Euro mission
Bale not ‘100 percent’ for Juventus decider
Zidane hoping to follow in Sacchi’s footsteps
MADRID: Arrigo Sacchi was a revolutionary who came from nowhere to lead a great AC Milan side to back-to-back European Cups in 1989 and 1990.
It is a feat that no coach has achieved since, but that Zinedine Zidane will match if he retains the Champions League trophy with Real Madrid in Saturday’s final against Juventus in Cardiff.
A recent poll on the website of Corriere dello Sport saw Sacchi’s Milan named as the greatest Italian team of all time by internet users and the second-best side — behind the ‘Grande Torino’ that dominated ‘calcio’ in the 1940s before being wiped out in the Superga air disaster — by a panel of 10 coaches.
Sacchi’s team “dominated Europe with a new kind of football, comprised of pressing, strength, speed and ideas,” according to the Rome-based sports daily.
Thirty years after Sacchi’s appointment as Milan coach, his precepts no longer seem so revolutionary: a 4-4-2 system with zonal marking, the absence of a ‘libero’, aggressive and constant pressing, pace, the offside trap, intensive training sessions...
But all that was revolutionary when Silvio Berlusconi hired him in 1987, despite Sacchi having never been a player and only coached in Serie B with Parma.
In a conservative Italian game where the best path to success was via a defensive style, Berlusconi and Sacchi added a new dimension by introducing a more seductive way of playing. “Win, convince and entertain,” is how Sacchi sums up his Milan team’s outlook.
Nevertheless, the man who would become known as “The Prophet of Fusignano” first of all had to convince those who doubted him largely because he had never played at any notable level.
“I never realised that to become a jockey you needed to be a horse first,” Sacchi joked. But Berlusconi’s support was crucial at the beginning.
The story goes that before an important match away to Verona, when the new coach’s methods had yet to convince his new side, the club president made it clear to every Milan player: “Between the team and Sacchi, I take Sacchi. He is staying. I’m still not sure about you.”
It worked and Sacchi was able to put
in place his methods, ably helped by the likes of Franco Baresi, Carlo Ancelotti, Paolo Maldini, Roberto Donadoni and the Dutch trio of Ruud Gullit, Frank Rijkaard and Marco van Basten.
Sacchi used to arrive at their Milanello training ground in his silver Porsche and would take sessions while wearing his Ray Ban aviators and with a megaphone in his hand, to compensate for his quiet voice.
With him, Milan won the ‘Scudetto’ in 1988, their first in nine years, and then those successive European Cups, hammering Steaua Bucharest 4-0 in the final in 1989 and retaining the trophy with a 1-0 defeat of Benfica the next year.
He later led Italy to defeat on penalties in the 1994 World Cup final and then a group-stage exit from Euro 96 before returning for a second, unsuccessful spell, at Milan and a brief stint at Atletico Madrid.
Sacchi then worked as a youth team coordinator for the Italian Federation and he has remained an unavoidable, but sometimes unwelcome, reference point for the new generation of Italian coaches, such as Ancelotti, Antonio Conte and Massimiliano Allegri.
Now 71, the “Prophet” has never disappeared from the landscape, regularly appearing in the Italian media to voice his opinion, without a megaphone this time.
Last year he was overtly critical of the work done by Allegri at Juventus, saying: “The only verb they can conjugate is ‘to win’. That might be enough in Italy, like for Rosenborg, who always win in Norway. But not in the Champions League.”
On Saturday, then, Allegri has a chance to both prove Sacchi wrong and allow him to remain the last coach to win consecutive European Cups. Otherwise, Sacchi will have to pass that honour on to Zidane.
Meanwhile Real Madrid forward Gareth Bale said on Tuesday he regretted rushing back from ankle surgery earlier in the season and admitted he was not fully fit for the Champions League final against Juventus in his home city of Cardiff.
Bale missed almost three months with an ankle injury he suffered in November against Sporting Lisbon and has spent the last six weeks recovering from two separate calf problems. He said he was not yet fully recovered and appeared resigned to not starting what should have been a
dream final.
“I’m not 100 percent,” Bale told reporters on Tuesday. “I haven’t played in six or seven weeks. I had my ankle operation, which still hasn’t really recovered. I’d been in a lot of pain in training and have taken tablets to get through games.”
The question of whether Zinedine Zidane will field Bale at the Millenium Stadium or high-flying Spanish midfielder Isco has dominated the Spanish media before Saturday’s final.
Bale said he would accept whatever decision Zidane made. Isco, who has scored five goals and notched three assists in his last eight games, was in a strong position to start ahead of him, he said.
“If I’m called upon to start, I will start, obviously. But to last 90 minutes — I haven’t played a lot of football this year since my operation, so that would be difficult,” said Bale, who joined Real from Tottenham Hotspur for a then-world record 100 million euros in 2013.
“Isco has been playing fantastically well for us in the end of the season, so whatever the manager decides I will be there to do it.”