Homecoming: A Football Manager AAR

[Heiro de Bodemloze]

HOMECOMING: A FOOTBALL MANAGER AAR


I must admit from the beginning that I owe a great deal to Spanish journalist and author Marti Perarnau in terms of inspiration for this series after reading his two books where he shadows Pep Guardiola during his three years as coach at Bayern Munich. I highly recommend them both to anyone with an above average interest in football, tactics or the behind the scenes machinations of some of the biggest clubs in the world.

I will be using the game Football Manager 2012 to tell this story, and I hope you enjoy!



Introduction

I was walking through suburban Seoul one night, it was a Tuesday I think and I had been working late trying to figure out the movement of one of my centre backs on defensive corners. This was during the time I was coaching part-time at a second division local team. I was reasonably confident I had found a solution and tried recalling the game-tape from our last game when I heard excited shouts and the unmistakable sound of a ball hitting the woodwork. I am always eager to watch some football so I jogged down the street to find a game of cageball.

In a small space, in between two blocks, there had been made space to play the beautiful game, just some asphalt occupied by two small goals and ten kids with a ball surrounded by fences a few meters high. And while I was there I saw one of the most incredible players I have ever seen, still to this day he is one of the best I have seen at controlling the ball in close spaces. You should have seen him. It was incredible! I sat watching for an hour longer, until they were finished and ran over to the kid with a card and told him to come to the field where my team trained the next afternoon.

At the time, I was the assistant coach to an older Korean man, wonderful coach, I still ask him for advice at times and he sometimes comes to games I coach. He was uncertain at first, but after I convinced him to let the kid join in on one session, he did the rest of the convincing by dribbling half our squad off their feet.

He proved his quality again when he started playing regularly for our team and was a standout performer for two seasons running, he even scored the goal securing our promotion to the top flight of Korean football. Then, in a pre-season game, he broke his ankle and never played again. I think he could have been one of the greats, but sadly, his career ended there.

Roberto told me this story on one of the first of many dinners we had together, the one where he told me he would agree to me following him for his first season back in Italy as a coach and publish what I saw. I never quite could figure out what he wanted to say with this story, although it might be about how quickly fortunes could turn or how a little thing could make a big change. Regardless it was clear it was a story that had stuck by him.

What follows is my chronicle of what happened in the 2011-12 season when Roberto Mezzina returned to his native Rome to coach his boyhood team Lazio.

[Heiro de Bodemloze]

Reserving this post for later

Hope you enjoy, chapters coming up soon!

[Shankbot de Bodemloze]

I admit to knowing next to nothing about football, but I'm interested in seeing how you get this to work.

[Hitai de Bodemloze]

I have a soft spot for Lazio, so things are looking up. Will you be going into your tactics as the season goes on? I'd love to see some strikerless shenanigans.

Also, why FM12?

[Owlparrot3]

I like like like like like it .Go on heiro. Fells good to know that my encouragement was not in vain .Though I would prefer clean standard style for a football aar (I mean the font style).

[Caillagh de Bodemloze]

I admit to knowing next to nothing about football, but I'm interested in seeing how you get this to work.

I reckon there's a fair chance you know more about football than I do. I'm hoping to be educated as well as entertained.


Heiro, I like the way this starts. I'm looking forward to discovering which little things will make the big differences, and just precisely how quickly fortunes will change.

[Alwyn]

Like Shankbot, I know very little about football, but - like Caillagh - I am intrigued by stories where small events have significant consequences and look forward to seeing how your story will develop.

[Heiro de Bodemloze]

I admit to knowing next to nothing about football, but I'm interested in seeing how you get this to work.

Somewhat surprising seeing as your from the homeland of football, but I suppose it happens. You should be aware that banter is a big part of it, at least between fans. As always I am grateful for your support and encouragement, thank you!

I have a soft spot for Lazio, so things are looking up. Will you be going into your tactics as the season goes on? I'd love to see some strikerless shenanigans.

Also, why FM12?

Happy to hear it, hope I will do them justice! I certainly plan to do so, you are Italian? I am thinking of a 4-3-1-2 which might merge into a 3-4-1-2, not entirely sure yet haha. I can recall playing a formation without centre backs, so shenanigans are not at all off the table!

I like like like like like it .Go on heiro. Fells good to know that my encouragement was not in vain .Though I would prefer clean standard style for a football aar (I mean the font style).

Thank you! As for the font, it is a part of a long and time honoured tradition of me shamelessly ripping off Robin de Bodemloze, so it is going to have to stay. Besides it looks pretty.

I reckon there's a fair chance you know more about football than I do. I'm hoping to be educated as well as entertained.


Heiro, I like the way this starts. I'm looking forward to discovering which little things will make the big differences, and just precisely how quickly fortunes will change.

Thanks a lot! I believe stories should be mostly about characters, but of course there has to be a fair bit of football stuff in there! Hoping I can make it balance nicely, please let me know if you think it doesn't.

Like Shankbot, I know very little about football, but - like Caillagh - I am intrigued by stories where small events have significant consequences and look forward to seeing how your story will develop.

I will do my best to make sure not following football a lot will not make this harder to read (dare I say enjoy?). I am experimenting some with story structure and stuff, I am certainly hoping it will turn out nicely! Thank you for your support!

