aerial power. ‘The type of player I am means I’m best suited to being behind the main strike force,’ Boban said. ‘I can’t be at my best in that role for all of the 34 games but I much prefer being in the centre of the field, where I’m more involved … Zaccheroni has made it possible for me to give my best. A lot has changed.’

It wasn’t plain sailing all the way to the title, and Milan had to rely on a last-minute own goal to defeat Sampdoria 3–2. Their most crucial victory came away at Juve. Milan were on the back foot throughout the first half, but after half-time a long, bouncing ball in behind gave Weah the chance to open the scoring by cleverly nodding over Angelo Peruzzi. Their second was another showcase of their front trio’s varied skill sets; Bierhoff battled for a high ball, Boban picked up possession and delicately half-volleyed the ball over the defence for Weah, who raced through, steadied himself and drove the ball home. The next week Milan defeated Empoli 4–0, with a Bierhoff hat-trick, and then recorded a final-day 2–1 victory at Perugia, a match interrupted when rioting home fans invaded the pitch, supposedly to delay the game and allow their relegation-threatened side an advantage by knowing the results of rivals’ matches. This delayed Milan’s confirmation as champions, too, but Zaccheroni’s side were eventually home and dry. It was one of the less convincing title victories of this era, but Milan captain Paolo Maldini declared it the most memorable of his seven Scudetti because it was so unexpected. Zaccheroni had overcome Milan’s obsession with 4–4–2, implemented a front three, and taken the Rossoneri – who finished in the bottom half the previous season – to the title.

Questions persisted about precisely who had suggested the change in system, and one man inevitably insisted on taking all the credit. Milan owner Silvio Berlusconi claimed it was his idea to deploy Boban as the number 10, which deeply offended Zaccheroni.

Whatever the truth, the number 10 had returned to prominence, and while 1999/2000 was an ugly season in Italian football, dominated by refereeing conspiracies and settled in controversial fashion on the final day, it was nevertheless a wonderful campaign for trequartisti.

A good example came at Giovanni Trapattoni’s Fiorentina, who finished as last of the seven sisters but offered arguably the most cohesive attacking trident. Gabriel Batistuta was the most complete striker of this era, and his closest support came from Enrico Chiesa, a speedy, two-footed forward capable of operating wide and shooting from acute angles. Behind them was Rui Costa, a classic number 10 adept at dribbling past challenges and slipping delicate passes in behind.

Fiorentina’s equaliser in a 1–1 draw with fierce rivals Juventus shortly before Christmas was a perfect example of their attacking potential; Rui Costa brought the ball through midfield and prodded it into the path of Chiesa down the left, and he fired a near-post cross into Batistuta, who converted smartly. This was precisely how the attacking trident was supposed to operate: the number 10 initiating the break, the second striker running into the channel, the number 9 scoring. Fiorentina’s opener in a 2–1 victory over Inter was another typical goal, coming when Rui Costa passed out to Chiesa on the left; his devilish cross tempted Angelo Peruzzi to advance, but the goalkeeper grasped at thin air, and Batistuta nodded into an empty net. However, Fiorentina didn’t produce these moments consistently enough, and their underwhelming league finish meant Batistuta’s nine-year love affair with Fiorentina was over – he moved to Roma.

Fabio Capello’s Roma had only finished one place above Fiorentina, but they were an exciting prospect. Capello was previously a strict 4–4–2 man, and therefore his decision to build the side around Totti, Italian football’s next great trequartista, was a significant moment in the revival of the number 10. Cafu and Vincent Candela were ready-made wing-backs, so Capello was another who turned to 3–4–1–2.

Fielded permanently behind two strikers, Totti was sensational. He dropped deep to create from midfield, and could arrive late in the penalty area to score. But Totti’s natural home was between the lines, and his speciality was a specific pass – retreating slightly to receive a ball from midfield and then whipping the ball around the corner first-time for a runner down the right, usually either Vincenzo Montella breaking in behind or Cafu sprinting from deep.

Roma’s best performance was their 4–1 derby victory over Lazio in November. All four goals came within the first half-hour and were scored in similar circumstances, with Delvecchio and Montella racing in behind, scoring two apiece, while Totti prowled between the lines. Roma briefly went top in autumn, although they collapsed dramatically in spring, winning just one of their last ten, failing to score in five of them. But that was a blessing in disguise, as it prompted Roma’s signing of Batistuta, and his goals fired Roma to Totti’s only Serie A title in 2000/01.

Fifth-placed Parma had a disjointed campaign. They were hindered by the inconsistency of their number 10 Ariel Ortega, who, having replaced Juan Verón successfully at Sampdoria, now replaced him less convincingly at Parma. A 3–0 victory over Verona in October showed their 3–4–1–2 had potential, with Ortega grabbing a goal, an assist and a pre-assist, and the two forwards, Hernán Crespo and Márcio Amoroso, all getting on the scoresheet.

Ortega linked particularly well with the wing-backs Fuser and Paolo Vanoli, but sadly struggled with alcoholism throughout his career, rarely justified his tag as the first of the many ‘new Maradonas’ and started fewer than half of the matches in 1999/2000. Without him, the manager Alberto Malesani varied between a more cautious 3–5–2, or a 3–4–3 with Amoroso and Di Vaio flanking Crespo, but in both systems Parma missed a trequartista.

Significantly, however, Parma finished level on points with Inter, who started 1999/2000 with unrivalled attacking options: Ronaldo, Christian Vieri, Iván Zamorano, Álvaro Recoba and – last and very much least in the eyes of coach Marcello Lippi – Roberto Baggio. His excellent season at Bologna had convinced Inter to sign him in the summer of 1998, although he endured a difficult first campaign, in a typically chaotic Inter season that featured three changes of coach.

