Italy has produced more than its fair share of outstanding and innovative coaches.
From rigid disciplinarians to revolutionary innovators, Italians have achieved incredible success at home and abroad, Roberto De Zerbi being just the latest in a long line of Italian coaches gaining international recognition.
The Gentleman Ultra presents its top ten Italian “Misters” of all time.
Who’d make your list?
Giovanni Trapattoni
Giovanni Trapattoni is the quintessential Italian coach. Seeing him coach is like spotting your Nonno – your grandpa – on the bench.
But don’t be fooled by the amiable facade. Il Trap was a serial winner with a steely determination. A man much more suited to the evolving world of global football than any of us ever imagined.
His trophy haul and record with the great Juventus side of the late 1970s and early 1980s would be enough to put him in any Hall of Fame.
A half dozen Scudetti, every available European trophy and an Intercontinental Cup were the highlights of a golden spell.
Despite his domestic success, there were those who doubted that he could succeed elsewhere and adapt his approach to different personnel. He would spend the next three decades travelling the footballing world and proving them wrong.
League titles with Inter, Bayern Munich, Benfica and Red Bull Salzburg – and some memorable international moments with Italy and the Republic of Ireland – showed that he was much more than a one-trick pony.
Constantly gesticulating and whistling on the sidelines, Trapattoni’s press conferences were the stuff of legend, as he mangled various languages and proverbs. Somehow he always managed to get his point across.
More entertaining and expansive than many gave him credit for, he knew how to close out a game better than almost anyone else in the sport.
The calcio landscape has been a little bit poorer since he hung up his tactics board in 2013 after failing to guide the Republic of Ireland national team to the 2014 World Cup – a feat even he couldn’t achieve.
Arrigo Sacchi
Is a great coach defined by the number of trophies won, by the achievements of their greatest team or by their overall impact on the game?
In the case of Arrigo Sacchi, he ticks the boxes for all three.
Milan had won just one Scudetto in the twenty years prior to the appointment of Mister Sacchi in 1987. Not only did he win the Serie A title with the Rossoneri, but he also led them to back-to-back European Cups and European Super Cups. He also won a domestic Supercoppa, two Intercontinental Cups and would later come within a penalty shoot-out of leading Italy to the World Cup. Trophies won. Tick.
Sacchi’s Milan team that won back-to-back European Cups in 1989 and 1990 are widely regarded as one of the best sides in the tournament’s history. The fact they successfully defended the trophy is testament to that, as it would take more than 25 years for the feat to be repeated when Real Madrid won it three times in a row starting in 2015. A defence including all-time greats Franco Baresi and Paolo Maldini combined with the Dutch triumvirate of Ruud Gullit, Frank Rijkaard and Marco van Basten helped create a formidable backbone. Sacchi’s greatest side, one of the best ever. Tick.
Italian sides were largely married to the defence-first ethos of catenaccio when Sacchi became Milan manager. He cast aside that conservative approach for something more akin to the Dutch-style “Total Football” of the 1970s. His approach, that included defenders playing out from the back and positionally fluid forwards who pressed high up the pitch, are still looked upon as “modern” in today’s game. Impact on the game. Tick.
Fabio Capello
If Fabio Capello was your schoolteacher, you would certainly fear him. However, if you paid attention and behaved, you would probably achieve outstanding exam results. And when you left school, you would suddenly realise how much you had grown to respect him.
I have chosen the teacher analogy as Capello was a strict disciplinarian, who appeared, headteacher-style, to have total command of his teams through a steely stare (and those iconic spectacles) from the side of the pitch.
From an Italian footballing perspective, Capello’s most iconic years in management were between 1991 and 1996, when he led a great AC Milan side to four league titles in five seasons.
In 1991/92, Capello’s Milan won the Serie A title without losing a single match.
Perhaps his finest hour was the Rossoneri’s 4-0 demolition of the highly fancied Barcelona in the 1994 Champions League Final.
It could be argued that league triumphs with Milan, as well as Juventus and Real Madrid, who Capello also managed, are to be expected. So, when he led Roma to the Serie A title in 2001, the club’s first in 18 years and only the third in their history, Capello’s status as one of Italy’s all-time great managers was secured.
Capello’s sides were built on strong defensive foundations, but creative players undoubtedly had their place, too. His career in international management – Capello took charge of England and Russia – didn’t bring the same success as his club days, but Don Fabio’s place among the greats is undisputed.
My enduring image of Capello is of AC Milan players tossing him in the air in celebration after another trophy success.
Not a stunt to attempt with your headteacher, right enough.
Carlo Ancelotti
“Two things that define you, your patience when you don’t have anything and your attitude when you have it all.”
Carlo Ancelotti
In his autobiography Quiet Leadership: Winning Hearts, Minds and Matches, Carlo Ancelotti goes some way to showing how the former AC Milan player became arguably the best Italian coach of all time.
Certainly, winning minds is his key attribute. Understanding how an elite player thinks is easy for him because, after all, he was one and played with possibly the best club side in world football. He knows that the coaching is almost secondary, with the players at the peak of their powers, the game is to understand those marginal gains that win games and trophies.
