Four years ago a team featuring Gareth Bale and Luka Modric met a team managed by Max Allegri in the Champions League knockout rounds. This happened:
Around a month ago a team featuring Bale and Modric met a team managed by Allegri in the Champions League knockout rounds. And this happened:
In between those two games, Max Allegri lost his job at Milan, was widely dismissed as a naive buffoon badly out of his depth at the San Siro, and was then unexpectedly hired by Milan rivals Juventus to replace beloved boss Antonio Conte. At the time the move was panned by many.
With the benefit of hindsight, however, a few things have become clear:
- Arrigo Sacchi himself would have had a hard time keeping Milan in the Champions League places over the last few seasons.
- Allegri is a very good tactician, even if his man-management and motivational skills cannot match those of Conte.
- This Juventus team needed a manager like Allegri to take the next step.
And so we’re reminded of something that we often need to be reminded of in an era of snap judgments about football players and managers–success in the beautiful game is a complicated thing. Max Allegri looked out of his depth at Milan. Now at Juventus he’s beating Real Madrid and competing for a treble. Paul Pogba couldn’t get a game at Manchester United ahead of Tom Cleverley. Now he’s widely considered one of the top five midfielders in the world.
Looking abroad, Francis Coquelin looked like another failed youth signing by Arsene Wenger. Now he’s arguably the most important player in the Arsenal squad. Southampton was going to get relegated this year after last summer’s losses. Now they’re looking at Europa League football this fall after putting together the best season by a non-big six team since Newcastle’s fifth place finish in 2011.
What can account for these changes? Any number of things–a change in attitude, tactical adjustments, or even luck. Allegri’s tale is compelling but not unique. He was saddled with a completely hopeless situation at Milan. He watched his star players get sold with minimal reinvestment from the club. The mood at the club worsened. The club’s joke of an owner continued to attract headlines for all the wrong reasons. And eventually it just got to be too much. Milan failed and Allegri was sacked.
Drop the same manager into a new club with good players, a supportive ownership group, and the freedom to make the changes he deems necessary and that same manager looks like a genius. But it’s a fine thing–would we be singing Allegri’s praises if he hadn’t made the shift away from the 3-5-2 to a 4-4-2 diamond? It’s unlikely. The 3-5-2 shape made Juventus defensively solid and allowed them to over-run domestic rivals. But it also made their attack predictable and reduced them to beating teams down via brute force. The shift to the diamond gave the team a new dimension as Arturo Vidal was pushed further forward and a new sort of midfielder in Claudio Marchisio joined the attack-minded trio of Vidal, Pogba, and Andrea Pirlo. Marchisio gave the team a bit of subtlety and defensive work-rate. He also is a better possession player than any of the other three and is able to slow games down and settle the pace when that’s required–as it is likely to be this weekend.
When Allegri proved himself with this change, both the fans and his players began to buy in more–which has given Allegri freedom to make other changes as needed. So when Juve faced Real Madrid in the semifinals they shifted into more of a flat 4-4-2 as Pogba and Marchisio were pushed wide and Vidal dropped deeper in order to help out with Madrid’s many attacking threats. The change worked, inspiring Juve to a memorable win against last season’s European winners.
And all this from a man who 18 months ago was thought of as being a midtable Serie A manager at best. Luckily for Allegri–and for Juve fans–sometimes snap judgments are wrong.