Former Juve and Bolofna coach Gigi Maifredi believes Juventus, Napoli and Atalanta will be the biggest challengers to Inter next season. Speaking with La Gazzetta dello Sport, Maifredi touched on a number of topics, including the title race, Motta’s Juve and what went wrong for the Azzurri this summer:
You decide where to start.
“From the fact that the next will be the championship… of coaches. Or at least I hope it will be the Festival of coaches, because the ‘Coverciano graduates’ are ultimately the best of all. I would like to see new proposals and I believe that the real ‘top players’ will be precisely the coaches, starting with the good Inzaghi who coaches the strongest team.”
Let’s analyze Motta and the move from Bologna to Juventus: as you did.
“Two very different passages: I arrived in an entrenched environment and had to change everything. Then I made my mistakes, including not signing a three-year contract that the Agnellis had offered me. I improved many things but I didn’t have patience. Thiago, instead, arrives in a system that he only needs to develop and improve, moreover with a sports director who from now on is playing almost everything because he chose him to start the new course. Let’s say that Giuntoli last year was there and wasn’t there, you see…”
Who or what intrigues you?
“The teams that failed the year before are always intriguing. So also Juve, which for years has not been looked at with the eyes that Juve deserves. Has it redone the midfield in a big way? If Koopmeiners arrives, he knows Serie A, the others don’t yet, so we need to wait to judge… Allegri has brought the team to the Champions League and added an Italian Cup: he’s a great coach but he hasn’t improved anything. Indeed, he put Chiesa in a position to perform less. Thiago? In Bologna he did a fantastic thing, he will bring his beautiful game: we will need to have patience, and I’m talking about Juventus fans, to wait for him if the first results don’t take off.”
And in Bologna?
“It takes great courage to arrive after Motta. And Italiano has shown it. Then, you know, his first guarantor is Sartori, a champion: history says it, not me. Last year he saw the team at the end of August, understood that an important piece was missing in the system and got Freuler. A genius: with his protection, Italiano will have to re-demonstrate that he has quality.”
Will Atalanta ever be a Scudetto contender?
“It’s not said that it can never become one. It’s not said. Gasp is formidable, Scamacca must confirm himself like Lookman; and Zaniolo is a nice intuition: he has power, class, he doesn’t have the… head but in Bergamo they make you stay there, on the piece, extraordinary workers. So he can only explode.”
Inter always ‘uber alles’?
“Always, but it will be a more fought championship than the last. To Inzaghi I would have said very good if he had always inserted, changing, Frattesi as a starter, an incredible player. Plus now he has Taremi, a strong type, and a midfielder of superior intelligence, Zielinski: he can not only do three roles for you but, attention, in the long run he could also become an excellent playmaker.”
Excuse me Maifredi: and Fonseca’s Milan?
“Fonseca… Team that remains strong and with Morata in addition, certainly an interesting coach but then we’ll see if the algorithms applied to football work.”
So Inter ahead of all and then?
“Let’s go back to Naples. Conte is a guarantee, one who dictates law and maybe somewhere else this thing wasn’t liked… And with Lukaku, well, together with Juventus and Atalanta he can really become an antagonist of Inter for the Scudetto.”
It will be the championship of coaches, you say. Who excites you?
“Palladino for example: Florence gives you pressure but you have to know how to face it, absorb it. And this too is a decisive step.”
Your advice to coaches?
“Sector coaches are needed. One for each department. Because Thiago, to say, knows what a playmaker should do and who is next to him, but for the movements of a ‘9’ you need a former player of the role. Specific training, experienced people in every technical staff, like for goalkeepers.”
Let’s close with the National Team.
“You know when they say let’s draw a veil? Well. It seemed there were players incapable of thinking with their own heads. If I had been Spalletti, superb in Naples, mind you, I would have resigned that very evening.” Big voice. Shock.
