was all-out attack.
Zeman performed impressively at Foggia in the early 1990s, before moving to Lazio in 1994, taking the club to second in 1994/95 and third in 1995/96, when his forward trio featured three proper strikers: Alen Bokšić, Pierluigi Casiraghi and the wonderful Giuseppe Signori, who won the Capocannoniere – the title given to Serie A’s top scorer – jointly in 1995/96 with Bari’s Igor Protti. Bokšić then departed for Juventus, so Zeman signed a replacement: Protti, of course. His forward trio now included the two top goalscorers from the previous campaign, although he only lasted midway through 1996/97 before being dismissed. What happened next was somewhat unexpected; Zeman spent the rest of the campaign attending Lazio matches at the Stadio Olimpico, joking that, having frequently been criticised for overseeing a leaky defence, he was assessing how his successor Dino Zoff would fix things. The following season, he was again regularly at the Olimpico, for a very different reason. Now he was coaching Roma.
At Roma, Zeman’s attacking trio offered greater balance. Rather than a trio of outright strikers, Zeman deployed just one, Abel Balbo, flanked by the speedy Paulo Sérgio and a young Francesco Totti, who drifted inside from the left into clever positions between the lines. Zeman’s 4–3–3 became more of a 4–3–1–2, with Totti the number 10.
‘Zemanlandia’, as his style of football became known, exploded into life with Roma’s 6–2 victory over Napoli in early October 1997, an extraordinarily dominant display in which Roma could have reached double figures. Balbo helped himself to a hat-trick, but Roma players were queueing up to provide finishes to their direct passing moves. They subsequently beat Empoli 4–3, Fiorentina 4–1, and both Milan and Brescia 5–0, although their defeats were often heavy too, and traditional Italian coaches particularly enjoyed putting Zeman in his place.
In December Roma lost 3–0 away at a Marco Branca-inspired Inter. ‘Some managers like to play possession football,’ Inter boss Gigi Simoni grinned afterwards. ‘I like to counter-attack. Everyone’s right, so long as they win.’ Zeman, however, insisted he was right even when Roma lost. His team became increasingly attack-minded as the season unfolded, scoring 17 goals in their final five matches to finish fourth, as joint-top scorers alongside champions Juventus. Zeman’s attacking trio provided balance in terms of style and goalscoring contribution: Balbo netted 14 times, Totti 13 and Sérgio 12. Totti also recorded ten assists; this proved to be his breakthrough campaign, and he would dominate Roma for the next two decades.
Roma slipped to sixth place in 1998/99, but again Zeman’s front three sparkled. Balbo had left for Parma, so Zeman promoted the tall, slightly awkward Marco Delvecchio, who managed 18 league goals with Totti and Paulo Sérgio chipping in with 12 apiece from either side. But Zemanlandia became a parody of itself; Roma scored the most goals in Serie A, 65, but conceded 49, more than relegated Vicenza.
The match that summed everything up came four games from the end of the campaign, when Roma hosted an Inter side that hadn’t scored away from home in open play for 700 minutes and had just appointed their fourth manager of the season, the returning, perennially cautious Roy Hodgson. Roma hit four goals, with Totti, Sérgio, Delvecchio and Eusebio Di Francesco all on the scoresheet. But they conceded five. Inter forwards Ronaldo and Iván Zamorano constantly breached Roma’s high defensive line to score two apiece, and then Diego Simeone headed a late winner. Defensive horror shows like this, and the 3–2 loss to Milan, the 3–2 loss to Perugia and the 4–3 loss to Cagliari, meant that Zeman wasn’t considered pragmatic enough to win a title.
Zeman also cemented his outsider status by dramatically accusing Juventus of taking performance-enhancing drugs. Juve doctor Riccardo Agricola was initially given a suspended prison sentence in 2004, then later acquitted. Zeman believes his determination to highlight Serie A’s dark practices hampered him in terms of future employment, and he’s probably right: he spent the next two decades managing the likes of Salernitana, Avellino, Lecce, Brescia, Foggia and Pescara, a succession of modest clubs for a coach who had significantly improved the fortunes of Lazio and Roma, regularly finished in the top five, and helped launch the careers of Alessandro Nesta and Francesco Totti. For all Zeman’s popularity with neutrals, his influence on managerial colleagues was negligible. He remained a cult figure.
