Serie A’s focus this weekend will be trained on a coaching debutant as he takes his seat on the AC Milan bench and patrols the San Siro technical area for his first assignment in charge of a senior team.
The selection of the charismatic Clarence Seedorf to a demanding post excites, but he is in treacherous territory, as his initial glances around the top flight of Serie A will have confirmed.
Seedorf begins his managerial career at home against Verona on Sunday night and with Milan 11th in the standings. He will have looked around the competition Milan must face between now and May and probably come to a firm conclusion: Italy is at present an unstable place for coaches.
Just consider the changes this month alone. When Massimiliano Allegri was pushed towards the Milan exit door last weekend, his team having lost 4-3 to Serie A newcomers, Sassuolo, he became January’s fourth newly unemployed boss.
By Wednesday that was five as Catania announced the removal of Luigi De Canio, who had been in charge for less than three months.
His replacement is Rolando Maran, who needed no lengthy introductions when he was revealed as the man the island club has hopes will steer them to survival in the elite division. Maran had been sacked by bottom-of-the-pile Catania to bring in De Canio last October.
Sometimes, the Italian managerial merry-go-round resembles not so much a hungry monster, chewing its way through coach after coach, as an elaborate form of job-share, based on shift patterns. One man clocks off, takes a rest and is back on again in next to no time.
Sicilian clubs seem to specialise in that. For Catania this season, read Palermo in 2012/13, where coaches were changed four times in nine months. Giuseppe Sannino started the campaign in charge of Palermo and, by the time he was reappointed in early March, Gian Piero Gasperini had been given the job and sacked twice. Sandwiched between them, Alberto Malesani had come in and been kicked out. Gasperini had been Sannino’s replacement in the autumn, Sannino was then replacing Gasperini before spring. Palermo were relegated.
Normally, the presence of Palermo and their explosive president, Maurizio Zamperini, in the 20-strong cast list of Italian football’s hirers and firers means the average duration of coach-per-job is several degrees lower than it might be otherwise. But even without Palermo, the Serie A has kept its revolving doors well-oiled. In the past 12 months, 16 changes of coach have taken place at the clubs in the top tier.
Among the most bizarre were the events at Lazio. Vladimir Petkovic, who last season bought a serenity and composure to the Rome club, had lost some of his knack in the first half of the 2013/14 campaign. It was clear he was looking to long-term future elsewhere when he agreed to take over the Switzerland national squad after the Brazil World Cup.
That, his bosses at Lazio decided, implied a “lack of focus”; but the dumping of Petkovic became something of a legal tug of war. He maintained he was still coach until the club properly fired him, which they eventually did, formally, only after his successor, Edy Reja, had begun taking charge of training.
Reja, a veteran of the profession, is another returning to an old haunt. He coached Lazio for just over two years until May 2012. His second spell has started promisingly, with a 1-0 win over Inter and Reja’s team go to Udinese tomorrow unbeaten in his two fixtures so far.
At Bologna, Davide Ballardini, who a year ago was accepting the vacancy at Genoa – that adventure ended in June – has just taken over from the sacked Stefano Pioli and confronts a tough start to his bid to drag the club out of the relegation zone, hosting Napoli.
At Livorno, 19th in the table, Attilio Perotti, replacing the dismissed Davide Nicola, has a still tougher initiation at Roma on Saturday.
As for 37-year-old Seedorf, self-confident and admired for his distinguished past with Milan, he at least knows that in the trigger-happy Serie A, where he has chosen to start his coaching career, he is with one of the more patient employers.
In his 10-year playing career at Milan, which ended in 2012, he worked under just three coaches, Carlo Ancelotti, Leonardo and Allegri. But only the last of that trio ever faced as steep a climb back to the summit of the league as the one Seedorf must get to grips with.
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