In September, the president of Italian football sat down in front of the media. Translated into Finnish, his words with unmistakable Italian poetry sound like a Dante imitation of a budding artificial intelligence.
– A new chapter begins in the still unwritten story of our sporting experience, Luciano Spalletti era. In a few days, we have had to fix a major and unforeseen crisis, which we faced quietly and in style.
Italy was in crisis when the summer 2021 European champion coach Roberto Marcini resigned just a couple of weeks before the next qualifiers.
Mancini had a contract until the 2026 World Cup, but the Saudi Arabian Football Federation made him a four-year offer with an annual salary of 25 million euros, according to the Italian newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport. It’s about that project.
The choice for the new head coach was so obvious that Spalletti was the hottest Italian name on the market.
However, his plan was to spend the winter somewhere other than on the sidelines. After the Serie A championship, he had to be reached at the foothills of Montaione, an hour’s drive from Florence. Spalletti had retreated there from the whirlwind of publicity and the pressure of football after announcing that he would take a year-long sabbatical.
La Rime is the Spalletti family farm of about 20 hectares, where olive trees and vines loom behind swimming pools, tennis courts and animal enclosures.
– This is where I can best focus on finding the best solutions. The silence of the hills is the most beautiful thing in the world, because here you find a certain kind of peace. It feels like being a monk in a monastery, Spalletti said in an interview with DAZN.
In the video, Spalletti compares wine production to football: working outdoors, planning strategically and looking for solutions. A prize awaits at the end.
He has always had the fault of an artist, or at least a charismatic street philosopher. Spalletti writes down his thoughts and has become known for his colorful phrases.
– Today’s world does not encourage hard work and sweating. Young people would rather post a picture of their hair on Instagram than put their heads down and stomp. In my national team, they become a pack of wolves in one line, pushing their teammates forward, leaving no one behind. They come here to win in the European Championships, not in Call of Duty, he brushes off in February.
What else can you expect from a man who, in a snowy stadium, took off half his clothes and headed in front of security guards dressed in parkas to celebrate the championship? And on the other hand, he got so frustrated with the reporter’s question that he grimaced, slapped his hands on his cheeks and beat his forehead on the table.
Spalletti has compared the striker to a fox in a henhouse and a player who lives in goals to a chicken that someone has to feed.
On Instagram, he has waged a war of words against critics, and as a counterweight has shared pictures of his artworks.
Now he is at the peak of his coaching career, as the head coach of his native country in the European Championships.
The pressures are a little different than in the peace of nature, far from the roller coaster.
– I need a little break. I don’t coach Napoli or other teams. I’ll be on the sidelines for a year, Spalletti said last May, about three months before his appointment.
Quick kick specialist
La Rimessa is located only ten kilometers from the birthplace of Spalletti from Umpitoscana.
He spent his childhood and youth in Tuscany. There he ended his playing career and began his coaching career. This happened at Empoli, which Spalletti took over as coach after his games ended, and which he raised from the third league level to the main league.
Those who talked about the Cinderella story quickly fell to the ground. In the following weeks, Spalletti was fired after five months, four months, four months, three months, two months and six months.
Twice he was fired by the club, who hired him back later that season, only to waive him again at the end of the season.
So there is dill meat, and then there is Luciano Spalletti’s coaching path.
However, success may depend on one thing. When Spalletti led Udinese to the Champions League, AS Roma became interested. That was the start of a more famous path that Spalletti is still on.
Spalletti to some extent developed the “valeys” role at Roma – the tactic of four defenders and six midfielders without a clear central striker – and scored hard in difficult conditions with colorful football.
He went to Zenit to reap national success and returned to Roma before moving to Inter. Then he won the championship for Napoli, which the city had dreamed of Diego Maradona since time immemorial.
Spalletti himself had been on the same line with Napoli. Success in Italy had eluded him, even at Roma and Inter. In the first, he was second three times in a row, always behind Inter. When he was at Inter, the ranking was fourth twice.
In Napoli, the ranking was third in the first season. Hekuma’s moment came in the 2022-23 season, when Napoli looked overwhelming at times.
The journey has been more complicated than a minute’s reading, but the destination is the culmination of the 65-year-old coach’s career: the Italian national team.
