Sarri had already been coaching for more than 15 years when he succeeded Conte at Arezzo. He began in the same summer as Italia 90. If you've ever been to Tuscany, the chances are you have driven through a village whose team was coached by him at one time or another.
Sarri never made it as a player. He was a rugged, non-league centre-back mentored by the great Kurt Hamrin, the Swede who used to regale his players with stories about playing against Brazil great Pele in the 1958 World Cup final and all those goals he scored for Fiorentina.
Unable to make a living as a footballer, Sarri worked as a foreign currency trader at the Banca Toscana. He was attached to the international department, which involved business trips to Europe's financial centres, including the City of London. But the role never stoked Sarri's imagination quite like football did.
He coached part-time, hopping from one Tuscan town to another: Stia, Faellese, Cavriglia, Antella, Valdema, Tegoleto – you get the picture. Strongly influenced by Arrigo Sacchi, whose AC Milan side he taped and studied with great attention, Sarri one day decided to follow in his footsteps.
Sacchi worked for a shoe company and used conventions in Europe as an excuse to watch Ajax before jacking it all in to become a coach. Like Sarri, he had a non-playing background and coined the famous phrase: ‘You don't need to have been a horse to be a jockey.’
So, in 2001, as Italy prepared to adopt the euro and foreign currency traders like him were no longer as useful to banks as they had been in the past, Sarri decided to take a leap of faith and leave his well-paid nine-to-five for what he says is ‘the only job I would do for free’.
BBC.
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