The New York Times - USA (2020-08-09)

THE NEW YORK TIMES SPORTSSUNDAY, AUGUST 9, 2020 0 N 31

The strangest thing about
Zinedine Zidane’s rise into the
ranks of the finest coaches in
the world should, really, be that
nobody saw it coming, not even
those at Real
Madrid who had
been observing
him up close as he
learned the craft.
After retire-
ment, Zidane
scratched around a little, looking
for direction. He spent time as
Real Madrid’s technical director.
He served an apprenticeship
under Carlo Ancelotti. Eventu-
ally, in 2014, he seemed to set his
course: He was handed the
reins at Castilla, Real’s second
team.
Zidane’s 18 months there did
little to create the impression
that he would emerge as one of
the best coaches of his genera-
tion. In his only full season,
Castilla finished sixth in its pool
in Spain’s regionalized third tier,
despite being able to call on
players with the promise of
Marcos Llorente and Martin
Odegaard.
For Real’s president, Flo-
rentino Pérez, that presented
something of a headache. Zi-
dane was an idol to the club’s
fans. Pérez knew, at some point,
public pressure would mount to
hand him control of the first
team. In private, he wondered if
perhaps Olympique Marseille —
Zidane’s hometown team —
might ride to the rescue. Maybe
Zidane could cut his teeth in the
elite game there, then return to
Madrid when he was ready.
As it turned out, of course,
there was no need to worry.
From 2016 to 2018, in only two
and a half seasons in charge of
Real’s first team, Zidane won
three consecutive Champions
League crowns and a Spanish
championship. This year, having
returned to the job, he has add-
ed another La Liga title to his
coaching résumé.
It turned out his performance
as the coach of Castilla was no
guide to how he would perform
as the coach of Real Madrid. In
hindsight, the strangest thing
about Zinedine Zidane’s rise in
the coaching ranks is that any-
one at Real Madrid thought that
it might be.

No Experience Required

Deep down, Maurizio Sarri
had to know that his tenure as
Juventus manager was over on
Friday night. He might have
secured the Serie A title in his
first — and as it turned out, only
— season in Turin, but domestic

titles — this year’s was Juven-

tus’s ninth in a row — have

ceased to be a relevant barome-

ter by which Juventus judges the

success of a campaign.

Everything, instead, rests on

the Champions League. Sarri is

no fool: He would have been well

aware that elimination, even on

away goals, at the hands of

Olympique Lyon in the round of

16 would not have been seen as

meeting expectations. His prede-

cessor, Massimiliano Allegri, was

dismissed for falling in last

year’s quarterfinals. And Allegri

could point to five Serie A titles

as mitigation.

Still, it was somehow a sur-

prise when, after a meeting of

the club's executives on Saturday

morning, it was announced that

Sarri had been fired. If the speed

of the decision was startling —

brutal, almost, though maybe it

is kinder that way — it was noth-

ing compared to the identity of

his replacement.

Juventus, as one of the most

prestigious clubs in European

soccer, would not have been

short of qualified candidates.

Perhaps Simone Inzaghi, Serie

A’s outstanding coach over the

last couple of years, could make

the step up from Lazio. Mauricio

Pochettino, who transformed

Tottenham from an also-ran into

a Champions League finalist,

would have been a coup. Even

Zidane might have been willing

to listen to an emotional appeal

from a former club.

Instead, just a few hours after

Sarri had departed, Juventus

announced that Andrea Pirlo

would step into the role. A state-

ment on the club’s website de-

scribed in glowing terms Pirlo’s

playing career, his appreciation

for what Juventus means, his

appetite for the challenge of

restoring the club to Europe’s

pinnacle.

But the statement rather

glossed over the fact that Pirlo

had taken on his first coaching

job, with the Juventus under-23

team — its equivalent of Castilla

— just eight days earlier. He has

never managed a single senior

game. Zidane, in comparison,

was a grizzled veteran when he

replaced Rafael Benítez at Real

Madrid.

At first glance, it is hard to

interpret such an appointment as

anything other than a reckless

gamble. The thinking of Andrea

Agnelli, the Juventus president,

is opaque enough to prompt the

question that Pirlo might effec-

tively be a seat-filler until the

club’s great unrequited love —

Pep Guardiola — becomes avail-

able.

