In a brilliant four-year period, Vittorio Pozzo led the Italian national team to two FIFA World Cups and an Olympic gold medal, establishing himself as one of the greatest coaching figures in soccer history. Il Vecchio Maestro (‘the old master’) built a side considered mainly on par with any in the first half of the century.
He was also a central figure in establishing many of the traditional characteristics of Italian soccer – steely pragmatism melded with sophisticated precision.
Known as a tactical wizard, Vittorio Pozzo was also the successful leader of men. Authoritarian but paternalistic and attentive, he demanded that his players pay any price for an Azzurri victory, even if many of his charges were not Italian.
As a result, the Commissario Tecnico and his 1934 team won as hosts, with an entire country (not to mention fascist dictator Benito Mussolini) watching their every move. It was an iron-willed if fortunate, performance. However, the extraordinary 1938 national team was the true culmination of Pozzo’s footballing vision.
A Vision Takes Hold
An unrepentant Anglophile, the adventurous young Vittorio Pozzo discovered soccer while studying in England. After leading the Italian teams to the 1912 and 1924 Olympics in Stockholm and Paris – the latter time winning a bronze medal – Vittorio Pozzo was named the first head coach of the Azzurri not to be shackled by the decision-making of a technical committee in 1929.
At the second FIFA World Cup soccer finals in 1934, the hosts looked well on their way after uncomplicated victories over Greece (4-0 in qualifying) and the United States (7-1 in the first round), but a brutal quarter-final battle with Spain could not be decided after 120 minutes of 1-1 soccer.
A replay was ordered for the following day. Four Italian and seven Spanish players were unfit to play, including Spain’s inspirational goalkeeper Ricardo Zamora and legendary inside-right Giuseppe Meazza, who eventually carried the day with the only goal in the relatively deadened rematch.
A high-profile semi-final against fellow tournament favorites Austria in the semi-final was a lackluster affair. On a muddy pitch, the only thing separating the two was a dubious 10th-minute strike from one of the team’s many oriundi (South American-born Italian nationals), Enrico Guaita.
However, Pozzo’s playmaking center-half Luisito Monti – another oriundi who played for Argentina in the 1930 FIFA World Cup final – was in fantastic form pre-empting attacks by the aging Wunderteam, led by Vittorio Pozzo’s friend and rival Hugo Meisl.
In the final, Italy met a dexterous Czech team, who took the lead in the 70th minute and, by all rights, should have carried away the trophy. Motivated brilliantly as ever by Vittorio Pozzo, the hosts nevertheless managed to triumph almost through willpower alone as another oriundi, Raimondo Orsi, hit a spectacular, swerving shot to even the contest in the 81st minute. In extra time, a hobbled Meazza, all but left alone to drift in and out of the match, picked out Guaita from the wing.
The Roma midfielder slid the ball to Angelo Schiavio, who just managed to poke in the winner five minutes into the extra period.
Amid the grandiloquent jubilations for Italia, riding atop his player’s shoulders, Vittorio Pozzo was undoubtedly ecstatic as well as relieved. However, despite being given the title Commendatore for greatness in his profession after the event, Pozzo made it clear that he still had much to do to form the team that he wanted.
Playing His Soccer
After claiming a historic Olympic gold medal at the 1936 Olympics, Vittorio Pozzo and Italy were amongst the shortlist of favorites in 1938. However, the team was almost entirely different from the side four years earlier.
More refined and technical, the side now wholly revolved around Meazza (now captain) and Giovanni Ferrari’s inside forwards – the only two players to feature in both finals. Upfront with them, Vittorio Pozzo had inserted the deadly tandem of striker Silvio Piola and winger Gino Colaussi. They would go on to score five and four goals, respectively, in the finals.
Italy’s most challenging match of the 1938 finals actually came in the first round against a determined Norway side. Piola managed an extra-time winner, and Vittorio Pozzo adjusted the team for the daunting second-round match-up with France in Paris.
As usual, the Maestro made all the right moves, and Piola scored a brace to see off the hosts. In the semi-final, Brazil coach Ademar Pimenta famously rested his first-choice strikeforce of Leonidas and Tim and paid the price 2-1 to an undeniable Italy.
