football test

1 • What impressed you most about this season's UEFA Champions League?

Lippi: I was very impressed by the high quality of technical play, in particular FC Barcelona, but also the power and the winning mentality of Manchester United throughout the season. Both of these clubs were worthy of reaching the final. Something that did strike me was the reduced number of centre forwards or target players. In general, we only saw one main attacker and he was left detached when the others went into defensive mode. The great speed, the intense velocity of the attacking play, was the main feature for me from a technical/tactical point of view.

Capello: I would like to highlight the ability of a coach such as Guus Hiddink, who played against FC Barcelona and caused great difficulties for them –in fact he nearly eliminated them.

Guus underlined the need to know your opponent and to plan the game in the right way. It is said that sometimes great players can make the difference, but they can only do that if the game is properly planned by the coach. Another team that really impressed me was Liverpool FC - they are really made for the Champions League and their performance against Real Madrid was great. That is why I was very surprised when they were knocked out by Chelsea. Normally, when Liverpool play at home, it is really difficult for opponents to get a result, but they were not able to play their normal game in this instance. Both Guus Hiddink and Pep Guardiola, especially in the final, were able to cause problems for their opponents, and it is the coach's ability which I would like to highlight on this occasion

2 • Was there anything from a tactical perspective that was important?

Lippi: From a playing point of view, Barcelona's ability to keep possession of the ball was outstanding and, because of this and their good organization, they had very little expenditure of energy - it is 'chasing the ball' that is demanding on fitness. And then tactically, as Fabio mentioned, it was the great ability that was shown in denying space, for example, Chelsea against Barcelona in a tie that lasted 180 minutes. Chelsea were a little un- lucky and this clash was probably the only negative experience for Barcelona during the Champions League season. The tradition, the great technical skill, the way of playing, the football culture of Spanish players, their strong midfield players - they even played like that when they were children - are things we always knew about. But now they have added the capacity to win, because until EURO, Spain were not able to deliver the prize. These players have definitely grown up and they believe they can win.

Capello: I believe that this victory by Barcelona will be very important, but it must be assessed in the right way. I hope English players or German players will not try to copy the Spanish players. Every team has its own features. Some coaches came to England, for example, successful coaches such as Juande Ramos and Phil Scolari, and they tried to bring their type of game to their English clubs in a short time, but it did not really work out because it is difficult to introduce a style which does not suit the characteristics of the players you take over. The top four clubs in England have different approaches -Liverpool's way is different from Arsenal's because Arsène Wenger has a similar approach to Barcelona's passing game. It was more of an issue about defending for Arsenal this time around than one of style. In the future, the key for coaches will be to understand what they have in their hands and how to get the best out of what is available.

3 • What are your expectations for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa?

Lippi: Well, first of all, we have to qualify for it. We have not qualified yet but we are hopeful. Whenever big teams like Italy, England, the Netherlands, Argentina, Brazil and France take part in major events, they do not take part just to participate or to look good - they go to the tournament to win. But the process that leads to victory is a long one. First you need to qualify and, in my case, I need to rebuild the team, making sure I do not throw away too much of what we have. We have some very good players on the team, even though a few are getting older. Then I have to find some good new players to fill the vacancies. So my objective is to try and recreate a group that has the same psychological attitude as my former group which won the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany. My aim is clear: to try to win the World Cup.

Capello: Well this is a question that the whole of England has been asking for years. We will try and get as far as possible in the tournament but, before we can think about that, we have to qualify, as Marcello said. The England team is a good team, but we all know that in football there is a fine line between the ball hitting the post and going into the net or the ball going wide of the goal. So, sometimes there is a tiny difference between a positive and a negative result, but we will certainly try and reach the final in South Africa.

4 • What are the difficulties of managing a national team?

Lippi: The main difficulty is a lack of time in order to deliver to your players everything that you have in your heart and in your brain. That is, trying to deliver messages - messages which can build up a team. Today, we cannot afford to overlook everything that goes into building up a team. The national team is not representative of the best players of a nation - I am not even sure that I took the best players, technically speaking, to Germany. Maybe some very good ones stayed at home, but certainly I had super players in terms of belonging to a group, and all the positive effects that come with that. So the difficulty is you have very little time available, but you have to produce this sense of belonging, this team spirit, and you have to do it quickly.