A public feud against the old boss
Life in southern Italy is slow. In the north, everything happens more efficiently. At least that’s what we think. Time also seems to pass faster. For Spalletti, the “year” lasted only 48 days.
This has been repeated to a screeching tone, especially in Naples. During the city’s championship celebration, which went wild for months, it didn’t even come to mind that the celebrated hero still had a year left on his contract.
The irritation only started to appear as the year progressed. The sabbatical year turned into a couple of months off before moving to the hands of the “northern thugs” and the “oppressors of Naples”, i.e. the football association. Then Napoli drifted into a downward spiral and fired two head coaches in the midst of their championship hangover.
Behind the shoes was the most unpredictable owner in Italian football. Personal, grumpy and quick-tempered Aurelio De Laurentiis does what he wants with his company and burns both money and bridges. Even the spalletti didn’t get away with their skins intact. The dispute between him, the union and De Laurentiis continued throughout the winter and overshadowed the beginning of a new era.
In short: Spalletti’s contract with Napoli included a club extension option, which he expected to be exercised with a suitable salary increase. Instead, Napoli exercised the option but made no move to negotiate a better salary.
Spalletti announced that he would rather take a gap year. An agreement was reached on that, as long as the coach promised to pay millions in compensation if he signed a contract elsewhere during the year. This started a public debate about the terms of the non-compete.
We agree that the national team would not need an extra burden. The period between the games has been overshadowed by the usual circus, from the commotion related to Juventus’ accounting to the betting scandal involving several players. Serie A is of higher quality and more consistent than in the past, but the tiger has not yet lost its streak.
Italy plays in the European Championship as the reigning champion, but appears to be anything but a powerhouse. Embarrassingly left out of the World Cup twice in a row, the country is trying to introduce a new way of playing and new players, and at the same time defend its title. A place in this tournament was won by the minimum margin, through the mutual results of the qualifying group.
Probably only Denmark in 1996 and Greece in 2008 have started defending their championship with as much skepticism.
Spalletti has sworn by the team spirit and asked the legends to mentor the current team.
Goalkeeper legend Gianluigi Buffon is in the coaching group, but Spalletti also wanted to help Roberto Baggio, Francesco Totti and Alessandro Del Piero. Everyone arrived to watch the camp.
Mancini built the team brand around joy and play. The competition team was announced in a TV program that lasted for hours, where a coach dressed in a white suit played padel on a frying pan to the rhythm of a collective song. The event led to the excitement of the “home games”, where Italy played its entire group in Rome.
In the case of Spalletti, the headlines were more about the Italian folk disease, i.e. football-derived heartache. In the beginning, mobile phones and game consoles were banned.
Together with Buffon, he announced that he would return to the national team the habits of the old days, joint gatherings and retreats. He said he would take an Italian flag with him to the bench, which his mother sewed after Italy was knocked out by Germany in the 1970 World Cup. It was supposed to remind us of dreams and pride.
Everything reflects the glasses through which Spalletti looks at the world. He is an emotional and expressive coach who always has catchy phrases. Spalletti’s favorite quote is a Shakespearean phrase he uttered during his Roma years in the euphoria after a victory.
– Our fate is not in the hands of the stars, but in our own. Strong men, strong destiny. Weak men, weak destinies. There is nothing else, he has repeated whenever and wherever.
After Napoli’s championship, a local artist painted the words on the side of Spalletti’s car. One of his Fiat Pandas had previously been stolen from the hotel grounds, when disappointed fans vented their frustration by demanding quick kicks.
Patience is being tested even now. Italy did not insure against Spain. Rapa started coming right away. The media attacked, the doubters got up to speed.
Italy is not Brazil. Its most famous gift to football is not devastating attacking, but skillful defending. It does not live football primarily through joy, but rather tries to throw the hot potato of suffering at the enemy’s jumps.
If the EM contract crumbles properly, Spalletti will be the first in the crosshairs, and the metaphors written in the pocket will not calm the storm.
However, the Tuscan thinker has been cooked in such strong broths over the course of 30 years that inner peace can be found in any case even before the autumn grapes are ripe for picking.