In the 1930s the Austrian coach had a brilliant intuition that survived throughout the twentieth century up to the present day.
At the roots of this story there is a principle that, too often, contemporary man tends to forget: the awareness of his own limits. It was, in fact, becoming aware of the weakness and inferiority of his team that, at the beginning of the Thirties, an Austrian gentleman, who had recently landed in Switzerland to be a coach, developed a revolutionary tactical idea. And, despite having to face the fierce criticism and sarcasm of the aesthetes, this idea has crossed (and infected) the entire twentieth century football. That gentleman was called Karl Rappan and his stroke of genius was the “verrou”, in Italian declined in “catenaccio”. This module provided for the birth of a new role: the free one.