Football's Greatest Managers #1: Helenio Herrera
(Source: Multiple websites)
We kick off this series on Football's Greatest Managers with a controversial choice, a manager who's revered and reviled at the same time, one who triggered intense discussions on whether the was the God or the Devil of Football Managers...but undisputedly one of the Greatest Football Managers of all time!
He ruled his teams with a combination of dictatorial discipline, gruesome training regimes, bizarre psychological habits, military-style training camps, and strict dietary plans. Nobody possessed a fiercer will to win – and nobody went further in order to achieve it. His methods could be cruel and heartless, his teams ruthless and cynical. An egocentric, he revelled in the attention. “Go ahead and judge him as the mood takes you,” Gianni Brera, the influential Italian football columnist, wrote in 1966. “Clown and genius, buffoon and ascetic, rogue and model father, sultan and faithful husband, swaggering fool and quiet achiever, delinquent and competent, megalomaniac and health fanatic. Herrera is all of the above and more.”
Early Life:
Known as ‘HH’ to his friends, Herrera was born in Argentina in 1916 to Spanish parents. His father, Francisco, was an exiled anarchist from Andalusia, and a carpenter by trade. His mother, Maria Gavilán Martínez, was a cleaner. Doubts surrounded Herrera’s date of birth. His French, Spanish and Argentine passports claimed he had been born in 1916, but his official website says he falsified the date to give himself six extra years (
) . The date on the original document had apparently been 10 April, 1910.
Early Football Career:
In 1920, Herrera’s family left Argentina for Casablanca where he started playing football. He was an imposing defender, but of limited ability. A knee injury in his mid-20s hampered Herrera’s ambitions. In 1945, he rejoined Stade Français, as head coach. Three years later he joined Real Valladolid, before a stint with Atlético Madrid from 1949 to 1953 brought him two La Liga titles. He proceeded to coach Málaga, Deportivo de La Coruña, and Sevilla, before managing Portuguese club Belenenses in 1957-58.
Barcelona:
In 1958, Barcelona hired Herrera on a mission to dethrone Real Madrid. The arrival of Di Stefano changed Real Madrid giving them multiple league and European wins while Barca rarely qualified. The situation was desperate. Barça had an extraordinary side, with players such as Luis Suárez, László Kubala, Sándor Kocsis and Zoltán Czibor. But a mentality of inferiority and victimisation had pervaded the club. Herrera recognised Barça’s psychological frailty and sought to rectify it.
During the first one, players vomited. Perceived weaknesses got no sympathy. One player complained he was sick, only to be sent back into training. When another appeared with a plaster cast, Herrera broke it off. On one occasion, according to Lowe, a player was suspected of being led astray by his girlfriend. The club had tried to break up the couple, even hiring private detectives, but to no avail. When told of the situation, Herrera suggested that they hire someone to sleep with her.
Herrera delivered the title in his first season. That meant qualification to the European Cup. In 1959-60, Barça reached the semifinals and met Madrid, who were yet to lose in the competition. Herrera dropped Kubala (whose off pitch drinking lifestyle did not go well with the manager) and barca lost 6-2 on aggregate. Barça later won La Liga for a second time, but Herrera left the club. They would not win another league title until 1974.
Internazionale and HH's version of Catenaccio:
In 1960, Herrera signed a lucrative contract with Internazionale. “When I came to Inter, there was a terrible ambience, There were boards everywhere about past championships, very impressive you understand, but so distant.” Herrera told Kuper.
Contrary to the popular beliefs Herrera did not invent the Catenaccio system. It's origin's can be traced to Karl Rappan in Switzerland and then popularized in Europe by Nereo Rocco. It was Rocco's Milan that contributed heavily to the myth of catenaccio and its reputation suggesting an ultra-defensive system where five defenders sit deep, protected by aggressive ball-winners; a game plan designed to ruin football as a spectacle; to win at all costs. Rocco is said to have told his team: “Kick anything that moves; if it’s the ball, so much the better.”
Brera wrote that Herrera turned to catenaccio in sheer desperation after a poor start in the early 1960s. That claim is supported by Arrigo Sacchi “When he first arrived, he played attacking football. And then it changed. I remember a game against Rocco’s Padova. Inter dominated. Padova crossed the halfway line three times, scored twice and hit the post. And Herrera was crucified in the media. So what did he do? He started playing with a libero, told Suárez to sit deep and hit long balls, and started playing counter-attacking football. For me, La Grande Inter had great players, but it was a team that had just one objective: winning.”
