Maurizio Sarri reveals his approach to football was partly influenced by playing at semi-professional level. “I cannot see a reason for football without fun.”
The former Napoli Coach, now at Chelsea, puts entertainment above all else both for the fans and his players.
“I used to love the training. I loved being in a group and part of a team. I had a real taste for working hard and sweating. The match was more like suffering! Because of the type of football at the time. A struggle,” Sarri told the official Chelsea website.
Maurizio Sarri reveals his approach to football was partly influenced by playing at semi-professional level. “I cannot see a reason for football without fun.”
The former Napoli Coach, now at Chelsea, puts entertainment above all else both for the fans and his players.
“I used to love the training. I loved being in a group and part of a team. I had a real taste for working hard and sweating. The match was more like suffering! Because of the type of football at the time. A struggle,” Sarri told the official Chelsea website.
“My job as a defender may have been to stop opponents playing, but the first time I went to the pitch, I wanted to have fun. I think it is the same now, otherwise it is only work, only a job. I cannot see a reason for football without fun.
“In Italy there is no doubt a culture of the result, but in the last few years it is changing in Italy as well, there is a tendency to play more of an entertainment game. More looking after the public is starting in Italy as well.
“In those days I was not studying the tactics too much. I only started to see football in another way with Arrigo Sacchi’s coaching at AC Milan. Then I started to see more the tactical part of the match.”
As Sarri has said many times before, he grew up a Napoli supporter because that is the city where he was born, even though he moved to Tuscany as a child.
“The first time I went to watch a big football match live was with my father. The match was Fiorentina against Napoli, because my father knew very well that I was a fan of Napoli, which is where I was born. I think I was five or six and my father brought me to the stadium in Florence, near where we lived, to see Napoli.
“If I am asked who my first football hero was, at the time the symbol of Napoli was Antonio Juliano. He was a midfielder and the only Neapolitan playing for Napoli.
“In 1982, when the World Cup was held in Spain, Italy won it. I remember for the final I was in Sardinia and I watched the game on a big screen in the main square of the city. It was very emotional. It is one of those sporting events that stays in your mind for ever.
“It was not the same for me in 2006 when Italy won again, probably because I was at a different age, so I was less emotional.”