Lucky four years before, in the final, Vittorio Pozzo’s men stole the show from Hungary in France. In just the sixth minute, they opened the scoring with a flowing, length-of-the-pitch move that culminated in a Colaussi strike. A Pal Titkos equalizer stemmed the tide, but Italy was mouth-watering. Meazza made goals for Piola and Colaussi before the half was up, as The Azzurri cruelly exposed Hungary’s more deliberate style and outdated tactics.
Gyorgy Sarosi pulled one back for the Eastern Europeans. Still, Amedeo Biavati’s backheel set up Piola with eight minutes remaining, and Italy’s third all-time leading goal scorer thumped his left-footed blast into the net. Unpopular to the French fans and Italian expatriates in attendance, Pozzo and his team celebrated more intimately than four years before. But, the look on Pozzo’s face is one of complete satisfaction.
The demanding coach and his devoted team had played themselves into the record books as the first to successfully defend a FIFA World Cup as well as the first to win it on foreign soil. However, with war looming on the horizon, Vittorio Pozzo and his men never got the chance to defend their FIFA World Cup run as there would not be another final for 12 years.
Vittorio Pozzo struggled against social and political forces as coach of the Azzurri until the summer of 1948, when he retired at the age of 62. He led the national team to 63 wins, 17 draws, and 15 losses in his 19-year career. The 63 victories and the total number of 95 matches coached in are both Italian national team records.
After retiring, he resumed his previous career as a football journalist, but his standing as a football manager was compromised by what many saw as capitulation with Mussolini’s fascist regime. He eventually faded back to his beloved Turin and died four days before Christmas in 1968. A popular figure or not, Vittorio Pozzo’s place in FIFA World Cup history is enshrined with his team.
Vittorio Pozzo Tactics
While in England watching Manchester United’s center-half Charlie Roberts, Vittorio Pozzo was won over to the idea of a system featuring two backs and a playmaking center-half. Then, inspired by Austria’s Hugo Meisl, Pozzo developed his own tactics, known as the Metodo.
As a result, Vittorio Pozzo’s teams typically relied less on the center-half and more on the inside forwards, Giuseppe Meazza and Giovanni Ferrari, to break down defenses and thus combine the previously used 2-3-5 and W-M formations.
In the 1940s, the center-half became a stopper, and the revised strategy was called the Sistema (‘the system’). The new style was the grandfather of the unyielding defense and quick counterattacks typical of Italian football, and it proved ultimately valuable for the ever-quickening international game.
Vittorio Pozzo Coaching Career
National team
- 1912: Italy
- 1924: Italy
- 1929 – 1948: Italy
International Achievements
- FIFA World Cup Winner in 1934 et 1938
- Olympic champion in 1936
- 97 matches, 64 wins, 17 draws, 16 defeats
Club
- 1912 – 1922 : Torino (Techincal director)
Vittorio Pozzo Playing Career
Clubs
- 1905 – 1906: Grasshopper-Club Zurich (Switzerland)
- 1906 – 1911: Torino
Classic XI: the victorious team at Italy 1934
Combi, Shiavio, Allemandi, Bertolini, Ferrari, Ferraris, Guaita, Meazza, Monti, Monzeglio, Orsi
Classic XI: the victorious team at France 1938
Olivieri, Foni, Rava, Serantoni, Andreolo, Biavati, Colaussi, Ferrari, Locatelli, Meazza, Piola
Did You Know:
- Vittorio Pozzo carried two good luck charms. One was a piece of glass from a broken trophy, and the other was an unused return ticket to England.
- Pozzo ordered the team bus back to the hotel when crowds blocked Italy’s route to the 1938 FIFA World Cup final with Hungary in Paris.
- Waving off concerns about the nationality of imported players, Vittorio Pozzo said: “If they can die for Italy, they can play football for Italy.”
- Many of the players closest to Pozzo were from his hometown club, Torino. Unfortunately, the whole team died in the tragic Superga airplane crash of 1949.
- When Vittorio Pozzo left his job as Pirelli manager to take charge of the national team, he did so because he was not paid.