Instead, the manager most instrumental in promoting the third attacker was Alberto Zaccheroni. He’d toiled his way up through Italy’s lower divisions, winning promotion from the fourth and third tiers, before working in Serie B and then landing his first Serie A job with newly promoted Udinese, finishing 11th in 1995/96. He was originally a disciple of Sacchi, a 4–4–2 man, so when he found himself with three quality centre-forwards throughout 1996/97, he played only two. He could pick from Oliver Bierhoff, the prolific old-school German target man whose two goals as a substitute had won the Euro 96 final; Paolo Poggi, a hard-working forward who made good runs into the channels; and Márcio Amoroso – a shaven-headed, explosive Brazilian who was inevitably compared to Ronaldo and who topped the goalscoring charts in Brazil, Italy and Germany. Bierhoff and Poggi started the season up front, with Amoroso playing when Bierhoff was injured. With a couple of months remaining in 1996/97, Udinese found themselves three places clear of the relegation zone in Serie A, with tricky trips to Juventus and Parma, first and second in the table, in their next two games.
These contests proved significant. Udinese’s trip to Juventus, defending champions and on their way to another title, produced an unthinkable 3–0 away victory, despite Zaccheroni’s side going down to ten men inside three minutes. Zaccheroni switched to a 3–4–2, and somehow his forwards ran riot: Amoroso scored a penalty, Bierhoff scored a header, then Bierhoff’s flick-on found Amoroso running in behind to make it three. It was perhaps the most surprising Serie A victory of the decade. After Udinese recorded such an extraordinary win with three defenders and four midfielders, Zaccheroni retained that defensive structure for the trip to Parma, introducing Poggi as the third forward. Udinese again recorded a shock victory, 2–0, and the 3–4–3 was here to stay. The new formation helped Udinese surge up the table – having been battling relegation, they finished fifth and secured European qualification for the first time in the club’s history.
Zaccheroni continued with 3–4–3 for 1997/98, taking Udinese to a historic third-placed finish. Bierhoff led the line, flanked by Poggi and Amoroso running into space. Udinese scored in every game that season, and Zaccheroni constantly pointed to his side’s goalscoring figures to underline his belief in open, expansive football. Udinese beat Lecce 6–0, Brescia 4–0, Bologna 4–3 and Zeman’s Roma 4–2. ‘My system was not the 3–5–2, which you could observe elsewhere, but a system that included four midfielders,’ Zaccheroni later recalled. ‘And there’s a big difference. I looked around, I studied and I observed things that I didn’t like. Often there were five across the midfield, which I don’t like at all because eventually it becomes a 5–3–2 and you lack an attacking threat. I observed Cruyff’s Barcelona and Zeman’s Foggia, but these weren’t the solutions I was looking for; I didn’t want three in midfield [in a 4–3–3], which inevitably forced you to defend in a 4–5–1. A midfield four, however, can effectively support the attack and defence simultaneously. My target was to keep three up front, so they didn’t have to retreat all the time, so I started working on it, first with pen and paper, and then on the pitch.’
Zaccheroni became defined by 3–4–3, and beyond the simple numbers game, Udinese were demonstrating that underdogs could attack. ‘Once, when coaches took their teams to, say, San Siro to play Milan or Inter, they had to pray for a result,’ said Zaccheroni. ‘Now the mentality is different. We can go there with our own ideas and our own style of play.’
Zaccheroni took his style to San Siro somewhat literally, by becoming the Milan coach in 1998. This was, theoretically at least, a dramatic step down. Zaccheroni’s Udinese had finished fifth and third in the previous two campaigns, while Milan had endured two disastrous campaigns, finishing 11th and 10th. Zaccheroni was a highly promising coach, but the prospect of implementing a 3–4–3 at the club which had dominated Italian football with Sacchi’s 4–4–2, and largely stuck to that system since, seemed daunting.