Capello: To me, it was something really new. I was used to working every day as all the club coaches do. I had to address all the problems and constantly talk to the players - I spent a lot of time with them in happy times and difficult times. So creating a group with the national team was really a new experience because there is simply no time available. Also, you have to listen to the clubs' needs, especially when there are friendly matches. They may have some requests and you have to understand them, because we use the players, but they pay them. And the difficulty I have is that I need to prepare a match and immediately afterwards to say goodbye. Then maybe 40 days later they reappear and you have prepared everything for the next game, and the two players you need to talk to most are injured and not with you. Often all the work you have done needs to be scrapped and you start from scratch all over again. So, as a national coach, I agree with Marcello, it is more of a psychological thing than tactical, because you cannot do much in four days. There may be some new players and you need to instruct them. But the important thing is to set up the group and to have players who can express their personality. I had an experience in England at the first training when I thought: 'they are wonderful, they play very well technically, with the ball moving at great speed'. Then we played against Switzerland at Wembley and it was a different scene. They showed fear, were lacking in self-confidence and were not positive. It was a totally different scenario, so it was a mental thing, a burden for them, due to the importance associated with the national team.

Lippi: Referring to what Fabio said, during my first spell with the national team, after we had qualified, we went to play a friendly match in the Netherlands. It was a wonderful game against a very good side, and we won 3-1. But there was a problem because it was November, and I was not due to see them again until the following March three and a half months later, when we had to play against Germany in Florence. So I remember that I told the players that we would stay in touch and talk about the national team, about our qualities, our strengths, and the fact that we had grown up as a group. We did not want to lose everything we had built because we were forced to be apart for so long. When we met in Coverciano, our technical centre in Florence, the day before the match against Germany, I said to our players: 'I believe we will play a very good match against Germany, just as we did last week against the Netherlands'. They looked at me and I said: 'Do not worry, I have not gone mad, but I believe we will play as if we had just played last week'. And, indeed, we did play a wonderful game, and at that point I knew we had grown up as a group and that this was a very important team.

5 • Talking about Coverciano, what did you gain from being a student coach at the Italian FA centre in Florence?

Lippi: Well, your training in Coverciano basically gives you everything you need to be a coach. As a player, if you feel inclined to go into coaching after your playing career, you think you know football - you have discussed tactics with your coach, you have experienced the training programme, etc. After three months at Coverciano, you realize that you are doing things that you never thought about before. All the knowledge you accumulated throughout your career needs to be bound together, and this can be done by studying sports science, physical preparation, technical and tactical training, methods and so forth. The Coverciano experience is useful for organizing all the things you picked up as a professional player.

Capello: When you are a player, all you have to do is think about your own game, your fitness, your diet etc. - you train, you go home, and that is it. But when you become a manager, you have to think about the physical and mental preparation of the whole squad, building up team spirit, being aware of medical issues. Above all, you have to develop your leadership skills. You also realize that you do not focus on yourself, or an individual player, but on the team as a whole. So you are taught all these concepts in Coverciano and this is extremely helpful. Of course, results also depend on luck, but luck is only one element. You are chosen for the job because of your coaching know-how and the training at Coverciano gives you that.

6 • How would you describe your style of leadership?

Lippi: There is a difference between coaching with a club and with a national team. Fabio may not have reached this stage yet, but when you prepare the squad for the World Cup, not just a qualifying match, you have 50 days to deliver something and you spend a lot of time on the field. I believe there are a lot of similarities between Fabio and myself in terms of management. I think players from big teams do not want a father figure, but rather a strong guide, a competent coach who can lead them to the objective they have to achieve - which is winning. Then, whether the coach is nice or not is not very important. When I talk to my players I say: 'I am not your father or your older brother but, of course, if you need to talk to me, I am here for you'. What you need in this role as head coach are the necessary competencies in terms of tactics and skills. But I believe that managing human resources is fundamental today to train at the top level.

Capello: Well, I totally agree with what Marcello said; and he is right, we are very similar. I would also say that as a trainer, every day you have 23 or 25 players, depending on whether it is a national squad or a club, and each one is judging you. You are always under the spotlight in every moment - your reactions when you win, your reactions when you lose. How you manage this, how you manage that, and the way you work on the field. I have not won the World Cup like Marcello, but I think there are certain things which you learn that can be transferred from the club environment to the national team. For example, we lost against France and naturally everyone was very unhappy because of this sad result. But I said: 'Hi guys, today I am very happy'. They all stared at me because they thought I was mad. I went on and said: 'Yes, I am very happy with the way we played the first 30 minutes against the runners-up of the 2006 World Cup. We played at a very high level and we made their lives very difficult. These 30 minutes can provide us with a basis and in the future we will need to extend this 30-minute performance into the full 90-minute match'. From that time forward, we started with a different way of thinking on the field.