Kaizen theory is the way that little words and suggestions, understanding a player’s motivations, make them improve. Listening here is key. We have two ears and one mouth for a reason and at the elite level managing this is everything. That’s the point, he is not coaching, he is overseeing and he is leading. He has the respect and he has the trust of the best in the world.
This is why “Don Carlo” has won titles in all of Europe’s five elite leagues. He is a four-time Champions League winner, he has three FIFA Club World Cups, four UEFA Super Cups and a plethora of domestic silverware as well.
He could be not just the best Italian Mister of all time but the best manager ever in world football.
Nereo Rocco
When Nereo Rocco withdrew Ivano Blason to sweep behind Triestina’s backline in 1947, few could have anticipated how this defensive tinkering would shape Italian football for the next four decades. By ushering in catenaccio, Rocco was derided by many of his contemporaries as pragmatic and dogmatically defensive. But Rocco also knew that, in football, defence doesn’t win championships. Invention and a nose for goal ultimately do.
A lock is worthless without a key and, while managing Italy at the 1960 Olympics, “El Paròn” pinpointed the footballing lock-picker of a generation in Alessandria’s 17-year-old midfielder Gianni Rivera. As long as Rocco could count on Rivera’s brilliance in his tailor-made trequartista role, and as long as his defence kept asphyxiating opposition forward lines, his Milan side would conquer all.
At times he took this to extremes, such as with his deployment of the “Maginot Line” – a sweeper behind five defenders – in the Rossoneri’s 1969 European Cup win over Ajax and a Trapattoni-shackled Johan Cruyff, but Rocco batted away criticism with his dour external demeanour juxtaposed against his dressing-room irony and private joie de vivre.
Rocco’s career wasn’t all plain sailing. In 1973, a last-day defeat at the hands of “Fatal Verona” cost Milan another league title – but with four European trophies and an Intercontinental Cup to his name, Rocco has a strong claim to being regarded as Milan’s (as well as Triestina’s and Padova’s) greatest ever manager.
Luciano Spalletti
Currently Napoli’s favourite son, Luciano Spalletti has certainly earned his place amongst this prestigious bunch, despite having taken a rather roundabout journey to get there.
Initially something of a reluctant coach, success at Empoli, the last club he played for, led him to a flailing Sampdoria and then Venezia, then under the control of manager-eating president Maurizio Zamparini.
The bald one then finally settled with rather unfashionable Udinese, with whom he built a side that reached the dizzying heights of fourth place in Serie A. He then jumped ship to Roma where he demonstrated the innovative methods that would earn him a place amongst the immortal figures of Italian coaching heritage.
The fluid and irresistible false nine system spearheaded by the iconic Francesco Totti won plaudits across Europe. And even inspired the likes of Jurgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola.
Forever the bridesmaid in Rome, aside from two Coppa Italias, he earned little credit from Inter fans either as Antonio Conte swooped in to enjoy success built on Spalletti foundations. League titles in Russia were finally added to victory on home soil at the end of the 2022/23 season, as Spaletti led Napoli to their first league title in almost 30 years.
The new Azzurri boss will certainly have the backing of fans of the Naples club and all of the animals on his farm as he goes in search of international glory to add to his legacy.
Marcello Lippi
When Marcello Lippi arrived at Juventus in the summer of 1994, it was the most poisoned of chalices. Italy’s grandest club hadn’t won the Scudetto for eight years, since the waning days of the Michel Platini era. Eight years is an eternity for a team like Juve, a prolonged stay in purgatory. The club had to watch as the likes of Milan, Inter, Napoli and even Sampdoria won the title. Juve hovered around the top half of the table but were always the outsiders looking in; noses firmly pressed against the glass.
Lippi changed all that in one season, and he did most of it without Juve’s star player Roberto Baggio. Lippi brought the Scudetto back to Turin in the summer of 1995 by playing some of the best football ever seen from a Juve side. He managed to coax the best out of Gianluca Vialli and Fabrizio Ravanelli, ushered in Alessandro Del Piero as Baggio’s eventual heir and began Juve’s domination of Serie A and Europe. Three Scudetti in four years, four European finals in a row, three of them lost, but Juventus became the byword for fear in the mid-to-late 1990s. Lippi’s side was the measuring stick for greatness.
Lippi won’t go down as one of the Italian game’s greatest innovators, he was a pragmatic coach who shifted his formation depending on the talent available. But he knew how to maximise that talent to its full potential – better than almost any other Italian coach in recent memory. A blot on his name was his year at Inter. A feud with Baggio got very personal (wounds that have never healed), and Lippi completely failed to emulate the success he achieved in Turin. His return to Juventus in the summer of 2001 kick-started another era of brilliance. Two further Scudetti and another European final before he took the top job with the Azzurri.
What followed was Italy’s 2006 World Cup triumph, cementing Lippi’s legacy as one of the country’s greatest ever coaches.
Ottavio Bianchi
The man from the North who won in the South. Napoli’s most successful coach, responsible for their first Scudetto in 1987 and their only UEFA Cup in 1989.