Just as Baggio had been devastated at being reunited with Sacchi at Milan, now at Inter he suffered from the appointment of Lippi, with whom he’d rowed at Juventus. Lippi had little interest in Baggio, and even less interest in fielding a number 10; Vieri and Ronaldo were expected to cope by themselves, although injury problems meant they only once started together all season, in a 2–1 derby defeat to Milan, when Ronaldo was dismissed after half an hour for elbowing Roberto Ayala.

Like Parma, Inter struggled to create chances when playing 3–5–2, collecting only ten points from the nine matches before the opening of the January transfer window. They then completed a significant signing: Real Madrid’s Clarence Seedorf. Although the Dutchman had spent the majority of his career in a deeper position, he was instantly deployed as a number 10, and transformed Inter. On his debut, Inter defeated Perugia 5–0. Seedorf assisted the first, then dribbled inside from the left flank, produced a stepover so mesmeric that it left Perugia defender Roberto Ripa on the ground, and lifted the ball into the corner. Three more Inter goals followed, and Seedorf was substituted to a standing ovation. His arrival, and the shift from 3–5–2 to 3–4–1–2, meant Inter collected 23 points from their next ten games.

Baggio, meanwhile, didn’t start a single Serie A game until mid-January – Lippi was using anyone else he could find. For a January trip to Verona, Ronaldo, Vieri and Zamorano were all out, so Seedorf played behind Álvaro Recoba and unknown 21-year-old Adrian Mutu, making his first-ever Serie A start. Inter went 1–0 down, and Lippi spent the final stages of the first half speaking to a nonplussed Baggio on the edge of the technical area, giving him instructions with a succession of hand gestures in such a deliberate, overt way that he was surely asserting his authority as much as detailing specific plans. At half-time, Lippi introduced him as his number 10.

Baggio, never one for instructions, did his own thing. Two minutes into the second half, his through-ball to Vladimir Jugović bounced fortuitously to Recoba, who swept the ball home. Fifteen minutes from time, Recoba attacked down the left and stabbed a cross into the box that was met by Baggio, who slid in and diverted the ball into the far corner. Baggio celebrated passionately and, in typical fashion, used his post-match interview to slam Lippi for having questioned his level of fitness.

This didn’t stop Baggio from being handed his first start the following week, at home to Roma. Once again he won the game for Inter. After eight minutes he collected a pass from Seedorf in the inside-left channel, dribbled menacingly towards goal before poking a through-ball into the path of Vieri, who finished. Vieri, Baggio and Seedorf embraced, a trident on the same wavelength. They again connected shortly afterwards, but Vieri’s touch failed him. Roma equalised, but Inter responded; Vieri scuffed a shot into a defender, and the ball broke for onrushing wing-back Francesco Moriero, whose shot was saved by Francesco Antonioli and looped up into the air. Baggio took a couple of steps backwards to catch up with the ball, then produced a perfect over-the-shoulder volley, lobbing the ball over the recovering Cafu and delicately into the net. Baggio again celebrated wildly, and so did Lippi. Yet with others returning from injury, Baggio was dropped for the following weekend and used sparingly until the final weeks, once more omitted by an authoritarian coach.

Inter’s city rivals Milan started the campaign as defending champions, although their campaign was handicapped by injuries to Boban, who missed the first and last couple of months, meaning Zaccheroni sometimes reverted to 3–4–3. Milan were clearly better with Boban; he ran the show in a 2–1 victory over Parma, scoring both goals from free-kicks, which inevitably meant Berlusconi approved the system. ‘Boban was brilliant today, back to his best,’ he declared. ‘Today he had him playing behind a front two, which is one of the formations I like.’

Zaccheroni remained frustrated by Boban’s languidness and petulance, but he kept on proving his worth. In January 2000, Milan trailed Lecce 2–0 at San Siro having started with three outright strikers, so Zaccheroni replaced José Mari with Boban and switched from 3–4–3 to 3–4–1–2. Milan got a goal back immediately, then Boban crossed to Bierhoff for the equaliser, with the German striker wheeling away and pointing to Boban in his celebration. Then, in the final stages, Boban stepped up to take a free-kick and bent the ball over the wall and onto the angle between crossbar and post. The match finished 2–2, and Boban was the star despite playing only half an hour.

He was also the game’s outstanding player in a 2–1 victory over Lazio in February, receiving a standing ovation when he was substituted, before encountering yet more injury problems. These derailed Milan’s campaign. ‘We’d got very used to him playing behind us,’ said Andrei Shevchenko, who won the Capocannoniere with 24 goals in his first Serie A campaign. ‘He created the chances, he was the brains of the team, with amazingly creative ideas which he translated into balls for us to score. Now we have to take other routes to goal. That will take time.’

Second-placed Juventus were yet another side who used 3–4–1–2 throughout 1999/2000. That wasn’t particularly surprising considering they’d previously played that way under Lippi, but it became more significant when you considered the identity of their manager: Ancelotti. He was previously a strict 4–4–2 man who refused to accommodate a number 10. He didn’t want Zola, he didn’t want Baggio. At Juve, though, he couldn’t resist Zidane.

Upon his arrival at Juventus, Ancelotti discovered the squad were happy to make allowances for Zidane. One day, before an away trip, Zidane was late for the team coach and no one could get hold of him. A furious Ancelotti ordered the driver to leave without him, only for centre-back Paolo Montero to rush to the front of the coach and declare that they weren’t leaving without their talisman. Ancelotti relented, Zidane arrived ten minutes later, played well, and Juventus won the game. Gradually, Ancelotti understood the need to indulge number 10s, and started to regret his treatment of Baggio.

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