Football history
Zdeněk Zeman’s Coup de Grâce
Twenty-three league games. Ninety-one goals at either end. One last, doomed bloom of Zemanlandia.
The final scene could hardly have been more fitting. Roma had just lost 4–2 at home to Cagliari, Mauro Goicoechea had palmed a cross into his own net and the Stadio Olimpico was seething. By lunchtime on 2 February 2013, the Czech-Italian coach was dismissed. Roma sat eighth, with Serie A’s most fertile attack and its second-worst defence. In 90 minutes, Zemanlandia had shot itself in the foot. The dismissal ended an idea that had already begun to tatter in public, but the wreckage should not taint what came before. For five high-octane months, Roma were one of Europe’s most watchable teams because Zeman’s methods made them thrilling, unstable, and unmistakable.
The Return
Zeman was 65 when he returned to Rome, thirteen years after his first stint. He had just led Pescara to promotion and, in his exile from the elite, his reputation had acquired an almost legendary feel. Roma’s American owners had abandoned the Luis Enrique project after one season; supporters wanted a clear identity, not another vague promise. Zeman offered a front-footed 4-3-3, punishing summer conditioning and a license to attack.
His importance in Rome was never solely tactical. During his first spell, from 1997 to 1999, Zeman had challenged the big boys in Italian football with the same bluntness he brought to coaching. He returned as an outsider and a cult figure, admired more for what he represented than what he won. That made the appointment feel seminal. It also placed a committed coach inside a club still deciding on its road to a brighter future.
For me, it is not only winning that counts. The way you win is equally important.
Zeman to France Football, June 2012
San Siro offered the first stimulating proof that it could work. Roma beat Inter 3–1 in September; Alessandro Florenzi, a 21-year-old academy midfielder, charged beyond Francesco Totti to head the opening goal before Pablo Osvaldo and Marquinho finished moves powered by the same forward thrust. In December, they posted consecutive 4–2 wins over Fiorentina and Milan. Totti created from the left, Erik Lamela darted infield from the right, and Osvaldo attacked the middle. Restraint, what's that?!
The deepest midfielder offers the exit while the centre-backs hold an exposed base.
The Machine
The mechanism was easy to identify, exhilarating when in sync and catastrophic when it was not. The deepest midfielder offered the first pass, the two interiors rushed beyond him, the full-backs progressed, and the wingers crowded around the striker. Roma attacked in straight lines, then pressed immediately after losing possession. Everyone had to move as one entity; if the press came late or a runner lagged, the open grass behind them became an Autobahn.
Roma 2012/13 · Serie A matchdays 1—23
The Season in One Breath
Four more measures of the spell
I want people at the stadium to enjoy themselves.
Zeman, August 2012
The bill soon arrived. Roma led Bologna 2–0 and lost 3–2, then replicated the unusual magic trick against Udinese. When the press failed, the high defensive line became a welcome invitation rather than an obstacle; the midfield runners also left Daniele De Rossi stranded. Zeman’s inclination for Panagiotis Tachtsidis as the pivot of the midfield whetted the tension between coach, captain and the higher-ups. At the same time, the revolving door in goal between Mauro Goicoechea and Maarten Stekelenburg added fuel to the fire.
The Fracture
The statistics capture the beauty and the circus-like feeling. Roma scored 49 goals in 23 league matches, averaging 2.13 per game, and conceded 42. They won ten, drew four and lost nine, leaving them eighth on 34 points; their matches produced 91 goals in total. This was football without a brake pedal, and Zeman accepted the imbalance because he believed the next attack could erase the last mistake.
Results disintegrated after the winter break. Roma took two points from five league games, losing at Napoli and Catania before drawing with Inter and Bologna. Against Cagliari they conceded four, scored an own goal and argued among themselves as the crowd turned on the team. The club dismissed Zeman the next day and placed Aurelio Andreazzoli, a coach retained from previous regimes, in charge. By then, the collapse had become irreversible.
The Last Cigarette
The ruin still contained a few success stories. Lamela, then 20, had his most productive goalscoring season. Marquinhos learned to defend heaps of space at 18 before Paris Saint-Germain spent a pretty penny on him that summer. Florenzi established himself in the first team, while Totti, aged 36, returned to the left of the front three and produced some of his finest last dances. Zeman’s methods exhausted players, but he entrusted the young ones to follow them.
The same football that had exhilarated Roma finally cost him his seat; most managers would have grasped for the handbrake, but that was foreign to Zeman.
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