“I never realised that in order to become a jockey you have to have been a horse first.”
Many turned their nose up at Arrigo Sacchi when he was trying to make his name in management. Now, many look up to the Italian icon.
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He never played football professionally. Before his first managerial gig at Fusigano he worked as a shoe salesman, but his methodology has been used by so many successful coaches since.
Jurgen Klopp says Sacchi, now 75, ‘completely changed how we think about football.’ He ripped up the rulebook in his homeland with Italian football very much accustomed to Catenaccio – an ultra-defensive, defence-first philosophy, which you can still see today.
However, Sacchi’s methods were built on zones and pressing and he was influenced by Total Football, the Dutch-inspired concept under the leadership of Rinus Michels in the 1970s.
He made his name at AC Milan, where players were made to embrace the concept of a zonal defence, which allowed the team to generate numerical superiority when the time came to press the ball-carrier.
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The progression of the full-backs gave depth to offensive advances, creating more and better partnerships in attack, while wide midfielders could move central. Defensive midfielders were often found in more advanced areas too.
It brought a lot of success to Milan’s star-studded team, who most notably won a Serie A title and two European Cups in his four years at the San Siro.
His successor, Fabio Capello, enjoyed more success but it’s understood he continued the same methodology Sacchi first brought in.
Sacchi’s methods were copied by many others, which demonstrates the high regard he is held in by the game’s elite. Former Liverpool, Chelsea and Real Madrid boss Rafael Benitez cites Sacchi as a role model of his.
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Meanwhile, George Graham admits to copying Sacchi’s philosophy ‘a lot’ when he was at Arsenal.
In Jamie Carragher’s Greatest Games book, Graham said: “I was a big fan of Milan when they played offside to perfection. I copied a lot of what we did at Arsenal from Arrigo Sacchi.
“When I left Millwall to join Arsenal I knew the system I was going to go with. I looked at the Arsenal squad and saw we had the players to do it.”
Graham enjoyed great success at Arsenal, winning two league titles, two League Cups, an FA Cup and a Cup Winners’ Cup. Who knows? Maybe Arsenal’s incredible title win in 1989, which saw them snatch it away from leaders Liverpool in their own back yard wouldn’t have happened without Saachi.
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But Liverpool have been indirect beneficiaries of Sacchi’s style too – Jurgen Klopp’s ‘Gegenpress’ is a variation of it.
The Reds boss explained how he first became acquainted to the system as a player, which was brought in by then-Mainz boss Wolfgang Frank.
Klopp, who took charge of Mainz less than a year after Frank left in April 2000, said he merely applied what Frank first brought to the German club and admits he owes a huge amount to Saachi for this.
In Carragher’s Greatest Games book, Klopp said: “Sacchi completely changed how we think about football.
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“He is one of the most influential coaches in the history of the game and a complete game-changer for me. Because of him we had to judge the size of the pitch in a new way.
“I am sure you remember playing with man-marking tactics where you pretty much followed the opponent you were marking to the toilet. The pitch always felt incredibly big. Nobody played a high defensive line because too many teams played the libero (sweeper).
“Before I was told who to mark and that was it. Too often a team with the better individuals won the game because it was all one-versus-one challenges all over the pitch, so if the other player was better than you, how could you win? Saachi’s organisation made it completely different.
“It meant I watched 500 videos of AC Milan. I saw how whenever Franco Baresi raised his arms to play offside, everyone else in the team was waiting.
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“Ball-orientated defending became a real tool, and of course on top of that Milan were a sensational team with Ruud Gullit, Marco van Basten and Franco Baresi. They were some of the best players ever.
“Pretty much overnight we became a successful football team. We were not easy to deal with. We defended really well and it opened my mind.
“That was the basis for me when I became a manager, and still is. Organisation is the basis of football.”
With that principle in Klopp’s mind, Mainz, Borussia Dortmund and now Liverpool have certainly felt the benefits of those 500 videos as Sacchi’s influence continues.
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