From his latest outpost as head manager of China, where a monied football dynasty is under rapid construction, Marcello Lippi frequently gets asked about the dynasty he left behind in his native Italy. The extent of it, he admits, continues to surprise him.
But there they are, standing proud across the summits of European leagues, more and more ‘little Lippis’ — stellar managers gaining plaudits for their managerial nous, and generously praising their old mentor, telling how they learnt plenty about motivating men, designing strategy, understanding tactics from Lippi in the period when they worked under him at Juventus.
“I look at the midfielders I had at that time, and, yes, they haven’t done too badly as coaches, have they?” Lippi, 68, remarked recently.
That time between 1995-96 to 1997-98 when his Juventus reached three successive Uefa Champions League finals. Among the players who took orders from Lippi were Antonio Conte and Zinedine Zidane.
Conte the coach followed his mentor to the coach’s office at Juve, and won three league titles; he took up another job Lippi used to hold, in charge of the Italy national team, before embarking on the adventure that looks very likely to raise his reputation even further, manager of Chelsea.
Conte looks down on the rest of the Premier League from a high eyrie. Chelsea are eight points clear with 13 fixtures to go.
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Zidane, meanwhile, took a matter of months to collect as many Champions League titles as a manager as Lippi gathered in his career.
A little over 13 months into his first job as a senior manager, the Frenchman, Conte’s colleague for four seasons in Turin, is on course to add a Spanish Primera Liga crown to the European Cup triumph he oversaw with Real Madrid last May.
They only lead misfiring Barcelona by one point, but they have played two less games, which when completed will likely extend that advantage to something more emphatic.
Not to be forgotten in this parade of former juventini mastering the technical area is the manager enjoying an elevated view over the Russian top flight.
Massimo Carrera, like Zidane, had never been the senior manager of a top-flight team before last year, when he was temporarily put in charge of Spartak Moscow, shortly after joining the club as an assistant to Dmitri Alenichev.
Alenichev lost his post in August, Carrera took the reins and has performed so well that Spartak, five points clear at the head of the Russian Premier League, look favourites to win a first title for 16 years when the calendar resumes, after the winter recess, next month.
Carrera worked with Lippi for four years, leaving Juve after the 1996 Champions League success. After giving up playing in his 40s, he seemed set for a coaching career very much in the background.
He served as Conte’s deputy at Juventus, and worked with Conte again as a member of Italy’s backroom staff between 2014 and 2016.
The Moscow move only came about when Chelsea put a limit on the number of staff Conte was allowed to bring with him to London, and Conte reluctantly split with Carrera.
At the Juve of times past, Lippi admired Conte as a captain, Zidane as a creator, and valued Carrera’s work ethic.
But the player of that period Lippi imagined best suited to becoming a fine manager was Didier Deschamps, hard-working ball-winner, dressing-room galvaniser.
Deschamps’s achievements in management are many, including winning the French league with Marseille, taking Monaco to a Champions League final, and most recently, steering France, his current employer, to the final of Euro 2016.
Deschamps, like Conte, has been a Juventus manager. He guided the club out of a crisis in 2006-07 after they had been punitively demoted to Serie B because of the Calciopoli scandal.
The club, inching towards their sixth straight scudetto in Italy, may be ready to turn again to an old-boy as their next manager.
Word in Italy is that, were Juventus to replace Max Allegri this summer, high on the list of potential successors would be Paulo Sousa.
The Portuguese was a midfield colleague of Conte’s in the indomitable Juve of the mid-1990s and is now in charge of Fiorentina, where his contract expires in June.
Player of the week: Reza Ghoochannejhad, Heerenveen
Heerenveen forward Reza Ghoochannejhad. Edgar Su / Reuters
The Dutch club Heerenveen have quite a tradition for prolific scorers. Four times in the last 12 years, one of theirs has finished at the top of the Eredivisie’s goalscoring chart. This season, a surprise contender in Iran’s Reza Ghoochannejhad.
Happy New Year
Since the Dutch season resumed after the winter break, Ghoochanejhad has become poacher par excellence, his six strikes in the last five league outings carrying him to 13 goals for the Eredivisie season, two shy of the total scored by Nicolai Jorgenson, of Feyenoord. The haul included a hat-trick against champions PSV Eindhoven last month.
Peak of his powers
Goochannejhad, 29, said after that achievement — no other team, let along player, has scored three times in a single game against PSV this league season — that “I am at the top of my game.” The striker with the rusty left foot, notable heading ability and a sharp intelligence around the penalty box has reached double figures for goals in a season before, but never in the Eredivisie.
Heerenveen homecoming
He has had a varied career. Born in Iran, he moved with his parents to the Netherlands at the age of four, and, successful academically and talented at music, he had a choice of career. He pursued football, enrolling at Heerenveen’s academy. He made his debut for the club ten seasons ago, but between then and now he has been on quite a road trip.
Globetrotter
Injury in his early 20s made him consider leaving the professional game. He had already begun studies to become a lawyer when Dutch club Go-Ahead Eagles offered him a short-term deal. Goals followed and he was back on track, albeit flitting between clubs. Between 2009 and 2015, Ghoochannejhad played in both the Dutch first and second divisions, for two clubs in Belgium, for Charlton Athletic in the English Championship and in Kuwait and Qatar.
World Cup highlight
Goochannejhad committed his international career to the land of his birth. He had represented Holland at youth level but accepted without hesitation Iran’s call-up in 2012. He would go on to score his country’s only goal — against Bosnia — at the World Cup finals in Brazil in 2014. At the 2015 Asian Cup, his winning goal against UAE put Iran top of their group in Australia.
Momentum
He rejoined Heerenveen last summer. And team and player clicked. His 15 goals across competitions are already his best yield for a season anywhere. He cites his fitness levels as one explanation. “I have never had such a long uninterrupted run in a team,” he says. He will need to maintain his current form, starting against Twente on Saturday, to put his name on a distinguished honours board of recent Heerenveen hitmen, such as Klaas-Jan Huntelaar, Afonso Alves, Bas Dost and Alfred Finbogason, who all finished seasons as the Eredivisie’s top marksman. For each of those the swift reward was a move to a higher-profile league abroad.
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