Is Giovanni Sartori or Joshua Zirkzee worth more? Good fight, owner Joey Saputo and CEO Claudio Fenucci already know what to choose. This exciting Bologna certainly wouldn’t exist without those two. Let’s say that Sartori is the tailor, Zirkzee the model. Or one of the many models. The Bolognese parade is long and has just begun. Sartori’s story starts from very far away. He wasn’t a great footballer, but he experienced it on the pitch, it was the 70s and 80s, Italy was the point of reference for European football. Sartori has filled his baggage, he has sharpened his eye, even as a (modest) coach. Today, perhaps (but also without the perhaps), he is considered the best Italian sports director and, perhaps (but also without the perhaps) among the top in Europe. He is the man of miracles: from Chievo, Atalanta and now Bologna. Not Milan, Juve and Inter, so to speak. Self-effacing and of few words, his interviews over the years can be counted on the fingers. He prefers to be behind the desk, he doesn’t pose as a glamorous executive, he doesn’t need a double phone on his wrist, he knows perfectly well what time it is in Argentina and if there is an apparently insignificant match to check.
NO SOCIAL, NO WHATSAPP
He chose to be normal which, as Lucio Dalla, a true Bolognese, said, is an exceptional feat. The only one today. It’s not a social network, it doesn’t communicate with WhatsApp. He doesn’t need to put his big face in front of a camera to receive compliments and applause. He digs into the shadows, and always finds something. Born in Lodi on 31 March 1957, he is one of the last old-fashioned managers, a bit Corvino, a bit Perinetti. He is not one for algorithms, which are so dear in these parts: he sees live a hundred matches a year, because talent must be smelled, experienced, accompanied, paid, possibly little, and then sold, possibly for a lot (a couple of examples : Kulusevski, bought for 200 thousand euros and sold to Juve for almost 45, bonuses included, or Kessie even further back from 1.5 to 30). It makes societies rich and leads them to reach heights never reached.
ONE HUNDRED MATCHES
The Chievo miracle bears his signature. In Verona since 1992, thanks to the intuition of Luigi Campedelli, Luca’s father. The team is in C1, and the climb is inevitable: Serie B in ’94, Serie A in 2001, six years later, in the post-Calciopoli era, that neighborhood team reaches the Champions League preliminary round, after reaching UEFA. Then, the collapse and Chievo remained the brand and a Serie D from which to start again: he left in 2014. And what he left remains indelible: the various Perrotta, Pellissier, Lupatelli, Corradi, Barzagli, Amauri passed through him , and again Manfredini, Eriberto then Luciano. And above all, Gigi Delneri, the ideal sidekick in that period for a sporting director, with whom he created a great little neighborhood story. Like Thiago Motta today, like the day before yesterday Gasperini in Bergamo. Atalanta, in fact, his second golden stage. The list of names invented by Sartori is long, almost infinite, from Kessie to Spinazzola, from Mancini to Zapata, plus Kulusevski, Koopmeiners, Gosens, Malinovskij, Gagliardini, Pessina. Eight years with the Nerazzurri, always in a provincial dimension, which is more congenial to him, far from the pressures and claws of criticism. Atalanta, thanks (also) to him, has stabilized in Europe and in Italy is constantly in a medium-high dimension. Even in Bergamo, the summit was reached with the Champions League (three times), even touching the semi-final in the year of Covid. The latest miracle is called Bologna, where he has been working for only two seasons. He arrives with the team in anonymity, a little twelfth, a little fourteenth. Thanks to his closest collaborator – after having mourned the passing of Sinisa Mihajlovic – Marco Di Vaio, Thiago Motta was chosen to lead this new project. The team took off and in two seasons achieved a historic placing in the Champions League. The last time Bologna played among Europe’s big teams it was called the Champions Cup, 59 years ago. Giovanni Sartori was recently born. Last summer, he had courage and took a lot of criticism, when he deprived the team of people like Arnautovic, Barrow, Svanberg, Schouten, Vignato, Medel, to make room, among others, for small big bets like Beukema, Ndoye , Posch, Fabbian, Calafiori, Saelemaekers, to his old passion Freuler, Odgaard. Zirkzee got to explode and show all his talent, as did Ferguson. Zirkzee – paid not even ten million – is now worth more than forty, Inter and Milan want him and many clubs in Europe like him. Sartori misses the big leap, someone observes. But does he want it? He seems not to be interested. Normality.
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Read the full article at
The messenger
