SA Guest Editorial: Marcello Lippi - True Style On The Touchline
05/11/2003. Energy in the air, excited fans in the stands, Italy's best club on the park - Saturday afternoon at Torino's Stadio Delle Alpi, Marcello Lippi's Juventus drew 2-2 with
Perugia to take out the 2002-03 Italian Championship.
The legendary white-haired coach did what he always does on matchdays.
He stood on the touchline in a stylish Armani suit: watching his team play, thinking up his fresh and engaging tactics, smoking his cigars.
An Italian icon, this man. One with the dress sense of a model, the face of a movie star and the mind of a football professor.
Lippi always smokes when he is coaching.
If it were someone else, it would be offensive and hypocritical.
But with him it is different.
A cigar between his lips is acceptable.
Even cool.
He will be with Juventus for the long haul because of Saturday's championship win.
Standing on the touchline in a stylish Armani suit: watching his team play, thinking up his fresh and engaging tactics, smoking his cigars.
Better to have him there than at Inter Milan.
The indolence and the arrogance of the majority of the players at Milan's Stadio San Siro angered Lippi.
And that was not a good thing.
When he was sacked, he told club president Moratti that the team was full of spoiled children who thought they were great players.
Lippi never usually loses his temper.
He typically approaches coaching with a cool heart and a calm mind.
On the field this allows him to execute his myriad of fresh and elaborate tactics without fear of failure.
These tactics evolve on a weekly basis.
And such movement probably unnerves a relative debutant like Roberto Mancini.
But it should also encourage him to take his coaching exams at Coverciano and top his class like Lippi.
Unfortunately there was a period in Lippi's coaching past when things did not go as planned.
That was when he coached Napoli.
He earned the southern side a coveted spot in Europe, then club president Ferlaino sacked him.
A year later, he showed how good he truly was as a coach by guiding Juventus to the Italian Championship and the Italian cup.
Then he steered Juventus to victory in the Italian Super Cup and the Champions' League.
And filled with the comfortable confidence that justified success brings, he helped Juventus win four more trophies in the next two years.
A big part of his success is his temperament.
He is calm, not laid back, not indifferent, but quite calm.
And watching his Juventus play, then and now, it is plain to see that the team has adopted his mindset.
Each player works on and off the ball without succumbing to the internal and the external pressures that rock most Serie A footballers south and east of Torino.
A number of journalists criticised Lippi for this relaxed but focussed attitude when he was a libero at Sampdoria during the 1970s.
They said he lacked aggression and would never be an 'A' team player for Gli Azzurri.
And they may have been right on that last count.
But what would they say now that Lippi has used this tranquil and cerebral approach in his second stint coaching Juventus to again win the Italian Championship .
David Bongiorno
-------------------------------------------