Herrera claimed his system was misunderstood, because others had copied it and left out several attacking principles. This is supported by Mazzola, who believes the misconception is rooted in the European campaigns that served to establish Inter’s notoriety. “When I hear about Inter playing catenaccio, I have to say we played about six matches with catenaccio and 40 matches with attacking football,” Mazzola told FIFA.com. “I remember my team-mates Picchi and Guarneri, two centre-backs, who during San Siro home games could spend 60 minutes looking into the stands, trying to spot a girl to take out that evening, because the opposition only played in their half. But then, when we played abroad – and I guess this was a mistake – we didn’t feel very comfortable and secure, and stayed back more. We had five attacking players in the side, six if you include Facchetti, who used to get forward a lot, something that no one else did at the time. It’s true that we sometimes employed a very defensive system away from home, but we regularly played 4-2-4, and everyone worked really hard.”
The team also had a nickname: La Grande Inter. This was not undeserved. They were disciplined, durable, steely, skilful, spirited; fortified by Herrera’s fitness regime and team-building. The tactic was catenaccio, but with vital tweaks. Giacinto Facchetti, an athletic former centre-forward converted into an adventurous left-back, wreaked havoc down the flank. In 1965-66, he scored ten league goals. Centrally played an uncompromising sweeper with an excellent long pass – Picchi – and two centre-backs, Aristide Guarneri and Tarcisio Burgnich. The entire right flank was occupied by Jair, a hard-running Brazilian winger. In midfield, Suárez pulled the strings from deep. Corso loitered on the left, while Sandro Mazzola – son of the legendary Torino captain Valentino – played off the main striker.
In 1960-61, Inter flew out of the blocks ending the season with 73 goals in 34 games. The next season, Inter struck 59, but conceded three less; 31. The year after, Inter reached their statistical pinnacle. They shipped 20 goals, and although they struck only 56 times, it was enough to win the league. In 1963-64, the defence held firm again, conceding 21, while the attack hit 54. The second league title under Herrera, in 1965, was more entertaining, with 29 conceded and 68 scored. Between 1960-65, Inter enjoyed only two league campaigns of exceptional defending. They could be masterful defenders when they wanted, as Foot writes “Herrera’s enduring reputation as the ‘controversial missionary of catenaccio’ is built more on what was seen as the cynical will-to-win of his teams – their attitude – than on the way they actually played football”.
Defeat / Pivotal change in world football / Lisbon Lions / Total Football:
Football historians will carefully supply the single cataclysmic events that have changed the direction of football since World War II, and they are usually associated with Herrera. Celtic’s shock European Cup win in Lisbon in 1967 over Herrera’s Inter, a team seemingly invincible at the time, set the club, its coach and the system into something of a tailspin. Inter were feared and despised, but it was difficult to argue with the efficiency of their play and the challenge it offered to everyone to subvert it and usher in a new era of less cynical football. Jock Stein’s Celtic were too much an accidental confluence of great individuals to be considered the architects of Herrera’s downfall. Rinus Michel’s ‘Total Football’ conceit of the 1970s was the true inverse of the system, and Ajax’s victory over Inter in 1972 was probably a more significant event, but it’s an inescapable fact that Herrera gave us all this. It’s a sort of Yin-Yang view of the football universe, in that the presence of one paradigm will inevitably give rise to its opposite.
Later Years:
In 1967-68, after Inter slumped to fifth, Herrera left for AS Roma. Down in the capital, Herrera never reproduced the success he had had at Inter. In five years, he only won the Coppa Italia, in 1969. In 1973 after the controversy surrounding the death of Giuliano Taccola which was attributed to the training regime of Herrera, he left Roma to rejoin Inter. He oversaw an unsuccessful season, before suffering a heart attack. He blamed stress, and opted to quit coaching.
Coaching Style:
Discipline:
Discipline was the byword under Herrera. Players would cross Herrera at their peril. No individualistic quality trumped the value of obedience. Herrera cultivated what became known as the ritiro. They were no-nonsense training camps where players were locked up in hotels for days, surrounded by staff, pitches and equipment. The intention was to increase concentration before games. The camps could be brutal. Inter would book up entire hotels, so no other people were in sight. The players swapped family and friends for running and tactical drilling. When English forward Gerry Hitchens left the club, he said it felt like “coming out of the bloody army”. Slackness rarely went unpunished. During a cross-country run, Wilson writes, Hitchens, Suárez and Corso fell behind the group and arrived late at the base. They discovered that the bus had left, and were forced to make the six-mile journey back to Milan on their own.
