A return and an exemption mark the fate of two coaches who have always chosen sobriety over protagonism
Donadoni returning, Pioli falling. It is a cross between professionals who, for years, have represented two different faces of the same style of football: sober, polite, halfway lucky. Roberto Donadoni and Stefano Pioli belong to the generation of coaches born around the turn of the Sixties, children of a less shouty, more technical and more human type of football. Both former quality footballers (Donadoni, one of Sacchi’s many sons, with more success), stood out for their discretion and competence, without ever becoming characters. Both represent the generation of coaches who experienced the transition from artisanal to industrial football: they studied, updated their methods, accepted the idea that football today requires more psychology than schemes, because more or less everyone knows those. Both a little out of fashion, if you will. Without slogans, without shouting, with the force of measure. Accused of having a poor personality because, in a world of noise, those who are polite are often mistaken for weak. Donadoni, with his low tone, seems to want to remind you that the job of a coach is not that of a television motivator. Pioli, in the silence of his exit, reiterates that one can fall without transforming the defeat into a media trial in which the others are the culprits.