Carlo Ancelotti_ The Beautiful Games of an Ordinary Genius - Alessandro Alciato [25]
Psychologically, we were becoming powerhouses. Part of it was the sheer challenge of tolerating Arrigo Sacchi. He’d explain game plans at night, just as you were falling asleep. He’d sketch them out on the door of your room. He was especially priceless when he had to explain strategy to Gullit and van Basten, who spoke no Italian. In that case, the fallback was English, which made it hard to keep a straight face. When we had to sit through the first meetings in English, it was pure torture to keep from laughing out loud. To avoid snorting, or just bursting into hilarity, we would pretend to clear our throats. Me and Tassotti started, and soon everyone was doing it. “Its nesessari tu ev a sciort tim”: if I had to write it down in black and white, that’s how it looked to me, as an Italian. It’s necessary to have a short team. “Uen de boll arraivs, uan go e uan cam.” When the ball arrives, one go and one come. It truly was impossible to understand.
Everything sort of culminated just before a friendly match in Parma. Technical pregame meeting: oh, Lord, sense of terror, what’s he going to say now? What are we supposed to do? We walked into the meeting room, there was a pillar in the middle of the room, all twenty-two of us clustered behind it, trying to hide; if we broke into laughter, how would he ever know? This was the first pillar in the history of the world to possess forty-four legs, in lines of six, with two left over. Sacchi was practically talking to himself, blathering on in English. We couldn’t take it anymore, so we leveled with him: “Coach, your English totally sucks.”
He was number one, the best and the loudest. Even when he was sleeping. He didn’t dream, he screamed and shouted. While he was sleeping, he emitted terrifying sounds, as if someone were trying to cut his throat. Every so often, there would be a technical comment as well, even while he was fast asleep: “Run diagonaaalllll, diagonaaalllll!!!” or else, “go back, go back, go back, GOOOO BAAAACCCKKKK!” Jesus, the man never stopped. It was the secret of his success, and perhaps the source of great misery—to him and to others.
Before slipping into his nightly cataleptic trance, around ten thirty, he’d make the circuit of the players’ bedrooms. He shuffled along in his slippers, we could hear him coming. We switched off the lights, jumped into bed, covered our heads with our blankets, and pretended we were sleeping. Daniele Massaro was the worst, he always did it. We thought—and said—terrible things about Sacchi at first; that is, until he finally obtained the level of play he was looking for. It wasn’t really clear what we would have achieved without his maniacal dedication to his work. Certain techniques weren’t natural; it was just inhuman how hard we practiced. One diagram after another, one play after the next. A relentless schedule of tactical exercises. He always told me: “You like to run, and you do a lot of running. But I want something more: I want you to become a conductor, with the team as your orchestra. You need to study music, tempo. We are performing a symphony, and you need to know every note by heart.” The tempo, the time, was made up of: stop the ball and pass the ball. Stop and pass. Stop and pass. Every so often, just to let off steam, I’d add a little touch of my own: stop without passing, in the sense that Sacchi would stop practice entirely and tell me to start over from the beginning. We practiced for hours, me and him on our own, doing the simplest things. Things out of soccer preschool. Could we try dribbling now and then? No, stop and pass. Stop and pass. In the end, I knew exactly what I needed to do; he’d taught me perfectly. He showed me how to be relaxed and confident. I possessed a series of standard movements; I knew exactly where I needed to go when Tassotti had the ball, or Maldini or Baresi or van Basten. Or an opponent.
At the age of twenty-eight,