yesterday 07:03
|
Yes, and we will have our own Craig Ramsay in football! Italian expert Francesco Calzona will soon become the new head coach of the Slovak national team. However, whoever thinks this, that Slovak football will get its Craig Ramsay, is mistaken and it is high time to wake up.
While the experienced Canadian caused a revolution in Slovak hockey, we cannot expect anything like that from Calzon. And that’s because it wouldn’t be fair from us.
Francesco Calzona will not be in the same position as Craig Ramsay. He succeeded as the coach of the hockey team, while he managed to change the thinking of our players and coaches. But Ramsay couldn’t do it because he’s Canadian. He was able to do this because he is an educated and well-rounded person who has a clear idea of what he wants to achieve and how he wants to achieve it. But all this would be of no use to him if he did not have a guarantor behind him in the person of Miroslav Šatan.
Sports and human authority, which represents a support point for the coach of the national team. The future coach of the national football team can only dream of something like that. Calzona will be alone in Slovakia as a soldier in the field, which means that his position will be more reminiscent of the circumstances that Glen Hanlon once had to deal with. He also came to us from Canada, but he did not bring any hockey revolution with him and his era ended ingloriously. Now let’s go to Francesco Calzona.
This guy won’t bring us a revolution, but that doesn’t mean he can’t teach us anything. Calzona is a recognized expert in his field. If you want to know something about him, just go online and type his name. The information that he used to make a living by selling coffee quickly jumps out at you. How did this affect his coaching career? None. However, you can also find things about Calzon on the Internet that will tell you a lot about his football philosophy. For example, among the publicly available materials is the presentation of the final thesis, thanks to which Francesco Calzona worked his way up to the UEFA Pro license.
This work is entitled Training a four-man defensive line with a ball orientation. It is immediately clear from the aforementioned presentation that the Italian coach is no slouch. He is a perfectionist who emphasizes every detail in defensive activities. It is worth noting the fact that in the introduction of this presentation, Calzona helped himself to quotes from Jorge Luis Borges, who said that “whenever a kid on the street kicks something, that’s where football history starts again.” Well, that’s interesting. And you know what else Borges said? “Football is popular because stupidity is popular.” The truth is that the Argentine writer hated and despised football. He often said that it was a sport for primitives and that it made people stupid. It’s also lucky that Francesco Calzona devotes himself so superficially only to world literature and not to football…
Francesco Calzona at SSC Napoli training
Source: sscnapoli.it
–
DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR
Who is Francesco Calzona anyway? When information first appeared in our country that this man was a candidate for the post of head coach of the Slovak national team, the label assistant coach appeared next to his name. But that is not entirely true. In our dictionary, an assistant is perceived as the one who is the right hand of the head coach. But on the Apennine peninsula this function is called “allenatore in seconda” and at SSC Napoli it is currently performed by Marco Domenichini, Luciano Spalletti’s long-term partner.
The position that Francesco Calzona has in the employment contract is called “collaboratore tecnico.” If we wanted to translate it directly into Slovak, we would say that he is a technical collaborator. In this case, however, we will use terminology from the American NFL, where we register so-called coordinators. Well, Calzona is the defensive coordinator. That means he is in charge of the defense component. While in American football two squads alternate on the field (offensive and defensive), in our football there is only one team on the field. Calzono’s responsibility is to ensure that all the players are ready to fulfill the defensive principles that they established in Napoli. Either as individuals or as a whole. Francesco Calzona gained great credit already during his collaboration with Maurizio Sarri.
In the 2017/18 season, the Neapolitans were not far from winning the championship. They scored a lot of goals and in addition defended well. The fact that they defended well was also Calzon’s merit. But here we have to realize one important thing. In his career so far, Francesco Calzona has prepared teams from a defensive point of view that dominated the game with the ball and held it in their power for most of the playing time. In other words, these teams were able to defend, but they were also successful because they spent significantly less time on the defensive than the opposition. In the case of Napoli, it was match after match. SSC also played against Benevento, but also against Juventus Turin.
He kept the ball in his power and kept it in the attacking half. Therefore, Francesco Calzona prepared his charges mainly for the transition to defense, as Napoli’s opponents were only able to mount quick counterattacks. However, we are firmly convinced that the members of the Executive Committee of the Slovak Football Association took this into account even before they entrusted the president to negotiate with the Italian coach. Whether Francesco Calzona can actually help us from the point of view of the typology of our players was definitely subjected to a deep analysis by the members.
IS IT THE RIGHT ONE?
To understand each other. We also want to see an Italian in the position of head coach of the Slovak national team. But, do we want this Italian? We have no doubt that Francesco Calzona is a top professional. No debate. But is he the right person for our needs? What if we told you that there is one more Italian on the market at the moment who not only has an attractive resume, is not far from our mentality and is very eager to show himself? Moreover, if you spoke to him in Slovak, he would understand you and be able to answer you.
All this is fulfilled by Christian Panucci, the former great full-back who won the Champions League with AC Milan and Real Madrid. We are talking about a man who learned from the famous Fabio Capello as a player and later as a coach. While Calzona has no experience in managing a national team, Panucci assisted Capella in Russia before managing Albania himself. He burned out there. And why did it burn out? Because he had no guarantor behind him and was on his own. Also thanks to this experience, he is now much better prepared for what could await him in a new environment. We mentioned that if you spoke to Christian Panucci, he would be able to talk to you.
This is because his mother is Czech and Panucci spent time with his grandparents in the summer months. So he knows not only the language, but also the mentality. Here we add again that we are firmly convinced that the members of the Executive Committee of the Slovak Football Association took this into account even before they entrusted Mr. President to negotiate with Francesco Calzono. They must have talked about Christian Panucci, who is currently free, for many hours, but then they probably found an argument why he is not the right one for us.
–
