Calcio In Heels-The Annual Managerial sack race

It’s all about the men in the dugout and the club’s season aspirations in ‘Calcio in Heels’ debuting piece for Goalden Times. Rossella Marrai takes a look at the change of faces on bench, the ones who remained, their club’s season ambitions and finally what to expect from the beguiling Zdenek Zeman.

Eleven same faces on the bench

Coaches around the Italian peninsula of Serie A can all breathe a collective sigh of relief as they made it through their first three weeks of the season after giving their dramatic touchline orders from the dugout.

Rewind back to a year ago and things were quite dissimilar. Cagliari and Palermo had already replaced their coaches before the teams even walked onto the field. Massimo Cellino’s dispute with Roberto Donadoni saw him being shown the door before even completing pre-season with the Isolani, while further down the Mediterranean, in Sicily, the volatile Maurizio Zamparini was at his bid. At the end of the 2010-11 campaign, he had bid farewell to Delio Rossi and replaced him with Stefano Pioli, but a third round Europa Cup preliminary elimination to Swiss side, FC Thun resulted in Pioli feeling the wrath of Zampa as he was surprisingly replaced by Under-19 coach Devis Mangia. It didn’t end there; a few weeks later, Gian Piero Gasperini was already on route to Exit Week Five, before the eventual sacking of over a dozen coaches hit the headlines that season.

Two weeks into yet another eventual football season and every team has,
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