Inverting the Pyramid: The History of Football Tactics

by Jonathan Wilson

  The effectiveness of Herrera’s system could hardly be questioned. They won Serie A in 1963, 1965 and 1966 - missing out in 1964 only after losing a playoff to Bologna, were European champions in 1964 and 1965 and reached the final again in 1967. Success alone, though, does not explain why Shankly so hated Herrera and catenaccio, even allowing for their perceived defensiveness. The problem was the skulduggery that went along with it.

  Even at Barcelona there had been dark rumours. Local journalists who felt aggrieved by Herrera’s abrasive manner began referring to him as ‘the pharmacy cup coach’ and, although players of the time deny the allegations, they are given credence by what followed. ‘He was serious at his job, but had a good sense of humour, and knew how to get the best out of his players,’ said the Spain midfielder Fusté, who came through Barcelona’s youth ranks during Herrera’s reign. ‘All that stuff about him giving us all drugs is all lies. What he was, was a good psychologist.’

  That he certainly was, but the suggestion he was also a decent pharmacologist never went away. Most notorious were the claims made in his autobiography by Ferruccio Mazzola, Sandro’s younger and less talented brother. ‘I’ve seen with my eyes how players were treated,’ he said. ‘I saw Helenio Herrera providing pills that were to be placed under our tongues. He used to experiment on us reserve players before giving them to the first-team players. Some of us would eventually spit them out. It was my brother Sandro that suggested that if I had no intention of taking them, to just run to the toilet and spit them out. Eventually Herrera found out and decided to dilute them in coffee. From that day on “Il Caffè Herrera” became a habit at Inter.’ Sandro vehemently denied the allegations, and was so angered by them he subsequently broke off relations with his brother, but the rumours were widespread. Even if they were not true, their proliferation further sullied the image of the club, and the fact that they were so widely believed is indicative of how far people thought Herrera would go in his pursuit of victory.

  At Inter, tactics, psychology and ethos became commingled. Herrera might have had a case when he argued that his side’s tactical approach was not necessarily defensive, but it can hardly be denied that there was a negativity about their mentality. In The Italian Job, Gianluca Vialli and Gabriele Marcotti speak at length of the insecurity that pervades Italian football; in Herrera’s Inter it revealed itself as paranoia and a willingness to adopt means that would have appalled Chapman, never mind an idealist like Hugo Meisl. Brera, eccentrically, always maintained that Italians had to play defensive football because they lacked physical strength. Gamesmanship became a way of life. Ahead of the 1967 European Cup final against Celtic, for instance, Herrera arrived in Glasgow by private jet to watch Celtic play Rangers at Ibrox. Before leaving Italy, he had offered to give Jock Stein a lift back so he could see Inter’s match against Juventus. Stein, wisely, did not cancel the tickets he had booked on a scheduled flight, and his caution was justified when Herrera withdrew the invitation on arrival in Glasgow, saying the plane was too small for a man of Stein’s girth. The taxi and tickets Inter had promised to lay on in Turin similarly failed to materialise, and Stein ended up seeing the game only because a journalist persuaded gatemen to admit him with a press card.

  They were minor examples, but even leaving aside the accusations of drug-taking and match-fixing, there were times Herrera appeared monstrously heartless. When Guarneri’s father died the night before a match against AC Milan, for instance, Herrera kept the news from him until after the game. In 1969, when he had left Inter and become coach of Roma, the forward Giulano Taccola died under Herrera’s care. He had been ill for some time and, after an operation to remove his tonsils brought no relief, further medical examination revealed he had a heart murmur. Herrera played Taccola in a Serie A game at Sampdoria, but he lasted just forty-five minutes before having to be taken off. A fortnight later Herrera had him travel with the squad to Sardinia for an away game against Cagliari. He had no intention of playing him, but on the morning of the game, he made Taccola train on the beach with the rest of the squad, despite a cold and gusting wind. Taccola watched the match from the stands, collapsed in the dressing room after the game and died a few hours later.

