The ‘unconventional’ madness of the new Massimiliano Alvini

According to a theory I subscribe to, the Tuscan people are mad. It is a kind of madness – a chronic shock, a short circuit – that leads them to look at things from the side, finding the most interesting angle there. A perspective that is never head-on, making them surprising, in some ways unclassifiable, incomprehensible, and at odds with objective reality. In short, the Tuscans – a group to which I immodestly belong – are different from others; perhaps they’re a bit off, I don’t know, but they’re certainly unique. They rarely show solidarity amongst themselves; on the contrary, they judge one another extremely harshly, finding faults that don’t exist and gaps in character that, in their eyes, are unbridgeable.

For this reason, I was taken aback to read that a seemingly mad Tuscan (of that sort of madness, and so on) like Silvio Baldini, the manager of our Under-21 national team, considers a fellow Tuscan to be a true embodiment of the kind of football we should be but are not yet. Baldini was referring to Massimiliano Alvini, a native of Fucecchio, a hamlet near Florence, who is currently manager of Frosinone. “His team,” Baldini said, “embodies Italian football.” The remark prompted further reflection on what exactly he meant. Alvini has a lengthy career behind him, having started out as a manager 26 years ago. As a player, he only spent a few seasons as an amateur, cut short by a serious knee injury. In 2000, he began coaching in Signa’s youth teams and from there, slowly, like a mountaineer on a cliff face, he climbed the mountain, reaching the summit (Serie A) only 22 years later, with Cremonese. With the Lombardy side, he played a simple brand of football, focusing on the front foot rather than the back. His spell lasted just 18 matches, during which Cremonese never won and, if anything, lost a great deal – 11 times, in fact – before he was sacked.

He appears to be one of those coaches destined to return home somewhat frustrated, telling his wife he is not cut out for the top level. There are many similar stories, and they all sound entirely plausible. Not least because Alvini went on to repeat the pattern over the next two years. He moved to Spezia and was sacked, then to Cosenza, where they dismissed him only to rehire him – yet still could not avoid relegation. If a Tuscan is mad, life is even madder, so much so that it offered the manager from Fucecchio an incredible new opportunity. It happened in Frosinone, where he secured a magnificent promotion, followed by today’s excellent sixth-place finish in Serie A.

What has happened? What has happened is that, over the last four or five years, Alvini has changed his philosophy. From a manager who was content simply to play the game, he has transformed himself into a manager who wants to dominate. He has studied the best – from Pep to Luis, from Jürgen to Luciano – and has adapted his style of play. His vision of football, once head-on, has become more lateral, leading observers to believe that even an unlikely Tuscan—a bit fair-haired and a bit greying, aged 56, who has always been mired in the lower echelons of the game—could actually become a role model, just as the ‘anarchist’ Baldini has declared. Such is life, my friends. One can choose to settle for the status quo or evolve, grow, and change, adopting a perspective that only a Tuscan can offer.