Whether you love or loathe him, Czech tactician Zdenek Zeman adds an increased interest to any Serie A Championship.
The coach, who polarises opinion amongst football aficionados, was handed the top job at Sardinian side Cagliari this Summer and fans were eagerly anticipating a chance to relive the glory years of the late 1960s, early 1970s.
However, this season things have not begun in the explosive fashion that is normally associated with a Zeman side. His tactics usually guarantee goals (at both ends of the pitch) and emotions that entertain and frustrate in equal measure but, so far the Isolani look more like a team destined for a quite troublesome campaign.
Sitting bottom of the league and only having netted three times in four games, is not what the supporters were expecting.
So, why is this?
Many experts have suggested that the Zeman style is a thing of the past, a strategy that has no place in modern Italian football. That his methods are now outmoded and that he is still clinging on to the fame and fortune that was bestowed upon him over 20 years ago.
There may well be a modicum of truth in the above but rather than apportion blame onto the coach, it is perhaps the players that are not of the calibre ‘Il Maestro’ has been often used to.
In short his ‘young guns’ are firing harmless blanks despite being handed the Zeman ammunition.
Let us briefly dissect the Zeman philosophy in its rawest form to decide whether it truly is a thing of the past.
Firstly his training methods are heavily based on fitness and stamina. He is famed for asking his players to perform thigh burning climbs, usually up the myriad of steps at the football ground.
Lung bursting long distance runs are also part of his sessions, as he tries to create players that can perform his high intensity pressing tactic.
Is this outmoded or do not all teams insist on their players being super fit? And what team does not employ asphyxiating pressing tactics?
They all do.
So, how about his ‘crazy’ 4-3-3 all out attack mentality which provides us with such a spectacle? Well, 4-3-3 is now one of the most common football tactics around the globe.
The notion of pushing full backs high up the pitch (a Zeman feature since the 1980s) is now practised by all top teams and his penchant for favouring attack over defence is the thing Italian football had been crying out for since the death of ‘catenaccio’ in the early 1980s.
Again, nothing that we do not see up and down football pitches all over Italy these days.
Quite simply, the problem lies in the personnel. Cagliari have invested in players that at this moment don’t look to be of the quality that successful Zeman sides are based upon.
Rewind to the Foggia team of the 1990s. A squad of unknowns at the time, but players that became some of the biggest names in Italy. Giuseppe Signori, Luigi Di Biagio, Bryan Roy, Francesco Baiano, Igor Shalimov, Dan Petrescu, Igor Kolyvanov, Jose Antonio Chamot to name a few, all went on to greater things.
More recently his Pescara side that trail-blazed through Serie B and into the top flight consisted of more familiar names for our younger readers. Ciro Immobile, Lorenzo Insigne and Marco Verratti, were the backbone of the team that won the division, scoring a massive 90 goals.
Even his Lecce side from from 2004, which finished an impressive 11th in Serie A, contained future stars in the shape of Marco Cassetti, Christian Ledesma, Valeri Bojinov and Mirko Vucinic.
Zeman failures have, more often than not, been at clubs where those potential stars have never materialised, where his youth scouting system has let him down.
His sorry stint at Napoli in 2000, had hopes were pinned on the likes of Antonio Floro Flores and the Brazilians Amauri and Matuzalem, all of who have had quite modest careers to date.
More recently at Roma in 2012, we witnessed the spectacular failure of youngsters such as Ivan Piris, Mauro Goicoechea, Panagiotis Tachtsidis and Dodo.
The current Cagliari squad has gambled on a set of ‘kids’ that have so far failed to make the step up to ‘Zemanlandia’.
Samuele Longo, Lorenzo Crisetig, Joao Pedro and Simone Colombi are those that are expected to emulate Signori, Di Biagio, Verratti and Vucinic.
Let us not blame the poor start on style or tactics. On current form, it might be that Zeman’s spin of the ‘Quality Youngster’ roulette wheel has fallen on red, when all his hopes where pinned on black.
Follow Enzo Misuraca on Twitter at: @enzoM_fif