  Then there were the allegations that Herrera habitually rigged games. The suggestions Inter manipulated referees first surfaced - at international level at least - after their European Cup semi-final against Borussia Dortmund in 1964. They had drawn the first leg in Germany 2-2, and won the return at the San Siro 2-0, a game in which they were significantly helped by an early injury to Dortmund’s Dutch right-half Hoppy Kurrat, caused by a kick from Suárez. The Yugoslav referee Branko Tesanić took no action. That might have passed without notice, but then a Yugoslav tourist met Tesaniç on holiday that summer, and claimed the official had told him that his holiday had been paid for by Inter.

  In the final in Vienna, Inter met Real Madrid. Tagnin was detailed to man-mark Di Stefano, Guarneri neutralised Puskás, and two Mazzola goals gave them a 3-1 win. The Monaco forward Yvon Douis had criticised Inter’s approach earlier in the tournament, and Madrid’s Lucien Müller echoed his complaints after the final. Herrera simply pointed to the trophy. They were more attacking in Serie A the following season, scoring sixty-eight goals, but they had lost none of their defensive resolve. Leading 3-1 from the first leg of their quarter-final against Rangers, they conceded after seven minutes at Ibrox, but held out superbly. That was the legitimate side of catenaccio; what followed in the semi-final against Liverpool was rather less admirable.

  Liverpool took the first leg at Anfield 3-1, after which, Shankly said, an Italian journalist told him, ‘You will never be allowed to win.’ They weren’t. They were kept awake the night before the game by rowdy local fans surrounding their hotel - a complaint that would become common in European football - but it was when the game started that it became apparent something was seriously wrong. Eight minutes in, Corso struck an indirect free-kick straight past the Liverpool goalkeeper Tommy Lawrence, and Ortiz de Mendibil, the Spanish referee, allowed the goal to stand. Two minutes later Joaquin Peiro pinched the ball from Lawrence as he bounced it in preparation for a kick downfield, and again De Mendibil gave the goal. Facchetti sealed the win with a brilliant third.

  De Mendibil was later implicated in the match-fixing scandal uncovered by Brian Glanville and reported in the Sunday Times in 1974, in which Dezso Solti, a Hungarian, was shown to have offered $5,000 and a car to the Portuguese referee Francisco Lobo to help Juventus through the second leg of their European Cup semi-final against Derby County in 1973. Glanville believes he was in the pay of Juventus’s club secretary, Italo Allodi, who had previously worked at Inter. He showed that the games of Italian clubs in Europe tended to be overseen by a small pool of officials, and that when they were, those Italian clubs were disproportionately successful. In so doing, Glanville simply proved what anecdotal evidence had suggested all along: referees were being paid off. It was that that Shankly could not forgive.

  The 1965 final against Benfica - played, controversially, at the San Siro - was almost a case study in the classic Hererra match. Inter took the lead three minutes before half-time as Jair’s shot skidded through Costa Pereira in the Benfica goal, but even after he had been injured, leaving his side down to ten men and with Germano, a defender, in goal, even though they were effectively playing at home, Inter continued to defend, happy to protect their lead. Was it pragmatism, or was it that, for all Herrera’s efforts at building self-confidence, they didn’t quite have faith in their own ability? Was it even that they had come to rely not just on their own efforts, but on those of the referee?

  Benfica, losing their second final in three years, blamed the curse of Guttmann, but the truth was that their attacking approach had become outmoded; at club level at least, catenaccio - by means both justified and illegitimate - had superseded the remnants of the classic Danubian style that still lingered in their 4-2-4. When all else was equal, though - when referees had not been bough
t off - catenaccio could still come unstuck against talented attacking opposition. Inter won the scudetto again in 1965-66, but were beaten by Real Madrid in the semi-final of the European Cup. The referee for the second leg of that tie was the Hungarian György Vadas. He officiated with scrupulous fairness as Madrid secured a 1-1 draw that took them through by a 2-1 aggregate, but years later he revealed to the Hungarian journalist Peter Borenich that he too had been approached by Solti. He, unlike an unknown number of others, turned Inter down.

