“I thought about taking a year off if I didn’t find an offer that motivated me. There were contacts with important teams, but for various reasons, we couldn’t reach an agreement. The Marseille directors, however, were clear from the start. And it’s a place that has always fascinated me. As a kid, I admired champions like Rudi Völler and Chris Waddle. It has very passionate fans, a bit like me.” Roberto De Zerbi is starting anew at Olympique, the second most titled team in France and the only one to have won a Champions League. On June 29, he signed a three-year contract with Les Phocéens, a little over a month after announcing his departure from Brighton. In two years, he led the English club to its first-ever qualification for the Europa League, only to be eliminated in the next season’s round of 16 by Daniele De Rossi’s Roma. “It was a historic milestone. Besides the sixth-place finish, we played an FA Cup semi-final, losing only on penalties to Manchester United. I launched many players who were sold for record amounts (like Caicedo, who moved to Chelsea for 116 million, or Mac Allister, sold to Liverpool for 42 million). It was hard to leave.”
The challenge in Ligue 1 will be the biggest for the coach from Brescia: except for his experience in Ukraine with Shakhtar Donetsk, which was interrupted on February 24, 2022, by the Russian invasion, De Zerbi has always achieved great results with lower-middle table or Serie B and C teams: Foggia, Palermo, Benevento, Sassuolo. Now he’s facing a club that has changed eight coaches in the last four seasons and is coming off an eighth-place finish that will keep it out of European competitions next season. “The people of Marseille consider OM the most important club in the country,” he says, but it’s necessary to rekindle enthusiasm and challenge the dominance of Paris Saint Germain, winners of ten championships in twelve years: “I will tell the players that we need to make the fans proud. Coaching Marseille is unique; you have a whole people behind you. With seriousness and courage, I will try to bring it back to Europe.”
De Zerbi on the Crisis of Italian Football: “We’re Missing the Superstars of the Past. But There’s Not Just One Reason for the Decline”
The start of his adventure in France coincided with Italy’s elimination from the European Championships in Germany. The 2-0 defeat against Switzerland in the round of 16 symbolizes a movement that can no longer produce young players capable of competing at high levels. “There isn’t just one reason for the crisis. There are fewer superstars being born than in the past, and there’s a lack of facilities, methods, investments. There are many foreigners, but if they play, it means they’re better. The top of the system, the National Team, is paying the price.” Even the Premier League attracts players from all over the world, yet England “is full of talent, in all positions. They have three right-backs who could all potentially start: Walker, Alexander-Arnold, and Trippier.” Euro 2024 highlighted midfielders more than strikers, and once lesser teams have been able to impose themselves through play: “Some great strikers have fallen out of the loop, like Benzema, others are aging: Cristiano Ronaldo is almost forty,” he observes.
From the Bench of Darfo Boario in Serie D to Lunches with Pep Guardiola: “The Grind Is My Strength”
Growing up in AC Milan’s youth teams, De Zerbi didn’t manage to break through at high levels. Only three appearances in Serie A with Napoli, the rest is a back-and-forth in lower leagues, breakthroughs with Foggia, Arezzo, and Catania, two Romanian championships with Cluj, and retirement at Trento, in Serie D. That’s where his climb as a coach began, starting on the bench of Darfo Boario, in Brescia. Looking back and remembering the path that made him one of the most sought-after coaches in Europe pushes him to have even more hunger for success: “I think about it every day. And that’s my real strength. I didn’t have a great career and didn’t start on a staff. Nobody wanted me, I had no connections. The grind is a source of pride, fuel to reach new goals.”
Today, everyone wants to attend the training sessions he conducts; on Amazon, manuals of exercises and schemes from his tactical sessions multiply. He draws inspiration a bit from Marcelo Bielsa’s offensive football, who also passed through Marseille, and a bit from Pep Guardiola’s stellar ball possession (the so-called tiki-taka), the Manchester City coach who has hailed him as one of the most influential coaches of the new millennium. A few days ago, they had lunch together in a restaurant in Brescia: “We talked a lot about football and players,” continues De Zerbi. “He’s the best of all, a reference point. We’re friends, for a passionate person like me, being able to chat with him in confidence is an apotheosis.”
Managing Talent and Careful Field Organization: “The Harmony of Play Isn’t Everything, But It’s the Means to Achieve the Result”
A former left-footed midfielder, skilled in dribbling and vision of play, from the bench, he has managed to enhance the class of young promises and revive that of over-thirty champions: from Berardi to Kevin Prince Boateng at Sassuolo, from Alan Patrick and Marlos at Shakhtar to Lallana and Welbeck at Brighton. “Talent knows no age,” he states firmly. “It’s easy for me to manage it because I had it too. I try to make myself available to the guys, give them a discipline they sometimes lack and some rules to stay in the group.”
He makes his teams play a brave game, which excites fans and highlights the flair of the most technical players: “In Italy, they say that those who want organization muzzle the players. It’s not true. Harmony is not everything, but it’s the means to achieve the result. I don’t want soldiers who just follow orders because I was never like that, but you can’t do anything alone. You need to speak the language of ten other people to express the qualities of individuals.”
It might be surprising that a communicator like De Zerbi doesn’t even have social media: “I didn’t have them before, and I wouldn’t want them now. Maybe I’ll be forced to do them because they’re creating so many fake profiles that it’s causing me problems,” he admits. “I don’t like to talk all the time. I don’t even remember the last interview I gave. I’m a coach; I have to take care of the field.” Better to focus on the new beginning with Marseille: today the arrival in the city, in two days the start of athletic preparation at the La Commanderie sports center. “I chose OM because it reminds me a lot of the passion and pressure I experienced at Foggia,” he concludes. “The Vélodrome stadium hosts almost seventy thousand people; it’s very warm. These environments push me to give my best.” Bonne chance, Roberto.