Player/Crowd Psychology:
Herrera possessed an intuitive understanding of his players’ psyche. During one tour, according to Lowe, when Czibor bemoaned having to stay away from home for so long, Herrera promised he could go back if he scored thrice. He hit a hat-trick in the first match. To the Catalans, he talked ‘Colours of Catalonia, play for your nation.’ And to the foreigners, I talked money,” Antoni Ramallets, the goalkeeper, told “He had files on everything. He could tell you about the parents of some Italian or German, what day he was born, everything.”
Critics often felt he went too far in pursuit of victory. More than once, these included his own players. “I’ve been accused of being tyrannical and completely ruthless with my players,” he said, according to Jonathan Wilson’s book Inverting the Pyramid: The History of Football Tactics(2008). “But I merely implemented things that were later copied by every single club: hard work, perfectionism, physical training, diets, and three days of concentration before every game.”
The demands of discipline and abstention were modelled on Herrera’s own private life. He never smoked and rarely drank. According to his daughter, Luna, his pasta dishes contained only olive oil and parmesan. He did yoga every morning. When awaking, he would tell himself: “I am strong, calm, I fear nothing, I am beautiful.” He was even wary of drinking too much water, hiding the bottle on the floor and guarding it with his feet when dining with his children.
The pre-match routines could border on the bizarre. He embraced his players before kick-off, and held one-on-one meetings known as ‘confessions’. He hunted information that could strengthen his relationship with the squad, instructing his masseur to overhear football-related utterances aired when players were in for treatment. Herrera served herbal tea and coffee with aspirin. Suárez, one of the key players, held a belief that if wine was spilled during a meal, he would score in the next game. Prior to crucial matches, Herrera would knock over a glass deliberately.
He emphasised the importance of crowd support, and participated in forming fan associations and networks. “Before away games, he would go on to the pitch first to make the crowd yell at him, so that they were already tired by the time we came out” Adrián Escudero, a member of the Atlético squad, recalled.
End of an Era:
On 9th Nov 1997, Herrera passed away. His ashes rest, after lengthy negotiations, against a brick wall that was granted, refused and then granted once more thanks to the intervention of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, in a marble niche hidden in the ivy of the Anglican cemetery on the island cemetery of San Michele in Venice.
Loved or hated, there is absolutely no doubt of his lasting legacy to the world of football!
(Source: Multiple websites)
We kick off this series on Football's Greatest Managers with a controversial choice, a manager who's revered and reviled at the same time, one who triggered intense discussions on whether the was the God or the Devil of Football Managers...but undisputedly one of the Greatest Football Managers of all time!
He ruled his teams with a combination of dictatorial discipline, gruesome training regimes, bizarre psychological habits, military-style training camps, and strict dietary plans. Nobody possessed a fiercer will to win – and nobody went further in order to achieve it. His methods could be cruel and heartless, his teams ruthless and cynical. An egocentric, he revelled in the attention. “Go ahead and judge him as the mood takes you,” Gianni Brera, the influential Italian football columnist, wrote in 1966. “Clown and genius, buffoon and ascetic, rogue and model father, sultan and faithful husband, swaggering fool and quiet achiever, delinquent and competent, megalomaniac and health fanatic. Herrera is all of the above and more.”
Early Life:
Known as ‘HH’ to his friends, Herrera was born in Argentina in 1916 to Spanish parents. His father, Francisco, was an exiled anarchist from Andalusia, and a carpenter by trade. His mother, Maria Gavilán Martínez, was a cleaner. Doubts surrounded Herrera’s date of birth. His French, Spanish and Argentine passports claimed he had been born in 1916, but his official website says he falsified the date to give himself six extra years (
) . The date on the original document had apparently been 10 April, 1910.Early Football Career:
In 1920, Herrera’s family left Argentina for Casablanca where he started playing football. He was an imposing defender, but of limited ability. A knee injury in his mid-20s hampered Herrera’s ambitions. In 1945, he rejoined Stade Français, as head coach. Three years later he joined Real Valladolid, before a stint with Atlético Madrid from 1949 to 1953 brought him two La Liga titles. He proceeded to coach Málaga, Deportivo de La Coruña, and Sevilla, before managing Portuguese club Belenenses in 1957-58.
Barcelona:
In 1958, Barcelona hired Herrera on a mission to dethrone Real Madrid. The arrival of Di Stefano changed Real Madrid giving them multiple league and European wins while Barca rarely qualified. The situation was desperate. Barça had an extraordinary side, with players such as Luis Suárez, László Kubala, Sándor Kocsis and Zoltán Czibor. But a mentality of inferiority and victimisation had pervaded the club. Herrera recognised Barça’s psychological frailty and sought to rectify it.
