Sacchi's Football Revolution: Part One - The Making Of A Genius
It Was What It Was : The Football History Podcast
The Overlap
4.9 • 667 Ratings
🗓️ 8 October 2024
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week on It Was What It Was, we continue the epic story of arguably the most important manager in modern football history: Arrigo Sacchi.
Following-up from last week's episode with Jamie Carragher (please go back and listen if you missed it!), Rob and Jonathan go back to Sacchi's roots and how his legend began.
We discuss Sacchi's early years, from shoe factories to football coaching - and the family tragedy that changed the Italian's destiny and the destiny of European football.
This episode is part of our special series on Sacchi’s extraordinary career and his lasting mark on the sport.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | A very dense fog fell over the Belgrade Stadium. |
| 0:10.0 | Absolutely nothing was visible from the bench. |
| 0:12.8 | Suddenly a howl ran through the stadium. |
| 0:15.6 | The mistilluminated by the powerful floodlights had turned into a milky substance, |
| 0:20.3 | absolutely impenetrable to the eye. |
| 0:22.9 | We sensed that Red Star had scored, but we'd seen nothing. |
| 0:28.0 | Well, welcome to it was what it was. I'm Rob Draper. I'm here with Jonathan Wilson. That was |
| 0:33.1 | a Rigo Saki talking about a very famous, postponed game or game that was called off because of |
| 0:39.2 | a bad light or fog. |
| 0:41.9 | And we are discussing the man we think is perhaps the most important figure in European, |
| 0:49.3 | modern European football history, modern European football tactics, certainly. |
| 0:53.2 | Hopefully you will have heard our episode with Jamie Carragher, |
| 0:56.7 | who talked brilliantly about Arrigo Saki and why he thinks he's so important, |
| 1:01.3 | which preceded this one if you haven't go back and listen to it. |
| 1:04.5 | But Jonathan, you're going to take us to the life of Aririgasaki. |
| 1:08.0 | Tell us why this is an important point in his life and what we're going to do |
| 1:12.3 | over the next couple of weeks. So this is the real crisis point. This is November 1988. |
| 1:18.1 | Milan are Italian champions. This is the second round of the European Cup. They haven't started |
| 1:23.1 | the season brilliantly. And there's a sense that Saki's revolution and he is revolutionary could fizzle out at this point. If he lose this game, probably he'll end up being sack. He'll certainly be under intense pressure. All his enemies, and he definitely did have enemies in Italian football, people who believed in the old ways, they're, you know, they're sharpening the knives, they're getting ready to pounce that, you know, we told you this guy was a fool, that we told you this way of playing |
| 1:47.7 | couldn't possibly work. They've drawn the first leg of this second round game in Milan, 1-1. The second leg, they go 1-0 down. Then Palo Pietro Vier to send it forward is sent off but the fog has come down |
| 2:02.2 | by this point and anybody who's been to belgrade you'll know where the sarva meets a danube |
| 2:06.5 | in that valley the fog can gather it can come in very very quickly it can get very very thick |
... |
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