SOCCER: ‘This is not a PlayStation game’ – Juventus boss Allegri
Allegri backing himself to win Champions League with Juventus before leaving for new challenge
WHEN he leaves Juventus, Massimiliano Allegri will leave Italy. “Certainly I will go abroad,” the Juventus coach says. He even breaks into English to emphasise his point: “In Italy, finished.”
Allegri is clearly a man with a plan. He believes he has “five or six years” left in club football before becoming a national team coach.
But before then there is one significant piece of business to complete at Juve: winning the Champions League.
We meet outside the entrance to the first-team complex at the club’s sprawling training ground in Vinovo, south of Turin – all gleaming glass and chrome – and pass Gianluigi Buffon and Andrea Barzagli, deep in conversation, on our way to another spotless meeting room.
Over the next hour, Allegri explains how he works, how he is “a natural and not a built coach” and how playing in the Champions League is comparable to a night at La Scala.
The latest grand opera production opens tonight, with Juventus facing Real Madrid in the first leg of their quarter-final. It will be pure theatre.
“When you play the Champions League you show yourself to the rest of the world,” Allegri says ahead of tonight’s match in Turin.
“At the premiere at La Scala, all the actors and performers have the same kind of feeling, in front of all the people, all the experts. It is on the same scale.
“So when this draw came out, some were disappointed, a little bit worried, but actually I was happy.
STIMULUS
“It was something that is a good stimulus, a great encouragement. It brings a lot of adrenalin. It will be two great matches.”
It is undoubtedly an epic tie, a reconvening of these two great European clubs for the first time since last season’s Champions League final in Cardiff when Real scored three second-half goals to win 4-1.
It was, painfully for Allegri, the second time his team had lost the final in three years, having been beaten by Barcelona in Berlin in 2015.
After that night in Cardiff, Allegri wondered whether he had taken Juventus as far as he could. He needed a day to reflect; to decide whether he could carry on.
Allegri had, remarkably, won a third successive league and cup double in Italy, but the Champions League had been elusive again, even if it was some achievement to reach two finals.
As he deliberated, Allegri thought of his grandfather, a stonemason, and something he had said to him when he was a boy.
His grandfather watched every one of Max’s matches as a young player. It did not matter whether he won or lost. He just wanted to be there and he wanted his grandson to have the
“fantasy” of playing the game he loved.
That fantasy means everything to Allegri and he determined to go again.
“I am very close to my traditions, to my origins,” he explains. “So that is where the force comes from.
“I take a lot from that but it also helps me to be serene and to be able to deal with things in the right way and not take myself too seriously.
“When I have bad thoughts I always go back home (to Livorno) and I always find serenity there.”
Bringing “home” that Champions League, however, remains the holy grail to Juventus.
The club have not won it since 1996, but Allegri – whose achievements have made him a coveted asset among a host of European clubs, including Arsenal and Chelsea – feels both he and his team are now better equipped.
“I have watched the final in Cardiff several times,” he says. “It was not a problem to watch it again.
“It has helped me to mature and to be sure in my conviction that to improve we needed not to rush so much. To be more quiet.”
What does that mean? By way of illustration Allegri discusses the last-16 tie against Tottenham Hotspur, when Juventus needed two goals at Wembley with just 26 minutes to play.
“Tottenham are certainly a great side and a great club,” Allegri says. “But I knew that during the match there was a period of maybe 15 or 20 minutes where they will concede goals.
FOCUSED
“That’s why I told my players to stay very focused, very targeted, because we had to exploit that. That’s what they did.”
Juve did not need 20 minutes; they scored twice in 180 seconds, and went through 4-3 on aggregate.
Allegri was lauded for his tactical changes – bringing on attacking fullbacks and altering the shape of his side to out-fox Mauricio Pochettino – but his explanation is far more pragmatic.
“I had a clear idea in my mind what we had to do considering we had no strikers on the bench, just full-backs.”
Still, it was an intuitive reaction which is fundamental to Allegri’s charismatic approach.
