Re: Serie A Thread - 2010/11 Season
ok then. rfu, this time i'll reply u in here. this message will obviously be way shorter than the sacchi message (it's got to be more "forum friendly") but i'm sure it'll be enough to satisfy your curiosity.
ok so, summer of 1982. 2 young "wannabe coaches" make history by getting the highest graduation vote EVER at the coverciano courses. i assume u guys know the coverciano school for coaches.... the one which gives u the license necessary to become a professional coach in italy. well the final test (actually it's not really a single test, is a series of exams) will give u some sort of a "degree grade" a final votation (on a scale from 1 to 100... if u get less than 60, then u failed and that means u have to go through the whole process again). well the commission who rates the young wannabe coaches is unbelievably accurate as every coach who ever got a great votation turned out to be a world class coach.... just a few examples to give u an idea of how reliable this commission is: trapattoni got an 85, herrera got 78, viani got 80, rocco got 82, bearzot got 85, lippi and gasperini got 90, ancelotti and spalletti got 92, capello and prandelli got 91). rfu i know i already told u all this, but i need to do some catching up for the others.
well in that summer of '82 there were 2 guys who got a record degree vote. the previous record was an 88 (achieved by the great Liedholm).... those 2 guys got a 94 and a 95. the one who got 94 was arrigo sacchi the guy who got 95 was zdenek zeman.
as one of the members of that examination board will say in an interview, many years later...
they were 2 weird guys.... they clearely didn't belong to football's world. one (sacchi) was just a normal shoe salesman from romagna... he looked kinda humble at first sight, but as soon as he opened his mouth u could realise what an ambitious man he was... he wanted to change football in italy... he eventually changed the way the whole game is conceived all over the world.
the other guy (zeman) looked out of place too. he was too elegant, too sophisticated, too clever to become just a football coach.... his backgroud too wasn't the typical coach's backgroud, as his father was a very important doctor in his hometown Prague .... u would expect such an intelligent person to follow his father's footsteps and become a great doctor aswell."
and indeed u would... so why did zeman decided he wanted to be a football coach?
1968...a 19 years old zeman moves from his country (czech) to palermo to visit his uncle Cestmír Vycpálek, (here in palermo we used to call him Cesto). Cesto (who was a former player for juventus and palermo) was coaching palermo those days. Cesto was working for free, as he used to say "
i can't take money from the people who saved me and my family" (during WWII when Cesto was in Dachau concentration camp a sicilian fellow prisoner gave his life to save him...... and many years later, a sicilian family living in prague, gave refuge to cesto's family when the russian army invaded Czechoslovakia and then they helped his wife and son to move to palermo as stow aways, so they could join Cesto himself, who was already coaching palermo).
anyway zdenek reached palermo right when the russian army was invading his homeland... he fell in love with palermo, so he decided not to come back to Czechoslovakia. he studied here, graduated here and he also found the love of his life here in palermo.
but most important, his uncle Cesto "infected" him with his passion for football. and that's how zdenek decided to become a coach.
while studying to become a professional coach, zdenek was already making some experience, coaching palermo's youth team. from day one was clear to everybody this man was a football genius. the coverciano school will give him the usual huge football knowledge italian coaches can showcase, but his understanding of the game didn't come from coverciano school.
he was a natural. after graduating as a professional coach, he got his first assignement in foggia, an average serie b team.
that foggia team will make history!
he turned a bunch of nobodies, of average players into famous stars. in 2 seasons that team will reach serie a..... and once zeman's foggia made it to the big stage (serie a) the whole europe was able to see that amazing team.
it's just impossible to describe how beautiful that team was to watch... it was just crazy. zeman's training sessions were simply unbearable. as a result of that the players on the pitch looked like 11 usain bolts on steroids!
but pace was never zeman's first concern.... passing game was. he was a football teacher, he had an unbelievable ability to improve his players' skills.
just imagine a team running with british pace, passing with italian accuracy and moving with the dutch off the ball movement and applying sacchi's zone coverage.
impressive isn't it? but that still won't give u an idea of what i'm talking about. because u see, zeman's zone was even faster than sacchi's zone... even more extreme. he applied that phylosophy to an extremely aggressive 4-3-3 formation, where the sidebacks acted like wingbacks, constantly overlapping with the wingers.
there was basically no filter at midfield. no defensive midfielders. 2 registas and a metodista.... and both the wingbacks used to push AT THE SAME TIME!!!! for most of the match u could see only 3 foggia players in their own midfield (the GK and the 2 cbs) everyone else was pushing upfront.
thanks to zeman's exhausting training sessions, his players were able to apply his off the ball movements incessantly... for the entire match. just imagine genoa's off the ball movement or barca's off the ball movement...well those teams would look as static as the current playing liverpool, compared to zeman's off the ball movement.
