Harold Wilson believed a week was a long time in British politics. What on earth would he have made, then, of football on Italy’s Adriatic coast?
Seven days ago, Pescara were in freefall – bottom of Serie A and reeling not only from consecutive thrashings by Lazio and Torino but also an arson attack on their president’s private property. Desperate to change something, anything, they fired manager Massimo Oddo, replacing him with Zdenek Zeman. On Sunday, they thrashed Genoa 5-0.
How? How does a team that had not beaten anyone on the pitch all season – August’s “3-0” win awarded after Sassuolo fielded an eligible player their only other victory in 43 Serie A matches, dating back to 2013 – produce a performance like this? This scoreline was not misleading. Pescara were unusually ruthless in taking their chances, but they also did not allow Genoa a shot on target before the interval. By that stage they were already 3-0 up.
On the sideline, Zeman paced in his puffer. Were it not for modern rules prohibiting such things, one imagines he would also have been nursing a cigarette. His love of smoking is renowned, to the point that the Sassuolo manager Eusebio Di Francesco, sitting in the Sky studio, asked afterwards whether he would consider quitting if that was what it took to keep his team up. “No, let me keep my cigarettes,” said Zeman. “I am known for this unfortunately. I would like to be known for something else.”
In truth, Zeman is known for a good many other things. He is known for his willingness to speak uncomfortable truths – famously accusing the Italian Football Federation of turning a blind eye to doping at Serie A’s biggest teams in a sensational 1998 interview with L’Espresso. His words provoked an investigation which led to a Juventus doctor receiving a suspended jail sentence (although the club itself escaped punishment).
Zeman is known also for his brutal training regimes, for sending players out on runs with bags of sand strapped to their backs and his infamous ”gradoni” step-up exercises. Most of all, though, he is known as a coach who is committed in the most absolute terms to open, attacking football.
Almost three decades have passed since he first captured the nation’s attention, steering little Foggia into Serie A and subsequently the top half of the table with a style of play so entertaining that commentators likened it to visiting a theme park – his very own Zemanlandia. His tactical principles have hardly shifted since.
From the moment Zeman agreed to take the Pescara job last week, it could be assumed that he would ditch Oddo’s various experiments with a Christmas tree formation and a three-man defence – replacing them with his own trusted 4-3-3. It is exactly what he used during his previous stint at the club, back in 2011-12, when he led them on their last promotion to the top flight.
Some fans have still not forgiven him for abandoning them after that season. Under Zeman, Pescara blew away the competition in Serie B, scoring 90 goals, but he joined Roma in the summer that followed. At his press conference on Friday, he said he owed the city a debt.
Two days later, he paid the first instalment in spectacular fashion. Zeman was fortunate to begin this second tenure against a Genoa side that was itself without a win in 10 matches, but even so, it few would have predicted a Pescara victory – let alone one as emphatic as this.
Besides changing formation, his chief innovation was to switch the team’s top scorer, Gianluca Caprari out to the left wing. The 23-year-old first joined Pescara on loan during Zeman’s previous stint at the club, and is the only member of the first-team squad who was with the team back then. The manager thinks highly of him, but has always contended that he is most effective cutting in from the flank.
That conviction was borne out in a game where Caprari scored twice and dazzled with his endeavour between the lines. His first goal required just a single touch, arriving from the wing right on time to stroke Cristiano Biraghi’s through-ball beyond Eugenio Lamanna. His second was the reward for some brilliant footwork, picking his way through four defenders before finding the corner again.
If Caprari was the man of the match, justifying his call-up for this week’s Italian national team training camp, then he was not alone in impressing. The former Manchester City academy graduate Ahmad Benali was one of few Pescara players who had been in strong form even before Zeman arrived and, with a goal on Sunday, took his tally to four in the last three games.
Perhaps most surprising, though, was the man who replaced Caprari at centre-forward. Alberto Cerri had scored just eight goals in 58 Serie B appearances before joining Pescara in the January transfer window. Although he had room to improve at 20 years old, frustrated fans saw in him the embodiment of the club’s failure to build a team capable of battling seriously against relegation.
On Sunday, though, Cerri was a man transformed, using his 6ft 4in frame to bully defenders, win headers and knock the ball down towards team-mates running on. He started this rout and completed it – driving in the shot that Genoa defender Lucas Orbán deflected into his own net for the opening goal, before slotting home the fifth from close range.
Those fans present at Pescara’s Stadio Adriatico roared with joyous disbelief. Ultras had abandoned the Curva Nord, staying outside the ground as part of a protest announced before Zeman’s hiring. It will be fascinating to see, after this performance, whether all will hold to their vow to remain out on strike until the end of the season.
The victory itself might ultimately prove meaningless. Pescara remain rooted to the foot of the table, 10 points behind 17th-placed Empoli with 13 games left to play. Zeman suggested he that he didn’t think survival was very likely, but said it was meaningless to talk about such matters in any case when his players should simply be focusing on the next game.
He himself is happy just to be back doing the thing he loves best. Zeman had been out of work since the summer, and with his 70th birthday coming up in May, many assumed he would never coach at this level again. But this is a man who has said that he hopes to die in his tracksuit, teaching football to anyone who will still listen.
