Sportweek profiles the new coach of the Diavolo (where he has already won a championship), considered the prophet of a speculative and defensive style of play. And he enjoys teasing his critics…

In his 804 games as a coach, between league and various cups, Massimiliano Allegri has racked up 435 wins. Of these, 114 came with a score of one to zero, the minimum margin needed to earn three points: just over 26 percent of the total. Perhaps it is just a meaningless curiosity, or perhaps these numbers mean something now that Conte Max is back on the bench—that of Milan, where he already won a Scudetto in 2011—and the old jokes about his old-style football are starting up again. According to the above figures, it would be appropriate to drop the ‘short nose’ story, which was pulled out of the hat by Max himself in 2019 after his Juve side’s defeat to Spal delayed the Scudetto celebrations.
Allegri uses irony (sarcasm) and subtle, intelligent provocation as a weapon of mass distraction. He is one of those who have understood everything: football and life. He now plays on that term borrowed from horse racing (his great passion), used to explain the victory of one horse over another by a nose – the part of the animal that includes the head and neck – and therefore by an infinitesimal margin or little more. Applied to soccer, this expression has become the label that critics have stuck on him to justify his alleged tendency, as a player who was a trequartista and then an attacking midfielder, to play a game devoted more to caution than risk. Allegri is a master in the art of settling for less, even more so than in the art of making do. But if it is true that it is always a matter of perspective, it is time to put an end to this story of Allegri being defensive and a catenacciaro (in this regard, he replied to a question about how his Milan team would play: “If I don’t answer, you’ll say I’m defensive; instead, we’ll be offensive…”), faithful to an antiquated, outdated, stale, and offensively asphyxiating, not to say constipated, idea: low center of gravity, compact defense, and then a goal will come sooner or later. Allegri is not like that. At least, he hasn’t always been.

Win or convince?—  Of course, the Sassuolo and Cagliari coach (not to mention Aglianese, Grosseto, and Spal…) wasn’t exactly driving a luxury car, so it’s understandable that he repeated the old adage of “first don’t concede.” The fact is that, since that 1-2 defeat at Spal, he has won 1-0 on 27 occasions out of 61 games: that’s more than 44%, proving that perhaps that joke about ‘short snouts’—which was actually intended more to illustrate Allegri’s philosophy: the important thing is to win the championship, and who cares if it’s by just one point – has actually influenced his approach to football, at least from a certain point in his career onwards. And if it’s true that it’s almost always the freshest memory we have of a person that shapes our opinion of them, then Allegri has become, willy-nilly, the symbol of a style of football that (in words) no one likes anymore. In short, everyone blames him for the last three years at Juventus, which have indeed been more disappointing than satisfying, and few dig deep into their memories to find the flashes of ‘bel giuoco’ (to use Berlusconi’s words, who, on Galliani’s advice, brought him to Milan) that he showed first in red and black and then in black and white.

judgments and prejudices—  It has been written that Allegri has the virtue—or flaw, depending on your point of view—of always believing himself to be a little smarter than others, and therefore, in his ‘unspoken words’ that alternate between mocking jibes and vehement television outbursts against his occasional (Sacchi) or long-standing (Adani) critics, there is much of the typically Livornese character, amused and mocking. He does not mind, on the contrary, being pigeonholed in the list of ‘results-oriented’ managers as opposed to ‘players’ or presumed such. True to his pragmatism, Allegri considers certain discussions about the quality of the game to be a pure exercise in style, vague if not superfluous: “If you want to have fun, go to the circus,” he said when certain comments annoyed him the most. Yet, returning to the numbers, in his debut on the bench of a big club, Milan, he won the Scudetto with 65 goals scored, the second-best attack in the league behind Inter (69 goals). On the other hand, he conceded only 24, proving – as he himself reiterated at the beginning of his second adventure with the Rossoneri – that “in Italy, the team that concedes the fewest goals wins. In recent years, only Sarri, at Juventus, has reversed the trend.” That said, the (pre)judgment on Allegri as the (un)healthy proponent of speculative, defensive, and therefore uninspiring and unengaging football seems frankly unfair; the result, it was said, of the last three years at Juventus, which were lacking in satisfaction and good play, the consequence of a team progressively drained of talent, which forced him to make a virtue of necessity (which could explain, at least in part, that 44% of 1-0 wins) and a crisis within the club, with Allegri having to act as a lightning rod to contain the damage and keep the players sheltered from the winds blowing from all sides. But Allegri’s first Juve also put on a show in Europe, despite losing two Champions League finals in 2017 and 2019. On the other side of the coin, however, there are five league titles and four Italian Cups in a row, plus two Italian Super Cups. Of course, this is the Juve of Buffon, Barzagli, Bonucci, and Chiellini in defense, Pjanic in midfield, and Tévez (albeit for only one season), Dybala, Higuain, and Mandzukic up front.

Football is simple—  But it is Allegri himself who argues that players are more important than the game, in defiance of his colleagues (most of them) who instead adapt the players to the game plan. Contrary to certain dogmas, Max believes that “it is not tactics that win, but the technical skills of the players. Football is simple: defensive organization and individual technique.” In Sportweek, June 2009, after a splendid season at the helm of Cagliari (already safe at the end of the first half of the season), on his debut as a coach in Serie A, he went so far as to say: “I disagree with someone like Mourinho on football: I put the players at the center of everything, not the coach. It makes me sick to hear people philosophizing only about formations and tactics.” These words were spoken, however, after he had displayed a brilliant, attacking style of play, keeping the ball on the ground, which earned him the Panchina d’Oro award for best coach in the league. However, these words cost him accusations of an offensive strategy lacking in ideas, favoring individual initiatives and, in general, giving players (excessive) freedom. After all, when you have talented players full of inventiveness and dribbling skills like Ibra and Robinho in his first Milan team (proof of his pragmatism, in January he replaced the declining Ronaldinho with the bulldog Van Bommel and won the Scudetto) or Dybala and Tevez at Juventus, it doesn’t seem like a bad idea to loosen the reins. Allegri himself explains it even more clearly: “In soccer, there are categories. There are players who win the Champions League, those who win championships, and those who win nothing.” Modric certainly belongs to the first category, the star of his new Milan, where the quality of the players counts more than the tactics (Max dixit). It remains to be seen whether this is a provocation or a real conviction, considering that his colleagues who have gone down in history (Sacchi, Guardiola… to name the most recent) are those who have paved new paths to victory.