I'm a new one here, but hopefully you won't mind if I answer your question as I am a big Spartak Moscow fan.
First, there are some people who are skeptical of Carrera. Mostly they are either former Spartak players or old school Russian coaches. There are a few reasons for this skepticism:
1) Some of these people think that the traditional way of playing football at Spartak is similar to tiki-taka, while Carrera is more of a pragmatic guy, so they don't like that Spartak is "too boring" and wins 1:0 too often.
2) They are envious because Massimo is about to achieve something that no Russian coach has achieved in last 15 years (and many of these Russian coaches were famous former Spartak players, e.g. Dmitry Alenichev). Thus, they pretend that Carrera hasn't done anything special, everything was done by the previous coach, and he is just very lucky (note that we finished 5th last year, 15 points behind the 1st place).
3) They cannot understand Carrera's tactics, because a traditional way of coaching in Russia is to stick to one formation and use it all the time, while Massimo uses 5 or 6 different formations and switches between them seamlessly (both from game to game and within a single game). And because they cannot understand Carrera's tactics, they tend to say that Spartak is not well-organized.
Now, leaving this small but loud group of people aside, everyone else at Spartak and around Spartak absolutely loves Carrera.
Players love him because a) he is a great tactician who is able to find and exploit weaknesses of his opponents; b) he is a great motivator; c) he is fair (in the sense that he does not have any "personal favorites" who always play, as some of our previous coaches did; whoever does best in training tends to be in the starting 11). As a result, as Carrera said after the derby against CSKA, "Spartak has become a team. But before becoming a team, we have become a family". Before he became a head coach, we hadn't been a family for many, many years.
Our fans absolutely love him not only because of the results or this family feeling, but also because of his passion and behavior in general. He respects the club he works at; he is always friendly with the fans; he never complains about refereeing during hiss press-conferences (something many Russian coaches do very frequently); he never blames his players in public (though he is very demanding and can give them a hairdryer treatment behind closed doors when they deserve it).
All in all, it has been an amazing turnaround for Spartak. We finished 4th, 6th, 6th, and 5th in four previous seasons; no current Spartak player has ever won Russian league; only 4 players have ever won league titles (1 in Germany, 1 in Bulgaria, 2 in Ukraine). One year ago we thought that we have a terrible team, but now we are only 1 point away from the title with 3 matches to play. As a result, our home attendance increased from around 25,000 in last two seasons to around 32,000 this season. Fans vote with their feet, so probably this is the best indicator of how much Spartak has improved under Carrera.
Massimo has already become a hero for the fans. I've heard stories of some Spartak fans who started learning Italian because they wanted to understand Carrera without an interpreter; some Spartak-themed websites have translated articles about Coverciano to Russian because people want to learn as much as possible about Carrera and his training as a manager; users of another website, a very popular Spartak forum, are seriously discussing the possibility of giving the traditional player of the season award to Carrera instead of giving it to any of the players.
Sorry, I know this is already way too long for a forum post, but I just cannot praise Carrera highly enough. We have not won the league since 2001 and any title since 2003, when we won the cup, which is the longest title wait in Spartak club history. If Carrera ends this wait, he will become a true club legend at Spartak.
The only thing our fans don't like about Carrera is that they are afraid that Juventus, or another big European club, will eventually steal him from us :smile:
First, there are some people who are skeptical of Carrera. Mostly they are either former Spartak players or old school Russian coaches. There are a few reasons for this skepticism:
1) Some of these people think that the traditional way of playing football at Spartak is similar to tiki-taka, while Carrera is more of a pragmatic guy, so they don't like that Spartak is "too boring" and wins 1:0 too often.
2) They are envious because Massimo is about to achieve something that no Russian coach has achieved in last 15 years (and many of these Russian coaches were famous former Spartak players, e.g. Dmitry Alenichev). Thus, they pretend that Carrera hasn't done anything special, everything was done by the previous coach, and he is just very lucky (note that we finished 5th last year, 15 points behind the 1st place).
3) They cannot understand Carrera's tactics, because a traditional way of coaching in Russia is to stick to one formation and use it all the time, while Massimo uses 5 or 6 different formations and switches between them seamlessly (both from game to game and within a single game). And because they cannot understand Carrera's tactics, they tend to say that Spartak is not well-organized.
Now, leaving this small but loud group of people aside, everyone else at Spartak and around Spartak absolutely loves Carrera.
Players love him because a) he is a great tactician who is able to find and exploit weaknesses of his opponents; b) he is a great motivator; c) he is fair (in the sense that he does not have any "personal favorites" who always play, as some of our previous coaches did; whoever does best in training tends to be in the starting 11). As a result, as Carrera said after the derby against CSKA, "Spartak has become a team. But before becoming a team, we have become a family". Before he became a head coach, we hadn't been a family for many, many years.
Our fans absolutely love him not only because of the results or this family feeling, but also because of his passion and behavior in general. He respects the club he works at; he is always friendly with the fans; he never complains about refereeing during hiss press-conferences (something many Russian coaches do very frequently); he never blames his players in public (though he is very demanding and can give them a hairdryer treatment behind closed doors when they deserve it).
All in all, it has been an amazing turnaround for Spartak. We finished 4th, 6th, 6th, and 5th in four previous seasons; no current Spartak player has ever won Russian league; only 4 players have ever won league titles (1 in Germany, 1 in Bulgaria, 2 in Ukraine). One year ago we thought that we have a terrible team, but now we are only 1 point away from the title with 3 matches to play. As a result, our home attendance increased from around 25,000 in last two seasons to around 32,000 this season. Fans vote with their feet, so probably this is the best indicator of how much Spartak has improved under Carrera.
Massimo has already become a hero for the fans. I've heard stories of some Spartak fans who started learning Italian because they wanted to understand Carrera without an interpreter; some Spartak-themed websites have translated articles about Coverciano to Russian because people want to learn as much as possible about Carrera and his training as a manager; users of another website, a very popular Spartak forum, are seriously discussing the possibility of giving the traditional player of the season award to Carrera instead of giving it to any of the players.
Sorry, I know this is already way too long for a forum post, but I just cannot praise Carrera highly enough. We have not won the league since 2001 and any title since 2003, when we won the cup, which is the longest title wait in Spartak club history. If Carrera ends this wait, he will become a true club legend at Spartak.
The only thing our fans don't like about Carrera is that they are afraid that Juventus, or another big European club, will eventually steal him from us :smile:
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Very interesting insights into Massimo Carerra and his career in Russian football.