  It was the following year, though, that Herrera’s Inter disintegrated, and yet the season had begun superbly, with a record-breaking run of seven straight victories. By mid-April they were four points clear of Juventus at the top of Serie A, and in Europe had had their revenge on Real Madrid, beating them 3-0 on aggregate in the quarter-finals. And then something went horribly wrong. Two 1-1 draws against CSKA Sofia in the semi-final forced them to a playoff - handily held in Bologna after they promised the Bulgarians a three-quarter share of the gate-receipts - and although they won that 1-0, it was as though all the insecurities, all the doubts, had rushed suddenly to the surface. They drew against Lazio and Cagliari, and lost 1-0 to Juventus, reducing their lead at the top to two points. They drew against Napoli, but Juve were held at Mantova. They drew again, at home to Fiorentina, and this time Juve closed the gap, beating Lanerossi Vicenza. With two matches of their season remaining - the European Cup final against Celtic in Lisbon, and a league match away to Mantova - two wins would have completed another double, but the momentum was against them.

  Herrera was said to have fallen out with Allodi, and was being courted by Real Madrid; Suárez was reported also to be considering a return to Spain, the homeland of his fiancée; and Moratti was believed to be keen to give up the presidency to devote more time to his business interests. Worse, Suárez was ruled out of the final with what was variously described as a thigh strain or cartilage damage, while Mazzola had suffered flu in the days leading up to the game.

  Celtic had dabbled with a defensive system, away to Dukla Prague in the semi-final, but although they got away with a goalless draw, that game had made clear that their strength was attacking. Their basic system was the 4-2-4 that had spread after the 1958 World Cup, but the two centre-forwards, Stevie Chalmers and Willie Wallace, took turns dropping deep, trying to draw out Inter’s central defensive markers. The two wingers, Jimmy Johnstone and Bobby Lennox, were encouraged to drift inside, creating space for the two attacking full-backs, Jim Craig and Tommy Gemmell. If Inter were going to defend, the logic seemed to be, Celtic were going to attack with everything in their power.

  And Inter were set on defending, particularly after Mazzola gave them a seventh-minute lead from the penalty spot. They had done it against Benfica in 1965, and they tried to do it again, but this was not the Inter of old. Doubts had come to gnaw at them, and as Celtic swarmed over them they intensified. ‘We just knew, even after fifteen minutes, that we were not going to keep them out,’ Burgnich said. ‘They were first to every ball; they just hammered us in every area of the pitch. It was a miracle that we were still 1-0 up at half-time. Sometimes in those situations with each minute that passes your confidence increases and you start to believe. Not on that day. Even in the dressing room at half-time we looked at each other and we knew that we were doomed.’

  For Burgnich, the ritiro had become by then counter-productive, serving only to magnify the doubts and the negativity. ‘I think I saw my family three times during that last month,’ he said. ‘That’s why I used to joke that Giacinto Facchetti, my room-mate, and I were like a married couple. I certainly spent far more time with him than my wife. The pressure just kept building up; there was no escape, nowhere to turn. I think that certainly played a big part in our collapse, both in the league and in the final.’

  On arriving in Portugal, Herrera had taken his side to a hotel on the sea-front, half an hour’s drive from Lisbon. As usual, Inter booked out the whole place. ‘There was nobody there, except for the players and the coaches, even the club officials stayed elsewhere,’ Burgnich said. ‘I’m not joking, from the minute our bus drove through the gates of the hotel to the moment we left for the stadium three days later we did not see a single human being apart from the coaches and the hotel staff. A normal person would have gone crazy in those circumstances. After many years we were somewhat used to it, but by that stage, even we had reached our breaking point. We felt the weight of the world on our shoulders and there was no outlet. None of us could sleep. I was lucky if I got three hours a night. All we did was obsess over the match and the Celtic players. Facchetti and I, late at night, would stay up and listen to our skipper, Armando Picchi, vomiting from the tension in the next room. In fact, four guys threw up the morning of the game and another four in the dressing room before going out on the pitch. In that sense we had brought it upon ourselves.’

  Celtic, by contrast, made great play of being relaxed, which only made Inter feel worse. In terms of mentality, it was catenaccio’s reductio ad absurdum, the point beyond which the negativity couldn’t go. They had created the monster, and it ended up turning on its maker. Celtic weren’t being stifled, and the chances kept coming. Bertie Auld hit the bar, the goalkeeper Giuliano Sarti saved brilliantly from Gemmell, and then, seventeen minutes into the second half, the equaliser arrived. It came thanks to the two full-backs who, as Stein had hoped, repeatedly outflanked Inter’s marking. Bobby Murdoch found Craig on the right, and he advanced before cutting a cross back for Gemmell to crash a right-foot shot into the top corner. It was not, it turned out, possible to mark everybody, particularly not those arriving from deep positions.

