Inverting the Pyramid: The History of Football Tactics by Jonathan Wilson Page B

inclinations of Vittorio Pozzo, the bushy-haired visionary who became the presiding genius of inter-war Italian football.
    Born near Turin in 1886, Pozzo had shown great promise as a runner, winning the 400m at the Piedmont Student Games, but was converted to football after a friend of his, Giovanni Goccione, who would go on to play at centre-half for Juventus, mocked him for ‘running like a motor car’ and suggested he should try running with ‘a ball in front of him’. No great player, Pozzo remained in academia, studying at the International School of Commerce in Zurich, where he learnt English, French and German, and then in London. Tiring of the ex-pat community in the capital, he moved north to Bradford, where his father’s influence found him a post studying the manufacture of wool. England, and football, suddenly gripped him. So determined did he become to understand his new home that, although a Catholic, he began to attend Anglican services. His weeks soon fell into the English routine: church on Sunday, work for five days, football on Saturday. His parents recalled him to help with his brother’s engineering firm, but he refused. His father cut off his allowance, but still he stayed, making ends meet by teaching languages.
    Manchester United became Pozzo’s favourite team, largely because of the style of their fabled half-back line of Dick Duckworth, Charlie Roberts and Alec Bell. He took to hanging around by the players’ exit at Old Trafford after matches and, one week, having finally plucked up the courage, he approached Roberts, told him what an admirer he was and said how much he would appreciate the opportunity to talk with him about the game. It was the start of a lengthy friendship, from which grew the style Pozzo would have his Italy side play twenty years later. He abhorred the third-back game, and demanded his centre-half, like Roberts, be capable of sweeping long passes out to the wings. It was a belief he held fundamental and led, for instance, to his decision, having been reappointed comisario tecnico in 1924, immediately to drop Fulvio Bernadini, an idol of the Roman crowds, because he was a ‘carrier’ rather than a ‘dispatcher’.
    Pozzo finally went back to Italy to attend the marriage of his sister, after which his family prevented him from returning to England. He soon found a position as secretary of the Italian Football Federation, and was asked to take the national team to Sweden for the 1912 Olympics, becoming comisario tecnico for the first time. Having lost narrowly to Finland and then beaten Sweden, Italy were hammered 5-1 by Austria. The defeat was disappointing, if not unexpected, but was significant in precipitating a first meeting between Pozzo and Meisl. They became friends, and would be rivals for the rest of their lives.
    Pozzo stood down after a 3-1 defeat to Austria the following December and resumed his travels. He served as a major in the Alpine Regiment during the First World War, and was made comisario tecnico for the second time following a 4-0 defeat to Austria shortly before the 1924 Olympics. They showed promise in Paris, beating Spain and Luxembourg before a narrow defeat to Switzerland, but Pozzo’s wife died soon after, and he resigned again. For five years he served as a director of Pirelli, spending his spare time walking with his Alsatian in the mountains. Then, in 1929, the Italian Federation came calling again. He served for twenty years, turning Italy into the best side in Europe and probably the world.
    When Pozzo had taken the job the first time, he had found a bloated league of sixty-four clubs, several of whom disestablished from the federation when he tried to form a more streamlined first division. By the time of his third coming, there was a professional league and the fascist government, having recognised the utility of sport as a propaganda tool, was eagerly investing in stadiums and infrastructure. ‘Whether beyond or within the borders,