The coaching madness overshadows the top players

Much more dignified signatures than yours had already written it on these contrasting columns: “Coaches are the new top players”. We always and definitely talk about it; they are the new number 10, the actual leaders, creators and demiurges of the formations. The teams are now, by natural extension, Napolidispalletti, MilandiPioli, CitydiGuardiola and so on. To the point that a battle between two formations, which used to be perhaps a battle between two cities, two worldviews/fans, or simply between 22 players – and then instead the battle between the respective top players (the respective numbers 9 , 10 or so ) – has now turned into the Duel between the two technicians:

Guardiola against Arteta, Spalletti against Allegri, Nagelsmann against Galtier, Conte against Pioli.

That’s how it is for everyone, up until the day after AC Milan won magazine 11 Headline: “Patrick Thiaw is Pioli’s last great invention”. Suppose there were perhaps more magazines eleven in the desolate landscape of Tell stories Italian sportswoman, but great invention of what? Four paragraphs in which there is no merit of Pioli other than that he used the German defender (author of an excellent performance but who only accumulated 200 total minutes during the season) and preferred him to Gabbia (if it was Nesta): a Choice almost forced by the three-man defense and the absence of Tomori.

But wouldn’t it be better to celebrate Patrick Thiaw? instead of Pioli? – By the way, his European baptism of fire, which a player does not celebrate after a great performance. Why pioli? The truth is, in a time as manic and control-obsessed as ours, that ofCoaching becomes a natural ideology. An ideology that we have grown up with since childhood and that we coach: think of the different football games, starting with Football Manager. There are those who even “become” coaches here, from Villas Boas to still willa Reims coach who doesn’t even have a coaching license but is “obsessed with Football Manager which sparked my passion for coaching” and who is now groping on a real bench.

A rampant ideology in an era thatsimultaneously, it has lost art and personality. Those who once put footballers on the field: Today there are fewer and fewer football artists, and even the strongest, most talented (especially in Europe) are decidedly more standardized in the way they play, they don’t have the creativity and uniqueness that their predecessors had until recently – but also for a natural factor: if we used to train on the streets, where everyone was different, now we are trained in the intensive training sessions of football schools, where everyone is the same. So much so that we fall in love with South Americans or Africans.

Not to mention the personality.

The Nagelsmann model, players with headphones on the pitch to better direct them – the evolution of the Sacchiana/Guardiolian control mania – assumes fewer and fewer strong players who are totally available to the on-duty coach to be simple enforcers . Not surprisingly the same Pep to bulky personalitiesthe Ibrahimovic of the moment, but not only (and don’t tell me Barca’s Messi was a ponderous personality), He has always preferred coaching players or who lacked the final step to become champions (the various Bernando Silva, Mahrez, De Bruyne himself). Just as Sacchi was able to coexist with the Van Bastens on duty for a year or two, and with difficulty, before being sent there Devil.

_{The street players we still forget (apart from almost all Brazilians).}

Finally, we also mentioned Nagelsmann vs. Galtier earlier. In reality, people are still mostly talking about PSG-Bayern, and fortunately about something else. Partly because there is, on the one hand Bayern Municha society larger than its individuals, which wasn’t “anyone” even with Guardiola, precisely because of its deep-rooted Bavarian character, because of its inimitable worldview My saint my. And partly because on the other side are the stars Messi, Neymar and especially Kylian Mbappé. Let me close with a little praise for this soccer villain.

A player company that plays alone, arrogant and opinionated, and who claims to expect different treatment (cheap in Primis) than the best of their fellows. The strongest soccer player in the world.

He started from the bench against the Germans, but no one spoke about tactics and plans. Everyone asked: When will Mbappé step in? Commentators and audience, in the stadium and at home. And when he entered, the Parco dei Principi exploded with a roar, the game changed, everyone was excited; He seeded, accelerated and even scored two goals, both ruled for offside – the second being canceled by that barbarism of semi-automatic offside for a Nuno Mendes front shoulder. In the meantime, however, he had returned football to its dimension, to its natural hierarchies. The ball artist, the strongest of all, whose stage is the green rectangle. The essence of footballexcluding trainers and coaching.