The secret of football for Rafael Palladino, the future coach

“I think that in Italian football we need more courage, and I hope the barrier has now been broken: it seemed to me that there was a wall, a lack of confidence in the promotion of young coaches.He declared with pride and a healthy bit of arrogance Rafael Palladino During the winter break, when there were still some doubts about his devastating impact on Monza and the first division. The results, which came suddenly with his relegation after the first weeks of suffering under the orders of Giovanni Struppa, were very much deserved, like the first success in Serie A with Juventus. Despite this, they have been confused with this rather vague but very present concept in the Italian sports news, known by the term “shock”: a change of coach that brings benefits without an exact explanation, as if by magic.

The truth is that Palladino seems to fully embody the profile of a future coach, in terms of technical management and communication skills, and his work is visible game after game. In a tournament that has already let Roberto De Zerbi go, a curiosity is now linked to the future of Palladino, who is theoretically in the right place at the right time: Monza is a fact that, also thanks to his contribution, is already worth half of our championship standings, and it is widely possible to imagine a rapid growth. He’s not afraid to learn, he recently showed up at Coverciano to hear a technical lesson given by Marcelo Bielsa: the Argentine coach took him aside for a chat. He restored optimism to the group, changed their tactical identity, and conveyed to his team the importance of courage: “For me, dribbling is the essence of football.”

Paladino is the last bet won by the duo consisting of Silvio Berlusconi and Adriano Galliani, the men who wrote history in our football.. However, they seem confused in the AC Milan management queue: too much gambling gone wrong, coaches wrong in a chain, the agonizing search for a rabbit to be pulled from a hat in an attempt to see another sake, another Capello. He appears. The umbilical cord with a past that is not cut even at the moment of the sudden change of shot, from Milan to Monza, from the coat of arms to the building of an affair. The great leap from point B to point A betrayed Galleani’s lucidity at first. Stroppa’s affirmation seemed mostly obligatory, an unavoidable acknowledgment of the man who awarded Monza the first division for the first time in its history. But in football, gratitude often confuses thoughts. While a very different Monza was being built for the market and more accustomed to the class than the one promoted by B, the decision to keep the Stroppa seemed to be at odds with the greatness shown by the management. And so, after one point in six days, the sudden reaction. Galliani and Berlusconi, in moving forward with the dispensation, would have preferred to look at home rather than open-mindedly, promoting Palladino from Primavera. They already knew that they had a little treasure in their hands.

As if by magic, Monza took flight, bringing the summer market work to fruition but without forgetting the main men of the promotion, from Di Gregorio to Ciurria, passing through the unsteady but logical use of the various Caldirola, Machin, Colpani, Mota and Gytkjaer. Palladino’s first move was to change the format: from a 3-5-2 to a 3-4-2-1, the trademark of the new head coach, Gian Piero Gasperini. Carlos Augusto, another pillar on the B-climb, brought him back to carve out kilometers on the left wing, after often having to juggle a left-footed centre-back in the three-man defence. He then turned Ciurria’s career on its head, reinventing him as a right winger in midfield after a life spent between trocar and attack. Compared to the other “Sons of Gasperini”, Palladino seems to have more solutions and game principles up his sleeve. It is, therefore, a football in which some references to Gasperini can be found, such as a certain aggressive flair of the small, very human-oriented defense arms, but also the ability, when the match calls for it, to slow down the pace. However, the main breaking point is the constant search for control of the ball. Monza wants to find space by managing possession, even insisting on dribbling, if necessary. He can do it because Berlusconi and Galliani have given him a quality squad in the most important roles in attacking maneuverability: Pesina can be used both as a midfielder and as an attacking midfielder, and we are talking about a permanent player at the national level. team, European champions as champions less than two years ago; Rouvella, who arrived on loan from Juventus, confirms the good things he has shown in recent years; Sensei, injuries permitting, finally made him revise that precise technique that propelled him to such a leading role at Conte Inter. And then, on the front line, Caprari’s inspiration returned to Verona levels after a complicated first part of the season.

After the success of the San Siro, Palladino’s last masterpiece this season, which brought up ten points out of the twelve available to Juventus and Inter, we saw Galliani rejoice without brakes, savoring the air derby again. Doubly successful, which arrived in the days when Silvio Berlusconi was hospitalized in San Raffaele. Regarding the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe coach, it was Galliani himself who gave the pre-match speech, emphasizing the clarity of the enlightened coach, who knows how to read not only tactical but also emotional moments. Paladino is a great coach project, a legacy that is not lost, like the art of courage.