During the first one, players vomited. Perceived weaknesses got no sympathy. One player complained he was sick, only to be sent back into training. When another appeared with a plaster cast, Herrera broke it off. On one occasion, according to Lowe, a player was suspected of being led astray by his girlfriend. The club had tried to break up the couple, even hiring private detectives, but to no avail. When told of the situation, Herrera suggested that they hire someone to sleep with her.
Herrera delivered the title in his first season. That meant qualification to the European Cup. In 1959-60, Barça reached the semifinals and met Madrid, who were yet to lose in the competition. Herrera dropped Kubala (whose off pitch drinking lifestyle did not go well with the manager) and barca lost 6-2 on aggregate. Barça later won La Liga for a second time, but Herrera left the club. They would not win another league title until 1974.
Internazionale and HH's version of Catenaccio:
In 1960, Herrera signed a lucrative contract with Internazionale. “When I came to Inter, there was a terrible ambience, There were boards everywhere about past championships, very impressive you understand, but so distant.” Herrera told Kuper.
Contrary to the popular beliefs Herrera did not invent the Catenaccio system. It's origin's can be traced to Karl Rappan in Switzerland and then popularized in Europe by Nereo Rocco. It was Rocco's Milan that contributed heavily to the myth of catenaccio and its reputation suggesting an ultra-defensive system where five defenders sit deep, protected by aggressive ball-winners; a game plan designed to ruin football as a spectacle; to win at all costs. Rocco is said to have told his team: “Kick anything that moves; if it’s the ball, so much the better.”
Brera wrote that Herrera turned to catenaccio in sheer desperation after a poor start in the early 1960s. That claim is supported by Arrigo Sacchi “When he first arrived, he played attacking football. And then it changed. I remember a game against Rocco’s Padova. Inter dominated. Padova crossed the halfway line three times, scored twice and hit the post. And Herrera was crucified in the media. So what did he do? He started playing with a libero, told Suárez to sit deep and hit long balls, and started playing counter-attacking football. For me, La Grande Inter had great players, but it was a team that had just one objective: winning.”
Herrera claimed his system was misunderstood, because others had copied it and left out several attacking principles. This is supported by Mazzola, who believes the misconception is rooted in the European campaigns that served to establish Inter’s notoriety. “When I hear about Inter playing catenaccio, I have to say we played about six matches with catenaccio and 40 matches with attacking football,” Mazzola told FIFA.com. “I remember my team-mates Picchi and Guarneri, two centre-backs, who during San Siro home games could spend 60 minutes looking into the stands, trying to spot a girl to take out that evening, because the opposition only played in their half. But then, when we played abroad – and I guess this was a mistake – we didn’t feel very comfortable and secure, and stayed back more. We had five attacking players in the side, six if you include Facchetti, who used to get forward a lot, something that no one else did at the time. It’s true that we sometimes employed a very defensive system away from home, but we regularly played 4-2-4, and everyone worked really hard.”
The team also had a nickname: La Grande Inter. This was not undeserved. They were disciplined, durable, steely, skilful, spirited; fortified by Herrera’s fitness regime and team-building. The tactic was catenaccio, but with vital tweaks. Giacinto Facchetti, an athletic former centre-forward converted into an adventurous left-back, wreaked havoc down the flank. In 1965-66, he scored ten league goals. Centrally played an uncompromising sweeper with an excellent long pass – Picchi – and two centre-backs, Aristide Guarneri and Tarcisio Burgnich. The entire right flank was occupied by Jair, a hard-running Brazilian winger. In midfield, Suárez pulled the strings from deep. Corso loitered on the left, while Sandro Mazzola – son of the legendary Torino captain Valentino – played off the main striker.
In 1960-61, Inter flew out of the blocks ending the season with 73 goals in 34 games. The next season, Inter struck 59, but conceded three less; 31. The year after, Inter reached their statistical pinnacle. They shipped 20 goals, and although they struck only 56 times, it was enough to win the league. In 1963-64, the defence held firm again, conceding 21, while the attack hit 54. The second league title under Herrera, in 1965, was more entertaining, with 29 conceded and 68 scored. Between 1960-65, Inter enjoyed only two league campaigns of exceptional defending. They could be masterful defenders when they wanted, as Foot writes “Herrera’s enduring reputation as the ‘controversial missionary of catenaccio’ is built more on what was seen as the cynical will-to-win of his teams – their attitude – than on the way they actually played football”.
