Start United States USA — Sport In Champions League, a Coach With the Right Résumé Can Still Get...

In Champions League, a Coach With the Right Résumé Can Still Get It Wrong

268
0
TEILEN

For Europe’s superclubs, the bar for success hasn’t changed. What teams look for in a coach absolutely has.
The strangest thing about Zinedine Zidane’s rise into the ranks of the finest coaches in the world should, really, be that nobody saw it coming, not even those at Real Madrid who had been observing him up close as he learned the craft. After retirement, Zidane scratched around a little, looking for direction. He spent time as Real Madrid’s technical director. He served an apprenticeship under Carlo Ancelotti. Eventually, in 2014, he seemed to set his course: He was handed the reins at Castilla, Real’s second team. Zidane’s 18 months there did little to create the impression that he would emerge as one of the best coaches of his generation. In his only full season, Castilla finished sixth in its pool in Spain’s regionalized third tier, despite being able to call on players with the promise of Marcos Llorente and Martin Odegaard. For Real’s president, Florentino Pérez, that presented something of a headache. Zidane was an idol to the club’s fans. Pérez knew, at some point, public pressure would mount to hand him control of the first team. In private, he wondered if perhaps Olympique Marseille — Zidane’s hometown team — might ride to the rescue. Maybe Zidane could cut his teeth in the elite game there, then return to Madrid when he was ready. As it turned out, of course, there was no need to worry. From 2016to 2018, in only two and a half seasons in charge of Real’s first team, Zidane won three consecutive Champions League crowns and a Spanish championship. This year, having returned to the job, he has added another La Liga title to his coaching résumé. It turned out his performance as the coach of Castilla was no guide to how he would perform as the coach of Real Madrid. In hindsight, the strangest thing about Zinedine Zidane’s rise in the coaching ranks is that anyone at Real Madrid thought that it might be. Deep down, Maurizio Sarri had to know that his tenure as Juventus manager was over on Friday night. He might have secured the Serie A title in his first — and as it turned out, only — season in Turin, but domestic titles — this year’s was Juventus’s ninth in a row — have ceased to be a relevant barometer by which Juventus judges the success of a campaign. Everything, instead, rests on the Champions League. Sarri is no fool: He would have been well aware that elimination, even on away goals, at the hands of Olympique Lyon in the round of 16 would not have been seen as meeting expectations. His predecessor, Massimiliano Allegri, was dismissed for falling in last year’s quarterfinals. And Allegri could point to five Serie A titles as mitigation. Still, it was somehow a surprise when, after a meeting of the club’s executives on Saturday morning, it was announced that Sarri had been fired. If the speed of the decision was startling — brutal, almost, though maybe it is kinder that way — it was nothing compared to the identity of his replacement.

Continue reading...