A man of such infectious enthusiasm, he was able to exchange Pescara’s freefall for free-scoring in the space of three training sessions. “You can be last in the table, but with dignity,” he said at full-time on Sunday. “Enjoying yourself is important, too.”
Talking points
• Pescara’s joy was Genoa’s humiliation, and by the end of Sunday night, Ivan Juric had been relieved of his duties as manager of the defeated side. He was replaced by Andrea Mandorlini, although not for the first time with this club you have to ask whether the blame should not rightly have been directed at a board whose constant wheeling and dealing make it impossible to sustain success. Genoa’s last three league wins were against Milan, Juventus and Fiorentina. Since then, they have let Leonardo Pavoletti, Tomás Rincón and Lucas Ocampos walk out the door.
• Only marginally less shocking than Pescara winning a game 5-0 was the sight of Gabriel Barbosa – the man known affectionately as Gabigol – actually scoring a goal. The Brazilian has long since become a cult figure at Inter, roared by fans every time he jogs out for a warm-up, but his impact on the pitch had been negligible since joining in an almost €30m transfer last summer. Prior to this weekend, he had made a total of five league appearances, all off the bench. But he was in the right place at the right time against Bologna on Sunday, arriving at the back post to poke home Danilo D’Ambrosio’s 81st-minute cross and seal a 1-0 win. Superstitious observers were quick to point out that Ronaldo’s first goal for Inter was against the same opposition. Realistic ones would note that these are very different players.
• That was Inter’s ninth league win in 10 games, by the way, and sets things up nicely for their game at home to Roma next Sunday night – a potentially pivotal moment in the battle for Champions League places. The Giallorossi, though, are looking pretty sharp themselves. Their 4-1 win over Torino represented the fifth time this season that they have scored four or more in a single league game, and the 10th time in all competitions.
• Gerard Deulofeu opened his Milan account with a very smoothly-taken goal to help the Rossoneri beat Fiorentina in Serie A’s Sunday evening game. It was a match that said much about these teams’ seasons, with Fiorentina dominating possession for large stretches and yet rarely threatening to score against opponents who were frustratingly passive at times but clinical at others. Of course, this might have been a very different story if Federico Bernardeschi had not been suspended.
• There was much intrigue, meanwhile, surrounding Silvio Berlusconi’s absence from the stands. The official date that has been given for him to complete his sale of Milan to Sino Europe Sports is 3 March – one day before the team’s next game at San Siro. Would he really skip his final home match?
• Oh, and while we’re on the subject of chatty team owners, it appears that Aurelio De Laurentiis’s remarks criticising Napoli’s performance away to Real Madrid have not gone down all that well with the fans. One prominent banner at the Stadio San Paolo this weekend labelled him a “buffoon”.
• We finish on an extraordinary note regarding Fabio Quagliarella, who cried in his post-game interview after scoring Sampdoria’s only goal in a 1-1 draw against Cagliari. He explained that this was a moment of release after a policeman was convicted of stalking him between 2007 and 2010. Raffaele Piccolo was found guilty of sending Quagliarella a series of anonymous defamatory letters in which he falsely accused the player of all manner of crimes – from taking drugs with camorra members to having sex with underaged girls – while simultaneously getting in touch with the player separately and offering to help him track down the mystery offender in his capacity as an officer of the law, on the proviso they would have to keep the whole story just between the pair of them. Quagliarella had not been able to speak publicly about the case until its conclusion, and said that one of the hardest things had been the inability to explain properly to supporters why he had left Napoli – a move which earned him great hostility from fans of what was his own boyhood club. “I wouldn’t wish what happened to me on anyone,” he told Sky. “My family was threatened. As a professional I have always tried to stay concentrated on the pitch, but it was not easy. This sentence has lifted a huge weight off my shoulders.”
Results: Atalanta 1-0 Crotone, Bologna 0-1 Internazionale, Chievo 1-3 Napoli, Empoli 1-2 Lazio, Juventus 4-1 Palermo, Milan 2-1 Fiorentina, Pescara 5-0 Genoa, Roma 4-1 Torino, Sampdoria 1-1 Cagliari, Udinese 1-2 Sassuolo.
| Pos | Team | P | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Juventus | 25 | 36 | 63 |
| 2 | Roma | 25 | 32 | 56 |
| 3 | Napoli | 25 | 33 | 54 |
| 4 | Inter Milan | 25 | 16 | 48 |
| 5 | Lazio | 25 | 15 | 47 |
| 6 | Atalanta | 25 | 13 | 46 |
| 7 | AC Milan | 25 | 7 | 44 |
| 8 | Fiorentina | 25 | 7 | 40 |
| 9 | Torino | 25 | 6 | 35 |
| 10 | Sampdoria | 25 | -1 | 34 |
| 11 | Chievo | 25 | -8 | 32 |
| 12 | Sassuolo | 25 | -6 | 30 |
| 13 | Udinese | 25 | -6 | 29 |
| 14 | Cagliari | 25 | -18 | 28 |
| 15 | Bologna | 25 | -15 | 27 |
| 16 | Genoa | 25 | -13 | 25 |
| 17 | Empoli | 25 | -19 | 23 |
| 18 | Palermo | 25 | -28 | 14 |
| 19 | Crotone | 25 | -23 | 13 |
| 20 | Pescara | 25 | -28 | 12 |