but then again off the ball movement wasn't zeman's signature either.... like i said, passing game was the best feature of that foggia. u see most coaches don't really design plays. coaches shape the defensive phase of the game... as for the offensive phase, most of them just shape some basic movements and that's all. they usually rely a lot on their players creativity and instinct.
zeman wasn't like that. he took total control of the offensive phase of the game by designing dozens of different plays and schemes. revolutionary crazy schemes, which used to involve in the same play 6 or even 7 players.
and he had his players practicing those schemes in training again and again and again until they became someting natural for his players (pretty much like breathing).
the huge fitness and stamina the players had thanks to those training sessions, the unpredictability of those wonderful schemes, the fact that the players knew those schemes perfectly... zeman turned that foggia into a scoring machine. it was pretty much impossible to take the ball away from foggia's players... all the passes were first or second touch, so the players never hold the ball enough time to allow the opponents to apply pressure on the ball carrier. and it was impossible to tell where the ball was going, as at any second, there were about 7 foggia players running around the opponent's box.... they were the harlem globtrotters of football.
and we're not talking about a top class team filled with top players.
the italian journalists created a new word: zemanlandia. zemanlandia is an imaginary, utopic, fantastic place, a place where football always equals to entertainment. zeman brought zemanlandia wherever he went to coach in his carreer.
was that a "perfect team"? no, far from it. infact zeman's teams were always extremely naive. zeman was obsessed with offensive football. defending is almost a blasphemy to him. he use to say "
i defend by attacking. i keep the possession line in the opponent's midfield and that's my approach to defending".
as u can easily imagine such an approach never really worked that well. zeman's team used to score 3, 4 goals PER MATCH! but they also used to concede 3,4 goals every time.
it was quite frustrating for the fans, but they loved him as he gave em such an amazing show on the pitch. as for zeman, whenever a journalist used to criticize his ultra-offensive style of playing, he used to reply.
if u concede 3 goals and score twice that's a problem... if u concede 3 goals and score 3 that's still a problem...... but if u concede 3 goals and score 4 times, then there's no problem at all.
that's another great thing about zeman. his mind is razor-sharp. arguing with him is extremely dangerous as he will most likely OWN u with his witty answers. there are books and websites filled with his one liners and aphorisms. and i'm not kidding
http://www.zeman.org/zeman-pag.php?PagID=4
another very charming thing about zeman is his captivating and absolutely unreadable look. there's something magnetic and mysterious in his eyes... whenever he talks u can't ever tell if he's being serious or if he's just teasing u... he's like the monna lisa!
anyway all the criticism he received for his unbalanced gameplay never had an effect on him... he used to reply by saying.
"
i'm not here just to win. i'm here to teach something to my players and to entertain the fans watching the game. that's my first goal. afterall sport isn't just about winning. it's also about how u win.... people call me a brilliant loser because of my 2nd and 3rd place with lazio..... but hey, very often losers have more to teach than winners"
or...
"
i don't care about winning, if dignity is the prize i have to pay for it. i'd rather lose as a man than win as a coward"...
or...
"a coach isn't in control of the result. the only thing a coach can control is the performance of his players. and i always make sure my players give the best performance they can..... results are unpredictable and uncertain.... performances aren't".
u can clearely see what zeman is about from this quotes. he's extremely naive but he also has the most romantic vision of football. he's brilliant as much as he's crazy.
and he's a nonconformist, a rebel.... in a country where everyone used to apply man marking and catenaccio, he shoked the public opinion and the football's establishment with his high voltage zone coverage and offensive schemes.
he didn't make the impact sacchi did, because, just like the great Nils liedholm or fascetti, he was a lone wolf.... he never wanted to become a leader... he never wanted to prove everyone wrong (that's what sacchi did), he just wanted to display his football and entertain.
we might say, if sacchi was football's copernicus, zeman was football's che guevara.
yet, even though his rebel, nonconformist attitude showed he never wanted to become a benchmark, with his amazing football he managed to became a "maestro". a few years ago, after a arsenal-juve matchup in champions league, during the post match interview an italian journalist asked arsene wenger who was his "teacher". arsene replied he didn't really have a teacher, but an inspiration... and that inspiration was zdenek zeman. he said "
if i didn't watch his football i don't even know if i would be a coach right now... infact most of my ideas come from him..... although i'm not as crazy and offensive minded as the Maestro..... but then again, i'm already blamed for being too offensive, so i could never really play zeman's football as that was way more offensive-oriented than mine".
there would be much more to say about zeman... i should talk about his awesome lazio team, about his great experience as roma coach or about is lecce wich was another great team..... but i guess this post is already long enough.
this summer, after a long retirement, zeman was hired by foggia (his first love).... so far foggia played 7 matches this season.....
they scored 18 goals and conceded 15 in theese first 7 matches!!!!! zemanlandia is back!!!
needless to say, i can't wait for him to come back in serie a!!!
It should be on an encyclopedia or something. 
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