  The onslaught continued. ‘I remember, at one point, Picchi turned to the goalkeeper and said, “Giuliano, let it go, just let it go. It’s pointless, sooner or later they’ll get the winner,”’ Burgnich said. ‘I never thought I would hear those words, I never imagined my captain would tell our keeper to throw in the towel. But that only shows how destroyed we were at that point. It’s as if we did not want to prolong the agony.’

  Inter, exhausted, could do no more than launch long balls aimlessly forward, and they succumbed with five minutes remaining. Again a full-back was instrumental, Gemmell laying the ball on for Murdoch, whose mishit shot was diverted past Sarti by Chalmers. Celtic became the first non-Latin side to lift the European Cup, and Inter were finished.

  Worse followed at Mantova. As Juventus beat Lazio, Sarti allowed a shot from Di Giacomo - the former Inter forward - to slip under his body, and the scudetto was lost. ‘We just shut down mentally, physically and emotionally,’ said Burgnich. Herrera blamed his defenders. Guarneri was sold to Bologna and Picchi to Varese. ‘When things go right,’ the sweeper said, ‘it’s because of Herrera’s brilliant planning. When things go wrong, it’s always the players who are to blame.’

  As more and more teams copied catenaccio, its weaknesses became increasingly apparent. The problem Rappan had discovered - that the midfield could be swamped - had not been solved. The tornante could alleviate that problem, but only by diminishing the attack. ‘Inter got away with it because they had Jair and Corso in wide positions and both were gifted,’ Maradei explained. ‘And, also, they had Suárez who could hit those long balls. But for most teams it became a serious problem. And so, what happened is that rather than converting full-backs into liberi, they turned inside-forwards into liberi. This allowed you, when you won possession, to push him up into midfield and effectively have an extra passer in the middle of the park. This was the evolution from catenaccio to what we call “il giocco all’ Italiano” - “the Italian game”.’

  Internazionale 1 Celtic 2, European Cup Final, Estadio Nacional, Lisbon, 25 May 1967

  In 1967-68, morale and confidence shot, Inter finished only fifth, thirteen points behind the champions Milan, and Herrera left for Roma. Catenaccio didn’t die with la grande Inter, but the myth of its invincibility did. Celtic had proved attacking football had a future, and it wasn’t just S
hankly who was grateful for that.

  Chapter Eleven

  After the Angels

  ∆∇ The World Cup in 1958 was, in a very different way, just as significant in shaping the direction of Argentinian football as it had been for Brazilian. Where for Brazil success, and the performances of bright young things such as Pelé and Garrincha, confirmed them in their individualist attacking ways, for Argentina a shocking failure left them questioning the fundamentals that had underpinned their conception of the game for at least three decades. Tactical shifts tend to be gradual, but in this case it can be pinpointed to one game: the era of la nuestra ended with Argentina’s 6-1 defeat to Czechoslovakia in Helsingborg on 15 June 1958.

  The change in the offside law in 1925 had passed all but unnoticed in Argentina, and an idealistic belief in 2-3-5 - or, perhaps more accurately, simply in playing, for the notion that there could be another way seems never to have occurred - carried them right through until Renato Cesarini took charge of River Plate in 1939. Even the Hungarian Emérico Hirschl, who arrived at Gimnasia de la Plata in 1932 and moved to River in 1935, and was accused of importing European ideas, seems to have favoured a classic Danubian pyramid, although probably by then with withdrawn inside-forwards. Certainly his philosophy was an attacking one, as a record 106 goals in thirty-four games in the double championship-winning year of 1937 indicates. Cesarini played in that side, but it was after he had succeeded Hirschl that River reached their peak.

  Cesarini was one of the original oriundi, who left Argentina for Italy in the late 1920s. He had been born in Senigallia, Italy, in 1906, but his family emigrated to Argentina when he was a few months old. He began his playing career with Chacarita Juniors, but, in 1929, Juventus enticed him back to the land of his birth. He was spectacularly successful there, winning five consecutive Serie A titles and developing such a knack of scoring crucial late goals that even now in Italy last-minute winners are said to have been scored in the zona cesarini.