Читать книгу Calcio: A History of Italian Football - John Foot - Страница 79

In Italy the first sweeper was crafted by Gipo Viani, one of the game’s great characters. Viani tried his hand at everything football had to offer: he was a player, trainer, manager and administrator at a number of clubs. After World War Two he took charge of Salernitana. A small club, Salernitana could not compete with the Juventuses and Milans of this world. Thus, they decided to defend a bit more. Like Rappan, Viani asked one of his attackers to track back in defence, marking the opposition’s number nine.⁵ This freed up one of his central defenders to act as sweeper. That was it. Put so simply, this doesn’t appear to be a revolution, but it was. The extra man in defence seemed to make a difference, frustrating the opposition and bringing them further forward, and freeing space for rapid counter-attacking on the break.

It was typical of Viani that he should invent a poetic story to explain the genesis of catenaccio. Sitting on the dock of the bay in Salerno, after yet another sleepless night worrying about Salernitana’s failures on the pitch, Viani allegedly observed the fishing fleet at work. He noticed that a reserve net was used as a back-up for the main series of nets. This, he later claimed, gave him the idea for the sweeper. It is a nice story, but almost certainly untrue.

Salernitana’s tactical innovation provoked much comment. Viani was so personally identified with the new system that it was given his name – Vianema. Salernitana, however, were much less successful than the teams associated with the other great proponent of catenaccio, Nereo Rocco. In their only season in Serie A (1947–8) playing with Vianema, Salernitana’s away record was appalling: they failed to win a single game. Vianema was catenaccio without counter-attacks, the worst kind of defensive football and, in its early form, it didn’t really work. Viani also claimed that he personally passed on the system to Rocco in 1961. Rocco applied catenaccio with some success as manager of Trieste in 1947–50 and then at Padova, whom he took to an unprecedented third place in 1957–8.

Suddenly, sweepers and catenaccio were all the rage, even at big clubs, but this did not mean that they were popular. Big clubs were supposed to score freely and destroy the opposition, even in Italy. The first big club to play with a sweeper was Inter in the first half of the 1950s.⁶ Alfredo Foni, manager of Inter, chose Ivano Blason as the club’s libero. Blason was a slow and clumsy full-back, but he developed into an excellent sweeper with the ability to zip long passes forward. His main duty, however, was to block any player who threatened to move past him. Legend has it that Blason would scratch out a line on the pitch before kick-off, and then inform the opposition strikers that under no circumstances would they be allowed past that mark. Up front, Inter had speedy and skilful forwards and the ability to break that was a key component of successful catenaccio. Statistics from the 1951–2 season tell something of the story of catenaccio in action. Inter scored nearly 30 fewer goals than second-placed Juventus, but they conceded less than a goal a game. Their defence had won them the championship. Nobody could unlock the Inter padlock.

Foni’s tactics caused something of a scandal, despite the scudetto. Torino, after all, had scored 125 goals in winning the 1947–8 championship, using an attacking system without a sweeper.⁷ Inter were killing the game, it was argued, and driving away spectators. Foni’s system was also a mentality, a way of understanding the game. Backed by Brera, Foni was condemned by many other journalists. Brera left us with this account of the way Foni’s Inter played. After defending for long periods of the game, ‘suddenly, Blason fired off a mortar shot: seventy metres away there were not many players around and a lot of empty space which Inter’s individual players could exploit’.