As he goes deep into his style of management, he is dismissive of a certain brand of coaching.
“I cannot be any different than I am right here, now,” he says. “I could never be a coach who mainly focuses on tactics or analytics because I am more instinctive.
“The coach, in my opinion, bases his decisions on sensations, on perceptions. Otherwise, it would be enough to sit in front of the computer and football would be like a PlayStation game.
“That is not who I am. In football there are a lot of people who try to reach perfection with figures, with tactics but it’s impossible because there are too many variables.”
Allegri is becoming animated as he
adds: “When you get to the training pitch in the morning it’s important to know the character of every player because you might find someone who is not feeling great, or could not sleep the night before or had a problem with his wife or the kids at school.
“So you prepare a type of training, but it’s important to adapt. The psychological condition is absolutely crucial.
“Overnight a player can change his approach; to the match and to training.
“A coach, more than a psychologist even, has to be a human resource manager.
Knowing what resources are available and trying to manage these resources the best way.”
It has led to a perception Allegri can be laid-back, which is something he actually embraces.
“If I were not so laid-back and didn’t manage to take some time off then I wouldn’t be able to be so focused, to have a clear idea and to follow my instincts and understand what needs to be done in order to make the right decisions,” he says.
“So I can never be a 24/7 coach – 24 hours of videos, videos, videos. For me, 20 minutes is enough. It has to be limited and concentrated.
“Every morning I wake up at 7am. I take my child to school and then at 7.30am for one hour I watch videos and I prepare the training. That’s enough.
“I always do it in the morning because I have a fresh mind.”
Unsurprisingly, given his strong opinions, Allegri agrees with the notion he is a far better coach than he was a player – a creative midfielder for Pescara, Perugia and Napoli.
“When I stopped playing and became a coach I realised that, in the past, all the arguments I had with my coaches were focused on the technical aspects and probably that was the biggest signal that I had to have things done my way,” he says, laughing.
That coaching career took him eventually to Cagliari and then to AC Milan in 2010, where he won his first Scudetto in his first season in charge. Even there he was not afraid to make changes.
“You make the decisions unconsciously – for example, at that time when I had players like Ronaldinho and Seedorf on the bench.
“When I think about it, oh my God, I was crazy!” Allegri says. “But it was about doing my job and doing what was the best for the team.
“If I had that level of consciousness I am talking about, it could have stopped me. Instead, the level of unconsciousness was useful.”
In 2014, he succeeded Antonio Conte at Juventus. “When I got to Juventus the year before they had been knocked out early so they were not able to proceed in the Champions League,” he says.
“Since then there has been a growth in self-esteem – by the club, by the team, by myself.
“Juventus will never be like Real Madrid or Barcelona because their history and playing style speak for themselves. They are very clear.
“Maybe we are closer to Bayern Munich. In the DNA of Juventus, this has always been a club that is very aggressive, very committed, never gives up.”
Juve have a manager whose DNA blends with their own. Even his hobbies are pursued with a fanatical rigour.
Allegri has a passion for horses, which can be traced back to the days when his grandfather took him to the racetrack, and he reels off the names of the jockeys he admires, including Frankie Dettori.
RELAX
“I am very busy, I work hard all the time. But I also need to relax, I need to disconnect,” Allegri says.
“That’s why I like horse racing, spending time with my friends. It helps me to recover energy.
“You cannot always be up. You need to unplug at times in order to be even more concentrated when you do work.
“I don’t want to go on being a coach forever. I would like to carry on being a club coach for another five or six years then I would like to coach a national team.
“It’s very difficult to last such a long time, to be able to achieve with the right capacity, the right intensity, especially for a coach like me who is a natural and not a built coach.”
Firstly, and with Juventus on course to again win the Scudetto, he wants that European title.
“What is missing is the Champions League. That is my focus,” Allegri says in that booming voice of his, even if he will never forget the words of his grandfather about the need to enjoy the game.
“There is too much pressure when it comes to youth players. This drives me mad, as it deprives them of their fantasy, of their imagination.” © Daily Telegraph, London.
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