Defeat / Pivotal change in world football / Lisbon Lions / Total Football:
Football historians will carefully supply the single cataclysmic events that have changed the direction of football since World War II, and they are usually associated with Herrera. Celtic’s shock European Cup win in Lisbon in 1967 over Herrera’s Inter, a team seemingly invincible at the time, set the club, its coach and the system into something of a tailspin. Inter were feared and despised, but it was difficult to argue with the efficiency of their play and the challenge it offered to everyone to subvert it and usher in a new era of less cynical football. Jock Stein’s Celtic were too much an accidental confluence of great individuals to be considered the architects of Herrera’s downfall. Rinus Michel’s ‘Total Football’ conceit of the 1970s was the true inverse of the system, and Ajax’s victory over Inter in 1972 was probably a more significant event, but it’s an inescapable fact that Herrera gave us all this. It’s a sort of Yin-Yang view of the football universe, in that the presence of one paradigm will inevitably give rise to its opposite.
Later Years:
In 1967-68, after Inter slumped to fifth, Herrera left for AS Roma. Down in the capital, Herrera never reproduced the success he had had at Inter. In five years, he only won the Coppa Italia, in 1969. In 1973 after the controversy surrounding the death of Giuliano Taccola which was attributed to the training regime of Herrera, he left Roma to rejoin Inter. He oversaw an unsuccessful season, before suffering a heart attack. He blamed stress, and opted to quit coaching.
Coaching Style:
Discipline:
Discipline was the byword under Herrera. Players would cross Herrera at their peril. No individualistic quality trumped the value of obedience. Herrera cultivated what became known as the ritiro. They were no-nonsense training camps where players were locked up in hotels for days, surrounded by staff, pitches and equipment. The intention was to increase concentration before games. The camps could be brutal. Inter would book up entire hotels, so no other people were in sight. The players swapped family and friends for running and tactical drilling. When English forward Gerry Hitchens left the club, he said it felt like “coming out of the bloody army”. Slackness rarely went unpunished. During a cross-country run, Wilson writes, Hitchens, Suárez and Corso fell behind the group and arrived late at the base. They discovered that the bus had left, and were forced to make the six-mile journey back to Milan on their own.
Player/Crowd Psychology:
Herrera possessed an intuitive understanding of his players’ psyche. During one tour, according to Lowe, when Czibor bemoaned having to stay away from home for so long, Herrera promised he could go back if he scored thrice. He hit a hat-trick in the first match. To the Catalans, he talked ‘Colours of Catalonia, play for your nation.’ And to the foreigners, I talked money,” Antoni Ramallets, the goalkeeper, told “He had files on everything. He could tell you about the parents of some Italian or German, what day he was born, everything.”
Critics often felt he went too far in pursuit of victory. More than once, these included his own players. “I’ve been accused of being tyrannical and completely ruthless with my players,” he said, according to Jonathan Wilson’s book Inverting the Pyramid: The History of Football Tactics(2008). “But I merely implemented things that were later copied by every single club: hard work, perfectionism, physical training, diets, and three days of concentration before every game.”
The demands of discipline and abstention were modelled on Herrera’s own private life. He never smoked and rarely drank. According to his daughter, Luna, his pasta dishes contained only olive oil and parmesan. He did yoga every morning. When awaking, he would tell himself: “I am strong, calm, I fear nothing, I am beautiful.” He was even wary of drinking too much water, hiding the bottle on the floor and guarding it with his feet when dining with his children.
The pre-match routines could border on the bizarre. He embraced his players before kick-off, and held one-on-one meetings known as ‘confessions’. He hunted information that could strengthen his relationship with the squad, instructing his masseur to overhear football-related utterances aired when players were in for treatment. Herrera served herbal tea and coffee with aspirin. Suárez, one of the key players, held a belief that if wine was spilled during a meal, he would score in the next game. Prior to crucial matches, Herrera would knock over a glass deliberately.
He emphasised the importance of crowd support, and participated in forming fan associations and networks. “Before away games, he would go on to the pitch first to make the crowd yell at him, so that they were already tired by the time we came out” Adrián Escudero, a member of the Atlético squad, recalled.
End of an Era:
On 9th Nov 1997, Herrera passed away. His ashes rest, after lengthy negotiations, against a brick wall that was granted, refused and then granted once more thanks to the intervention of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, in a marble niche hidden in the ivy of the Anglican cemetery on the island cemetery of San Michele in Venice.
Loved or hated, there is absolutely no doubt of his lasting legacy to the world of football!
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