7 • How has the game changed since you started coaching?

Lippi: What has changed today is the fact that you have to play in different ways depending on the characteristics of the players you have. In the past, there was usually a common way of playing by most teams. All you had to do was pick the best players for the formation. But now, you need to select good technical players, players who are very strong mentally. In Italy, the teams play in different ways, with various formations, and at national level I need to choose the best formation for the players I select. In general, coaches today need to use different systems to best exploit the skills and characteristics of the players that are available at that particular time.

Capello: I think there have been certain changes, certain evolutions. When I was a player, the Netherlands started playing in a way that resembles modern football. Then Arrigo Sacchi made an impact as an innovator, and we have been following that development for a number of years. As Marcello was saying, I think today you need to consider different formations which you can use against different opponents. You also must be flexible and be able to change, even within a particular game. You need to be able to alter your players' positions in order to hit your opponents at their weakest points. So, as a national coach, you have to pick the best players, the fittest players, but above all you have to be able to create a basic group. This can then be added to, as we did with Theo Walcott who played against Croatia. When the journalists saw the line-up and saw that I was going to play this 20-year-old, they thought I had gone mad. But, in fact, he was the fittest in that role for England at the time, so it was the right thing to do. You need to be flexible, to find the best players for the job, and to make brave decisions.

8 • What is your assessment of Italian football today?

Lippi: I really believe that the real expression of a country's football is not given by the club teams but by the national side. We are still in the process of building up our squad for next year. We are the world champions, our

Under-21s are strong, and there are a number of good youth players coming through, so I think there is a very positive future for Italian football.

Capello: We are now having players born in Italy whose families came from other countries, like Mario Balotelli of Inter Milan, which was not the case in the past. Players like that could be in Marcello's team in the future. It is the same in England where I have some very good Under-21 players and will include them in the national side when the time is right. With regard to football in Italy, and I am sorry to say this, I think that we lack continuity in our way of playing because, in my opinion, though we have great referees, they are obliged to stop the game too often in the Italian league. We are used to a refereeing style which is very strict and this means when any player falls down, the game is stopped. It takes time for our teams to adjust to the European approach. It is the Italian audience, the Italian spectators, who ask for this rigid refereeing - if anything happens and the referee does not stop the game, he will be criticized. We need to improve a lot in this aspect of the game. Italian football is a very good environment for young talents and the young players are really good. So I firmly believe that the future will be a positive one for the national team, but whether it is one, two or three Italian clubs doing well in the UEFA Champions League, we will have to wait and see.

Lippi: Yes, I agree. And I recognize that there is sometimes a bad attitude by the players towards referees and their assistants in Italy. In international football, the referees do not accept certain types of behavior from the players, things which sometimes happen in Italy, so they expel them and then the players are suspended.

Capello: Yes, indeed. This is something which I have seen in England and is very important. Players used to contest everything that the referee decided. The public, the journalists and the managers wanted this to stop, they wanted to see more respect, and this has more or less happened. I think FIFA and UEFA should really push the idea of respect for the referees. It is really disappointing to see all the players crowding around the referee and being abusive. We have to realize that referees can also make mistakes, and this 'attacking the referee' is a very bad example for young players, and stopping it should be official policy.

9 • Is there something that you would like to change or improve in today's football?

Lippi: There are probably many things that could be changed or improved. But for me, it is vitally important that countries maintain their football characteristics. Clearly, South American football has become a bit more European in the sense that they try to be more practical, more organized than before. Meanwhile, European football has acquired some South American elements, in particular technical quality with the ball. But it is important for each country to stay faithful to its 'footballing tradition'. I think English football will always be English at its core, but its national team will be the best expression of that. Regarding Italian football, I think improvements can be made, especially when it comes to attitude.

Capello: If we talk about innovation, I think the use of additional referees beside the goals could prove to be an important development. Also, it is a positive move that we play with the same model of ball in a particular competition - something that has been promoted in the UEFA Champions League. Improved technology has continued to have an impact on the game. When we consider football even seven or eight years ago, it was almost unthinkable to shoot from the kind of distances which are common- place today. Ronaldo's long-range efforts immediately come to mind. So certainly progress has been made thanks to technology, but I think there is still some work to be done in terms of attitude towards the referee and in minimizing the number of mistakes made by the referees themselves, especially in the penalty area, for example, with handling of the ball. We have seen some teams suffer because of these mistakes. With all the efforts that are put in throughout a season, we should try as much as possible to avoid penalizing teams because of such errors. It is really frustrating for a coach to see his work spoiled in this way as he strives to reach the finishing line.