[Heiro de Bodemloze]

Homecoming

On the tenth of July, I walked up to the gates at Formello, the Lazio training grounds. The gatekeeper buzzed me in and the door opened to a view of a dozen staffers hectically running to and fro making the last preparations. In the middle of the parking lot there were two large buses, already running and seemingly ready to go. The team was departing for a training camp in Switzerland and had opted to drive instead of flying, which I was told was part of a new scheme to help the socialising within the group and create unity ahead of the season. Roberto Mezzina had apparently already started making his mark upon the club.

I was lucky enough to secure a seat beside the man himself on the bus as we rolled onto the road heading out of Rome. I was of course already more familiar with his story than most, his rise to the top level had been anything but conventional, though I suspected the public story was but the tip of a gargantuan iceberg. He had played football as a youth, though never professionally and as far as I knew he had at the height of his own playing career been at the eleventh level of Italian football. Quite the step then, to coach on of the most historic clubs at the highest level, and all before Mezzina has even turned forty years old.

When he was twenty-two he had finished his degree as a teacher, specialising in languages. But as he tells me, he looked at the prospect of going from a lifetime living in Italy and going to school with little enthusiasm at this point and decided to book a flight to Seoul and begin there as an Italian and English teacher at an international school. Not long after he applied to a job as a coach for a local amateur football team to learn Korean, gain a few friends and indeed as a pastime for when he was not in the classroom.

The team was successful and the team´s coach was hired by a second flight team who asked the young Roberto to please join him. As any Italian Roberto had always had an interest and flair for the tactical and introspective part of the game, which had come to light even more so once he started taking a more active part in the fundamentals of football. Together they helped their team into the top flight and from there mounted title challenges and won a cup over the next few years. When Roberto´s mentor decided, it was time to step down, the club management were very keen for Mezzina to succeed him and he was happy to accept.

Some could have judged the club to have been at its upper limit as far as achievements were concerned, but Roberto looked at his squad and decided they could do one better than the second place they had managed in his debut season. They would go on to win the league and Roberto was offered a new position, this one in Australia, which he decided to accept. He spent the next five years tearing the Australian top league apart with his marauding style of play, successfully shaping a team which could compete successfully both domestically and internationally through the Asian Champions League, though he never managed to win the latter.

Following his finale loss in the Asian Cup, he received a phone call from Rome; it was time to come home.

“It has been great these first few weeks back in Rome,” Roberto tells me on the bus. “I had not been here for maybe seven years, I could breathe the Italian air, run on the Italian grass, it is amazing! And the work is incredible as well, this is a strong group of players, I can tell.”

He is almost wondering if there will be any point in bringing any new players into the squad. Although in Europe it is normal for a coach to strengthen the team with a signing or two during the summer, especially new ones who are looking to make their mark, he is not used to this from his other clubs, who were often not as strong financially and would make due with recruiting young players from the academy or signing a free agent at times. But it is still early, and the club has a whole group working on signings if Mezzina deems it necessary.

Maybe with that in mind he has invited a few academy prospects along for the trip to see them in action and assess their abilities, as he will do with the rest of the squad. With Roberto Mezzina one thing I judge to be sure from the very start, almost everything is deliberate and done with a specific purpose in mind. I am sure this is something I will witness as I watch the training sessions as well. For now I decide I will allow Roberto some rest and turn my attention to his assistant as we I notice a sign showing we are now passing Firenze.

[Shankbot de Bodemloze]

An incredible rise for Roberto, will be interesting to see if he brings in new players or follow what has served him well in the past.

[Alwyn]

I will do my best to make sure not following football a lot will not make this harder to read (dare I say enjoy?). I am experimenting some with story structure and stuff, I am certainly hoping it will turn out nicely! Thank you for your support!

Thanks! Even though I don't follow football, I'm finding Homecoming to be both accessible and enjoyable. I'm interested in how Roberto will motivate his team and enable them to perform better than expected. The use of details - such as Roberto's reason for the team travelling by bus, not plane - provides helpful insights into Roberto's thinking.

[Hitai de Bodemloze]

Interesting homecoming for Roberto. Looking forward to seeing the team he has inherited.

Happy to hear it, hope I will do them justice! I certainly plan to do so, you are Italian? I am thinking of a 4-3-1-2 which might merge into a 3-4-1-2, not entirely sure yet haha. I can recall playing a formation without centre backs, so shenanigans are not at all off the table!

Sounds interesting; I was messing around with a 3-1-4-2 yesterday in a save - it's an interesting style. I'd love to see something without centre backs! Plus points if you bring a libero into the mix

And no, I'm not Italian, but I find football clubs with strong political connotations very interesting. So Lazio is a big right wing club, with very hardcore right wing/fascist fans, which I find intriguing. Certainly an interesting dynamic to think about if you're writing a story about them.

[Caillagh de Bodemloze]

Thanks a lot! I believe stories should be mostly about characters, but of course there has to be a fair bit of football stuff in there! Hoping I can make it balance nicely, please let me know if you think it doesn't.

Will do! (On current evidence, I doubt I'll need to, though. )

Homecoming is interesting. It does a really good job, I think, of showing some of the decisions Roberto's having to make. How will he foster unity? Who should he recruit?

I wonder if we'll hear anything from his assistant - and whether the assistant agrees with Roberto's way of doing things...