Determined, technically very advanced and often innovative. But also hot-headed, and therefore sometimes polemical. That of Luciano Spalletti – who joined the national team at the height of his coaching career – is not an easy character, and this has certainly helped him become a winner.
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Il new national coach He was born 64 years ago in Certaldo, the village on the outskirts of Florence that gave birth to Boccaccio, in that area of Tuscany of which - despite having wandered for work for years up and down Italy - he has retained the strong cadence and that sort of irreverence towards the "powerful" that has led him in life to not shy away from the most unthinkable challenges and also to win many of them.
The most important is certainly the Scudetto Napoli, 33 years after the one won by Diego Armando Maradona; but his career, as he himself often likes to declare, is made up of a lot of hard work and sacrifice. In this sense, a phrase, pronounced after the 1-0 victory of the Neapolitans against Juventus in Turin, best sums up his "philosophy of life and play": "I've always hitchhiked and winning this championship repays me for all the sacrifices I've made. Sometimes they make fun of me because I wear football boots on the sidelines, but I know what I suffered to have those boots, because when I was little I didn't have the money to buy them."
The story of Luciano Spalletti: his career as a footballer
As a “little” Spalletti took his first steps as a footballer in the youth teams of Fiorentina and Cuoiocapelli and then made his debut in C2 in 1985 at Entella Bacezza where the coach was Giampiero Ventura who 30 years later would lead the Italian national team. And it was in Liguria that Luciano met his future wife Tamara (“a very long courtship”) who has remained at his side ever since throughout a career that has taken him everywhere.
The coach has always protected the privacy of his wife and children Federico, Samuele and Matilde; and that of his brother Marcello, who died in 2019. With him he had set up a farm in Chianti, the “buen retiro” that his wife now manages, but which represents one of his most lively and private passions.
Spalletti hung up his boots at 33, wearing the Empoli jersey but, after only one year, he was already the coach. With the Tuscans he obtained a promotion to Serie B, the victory of the Coppa Italia of Serie C and the immediate rise to Serie A. Then the experience on the benches of Sampdoria, Venezia, Udinese and Ancona also with some empty passages. Until the consecration: the return to Udine, where he had not been confirmed, is the historic qualification of the Friulians in the Champions League.
Spalletti's arrival on the bench: Udinese, then Roma and Zenit
An exploit that earned him the first call from a big club: Roma, between 2005 and 2009. With him on the bench – in the best years of Totti, 'invented' centre forward – the Giallorossi achieved three second places in a row in the championship; a quarter-final and an eighth-final in the Champions League; two Italian Cups and an Italian Super Cup. But at the beginning of the fourth season came the sensational resignation due to "disagreements" with the club.
And this was the moment when Spalletti showed courage; after a few months of inactivity, he flew to Russia to coach Zenit Saint Petersburg with whom from 2009 to 2014 he won two championships and a second place, a national Cup and a Russian Super Cup. In 2015, after only two defeats, a new dismissal.
So in 2016, something happened that no one expected: Spalletti returned to Roma to replace Rudi Garcia, the coach who took his place at Napoli this year. In the second half of the season with the Tuscan coach, his Roma was the protagonist of an impressive comeback: 46 points (14 wins, 4 draws and one defeat). But the new Giallorossi experience is remembered above all for the argument with Francesco Totti, immortalized in the TV series “Speravo di muore prima”: two strong characters who clashed even if there was always professional respect on both sides.
Spalletti's adventure at Inter and the Scudetto at Napoli
Similar dynamics also in the subsequent experience at Inter where the clash is with the captain Mauro Icardi. It is the character of Luciano Spalletti who does not accept impositions. The two years in the Nerazzurri are punctuated by nervousness and tension, more than by results, and end in 2019 with a dismissal. Then - at the end of a two-year sabbatical - the adventure with Napoli: the commentators are certain that the Tuscan and the president Aurelio De Laurentiis cannot coexist.
Instead, a miracle happens. Spalletti stands up to the owner. The championship arrives and a total, mutual love between him and Naples, the team and the city. Spalletti, in March, obtains the Bearzot award, and on the occasion of the award ceremony De Laurentiis announces his permanence on the bench of the league leaders. Yet, surprisingly, the coach decides at the end of the season not to continue on the bench.
“I want to be with my daughter Matilde”, he explains, making public a decision that was surprising for many. Then, while UEFA included him in the finalist trio for the best coach of the past season with Guardiola and Inzaghi, his arrival in blue where there is still a story to be written. The first challenges, already at the beginning of September.
Article published on 18 August 2023 - 20:55