He played with the best (from Dino Zoff to Gianni Rivera) and coached the greatest (Diego Maradona). Yet at just 17 years-old, Ottavio Bianchi had been told by doctors that he would never walk again following a serious knee injury suffered during his debut in Serie B with his local side, Brescia. Despite the potentially career-ending injury, Ottavio enjoyed a career at the top of the game that spanned five decades.
He was coaching Como at the time, when the call came to join Napoli, an advance he initially declined. The lure of Napoli, and, in particular, the prospect of coaching a raw talent as prodigious as Diego Armando Maradona, proved too much to resist
Though he insists it was a collective victory, few credit anyone other than Maradona himself for Napoli’s remarkable success during the Bianchi era.
He achieved the first scudetto in Neapolitan history in the 1986-1987 championship, winning the Coppa Italia in the same season. The following season, Napoli remained leaders until the twenty-seventh matchday, unexpectedly losing four of their last five games, handing the Scudetto to Milan. Despite the late slump in form and festering tensions within the dressing room, Bianchi was confirmed the following season. Rebels in the dressing room (Garella, Giordano, Ferrario and Bagni) were purged and Bianchi’s Napoli once again reached the final of the Coppa Italia (losing to Sampdoria) and won a historic UEFA Cup.
A remarkable trophy haul for a coach whose achievements are generally overshadowed by the extraordinary talents of the mercurial Argentinian.
Osvaldo Bagnoli
In Verona, Osvaldo Bagnoli remains a highly revered figure, but can he really be considered one of Italy’s great coaches?
The answer, as far as I’m concerned, is an emphatic yes!
Here’s why.
Back in the early 1980s Hellas Verona was an unfashionable provincial club that had just re-emerged from the second tier of the Italian game.
Bagnoli was a straight-forward and direct coach who had arrived in Verona from Cesena in 1981. Working class and left leaning, he shunned the limelight that fell on other great coaches of his generation. In fact, Berlusconi is said to have rejected Bagnoli for the role of Milan coach on account of his apparent communist tendencies.
Whatever his personal beliefs (he claimed to be uninterested in politics), on the pitch Bagnoli was a coach ahead of his time, playing a 3-5-2 when few even understood what such a system meant.
Though strictly limited in number, the best international players in the world came to Italy to ply their trade. Maradona had just signed for Napoli, Michel Platini was at Juventus, even lowly Udinese boasted the likes of Zico. This was the context in which Bagnoli won the most unlikely Scudetto.
With clubs limited to just two foreign players, the acquisition of Preben Elkjær and Hans-Peter Briegel was a masterstroke. The shrewd imports perfectly complemented the formidable team of Italians that Bagnoli had assembled.
Verona had achieved sixth place in the 1983-84 season and were Coppa Italia finalists two season in a row. In the 1987-88 season Bagnoli achieved Verona’s greatest ever European result, reaching the quarter-finals of the UEFA Cup. It is a mark of what he achieved that no other Hellas Verona coach since has even qualified for European football, let alone reached the latter phases.
But it was for winning the Scudetto in 1985 that Bagnoli will always be remembered.
Nearly forty years later, few footballing achievements can rival that of Bagnoli’s. Perhaps only Leicester City winning the EPL in 2016 or Sampdoria lifting the Scudetto in 1991 come close. And it is almost unconceivable that a so-called minnow, a provincial team like Hellas Verona could ever win Serie A again.
Winning a Scudetto with Inter, Milan or Juve should hardly count as an achievement. For winning one with Hellas Verona, Bagnoli deserves his place among the greats.
Zdeněk Zeman
Technically a Czech (hence his nickname, Il Boemo (“The Bohemian”)), Zdeněk Zeman has lived in Italy since the 1968 Prague Spring and the subsequent Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.
So, his coaching formation and his whole career (except for some unfortunate experiences) took place in the Bel Paese. Beloved by some, hated by others (especially Juventus’ fans because of his famous accusation in the summer of 1998 when he questioned the rapid muscular development of certain prominent Juventus players). Zeman has been one of the most influential and also controversial managers in Calcio history.
Considered a loser by his critics because he won nothing, Zeman defined an era with his 4-3-3 formation. His tactical approach was built on hard pressing, attack, and unscrupulous use of the offside trap.
Singer Antonello Venditti summarised Zeman’s philosophy in his song La Coscienza di Zeman, a play on the renowned Italo Svevo novel Zeno’s Conscience. The song reflects the philosophy and values of one of the most enigmatic and unconventional coaches in the history of the Italian game.
Some of Zeman’s games (losses too) made history. Like the defeat against Foggia when his squad conceded 8 goals to Fabio Capello’s Milan. That said, Zeman was a coaching guru that influenced many managers and changed the path of many players. Beppe Signor, was an average Serie C player before meeting the Bohemian, who transformed him into a scoring machine in the early 90s. Francesco Totti too flourished when he played under Zeman with Rome.
The funny thing about Zeman: his Zemanlandia (the land of Zeman) revolutionized Calcio but he’s considered the paladin of the fight against modern football. At 76-years old he’s still coaching at Pescara, in Serie C. A legend.