A cynic, of course, might sug-

gest Pirlo’s appointment is a

natural sequel to the club’s deci-

sion, in 2017, to change its crest,

a move that was supposed to

signify that Juventus was no

longer just a soccer team. Pirlo

is, after all, exactly the sort of

coach a digital brand able to

“deliver lifestyle experiences”

would covet.

But there is another possibil-

ity: that there is no ulterior

motive, no cunning scheme, no

kneejerk impulse, no decision

made while Friday night’s anger

was still hot. It is possible that

Agnelli and his colleagues have

reached the conclusion — coun-

terintuitive, but not entirely

incoherent — that not all experi-

ences are equal.

A Divided Game

There is, according to received

wisdom, a pattern to how a

managerial career should work.

A player retires, qualifies as a

coach and sets out to learn the

ropes at a club. The coach rises

through the ranks, maybe be-

coming an assistant manager.

After a while, the decision is

made to strike out on their own,

to take charge of a smaller team:

with a limited budget for their

ambitions, but limited exposure

for their mistakes.

If they are successful, teams

in bigger stadiums or bigger

leagues start to take notice.

There is an unexpected run in a

Continental competition, an

appearance in a cup final, a

couple of impressive league

finishes, given their team’s lim-

ited spending power. The coach

wins another job, and maybe a

title challenge materializes.

Eventually, they become suffi-

ciently expert to command the

attention of one of the game’s

elite.

The stratification of the game

over the last decade or two,

though, has rendered that pat-

tern obsolete. What useful expe-

rience for managing Real Ma-

drid, for example, would Zidane

have acquired at Marseille? Real

Madrid’s squad is stuffed with

vastly experienced internation-

als. Despite its rich history and

its ardent fan base, Marseille,

like most clubs in most leagues,

must cobble together a side from

hopefuls and castoffs.

The skills required to thrive in

those positions are as diametri-

cally opposed as the envi-

ronments themselves. One re-

quires a soft touch and a nose for

politics; the other demands an

overarching vision and a dema-

gogue’s rhetoric.

At Marseille, a coach might

have to correct technique; at

Real Madrid, at least one of

Zidane’s predecessors found the

mere whisper of advice was

treated as a mark of disrespect.

Marseille would require stout

organization and, at times, a

defensive approach; Real’s ex-

pectation is that it will have the

ball.

There are a handful of coaches,

of course, with the talent and the

reputation to straddle those

worlds. Guardiola is both teacher

and inspiration, as is Jürgen

Klopp. Until relatively recently,

José Mourinho would have fallen

into that category. Zidane himself

almost certainly would now.

For the majority, though, the

border is a hard one. Sarri him-

self is as good an example as any.

A hero at Empoli and Napoli,

thanks to his expansive style, he

has in the last two years been

deemed a failure at both Chelsea

and Juventus despite winning

two trophies in two years. The

same fate befell Ernesto

Valverde at Barcelona and Niko

Kovac at Bayern Munich. None

of them are bad coaches. They

were just not good coaches for a

superclub.

Increasingly, soccer’s elite are

heeding that lesson. It has been

the case for some time that ma-

jor clubs would rather appoint

from one another than grant the

coach of a smaller team the

chance of a step up. Coaching

Borussia Dortmund, say, offers a

better grounding for coaching

Paris St.-Germain than coaching

Rennes or Nantes.

Now that trend is reaching its

apex. Manchester United,

Chelsea and Arsenal all have

coaches with comparatively little

experience in managing clubs of

their status; in making their

choices — Ole Gunnar Solskjaer,

Frank Lampard and Mikel Arteta

— the clubs’ focus has been less

the length of a résumé and more

the relevance of a candidate’s

background.

If a Guardiola or a Klopp is

unavailable, then a recently

retired player with charisma and

authority is as likely — if not

more likely — to succeed as a

coach who has worked his way

up from the bottom. Pirlo is an

extreme example of that, having

never coached a game. But in

many ways, he is the natural

conclusion of the pattern.

There are no guarantees it will

work out, of course. There is an

element of risk in any appoint-

ment, and that is magnified when

the appointment has no track

record at all to fall back on.

But then Juventus has, by its

own estimation, underperformed

this season. It has fired two

managers in successive years. It

has won Serie A on both occa-

sions. Pirlo’s appointment is a

risk, but a risk is not the same as

a gamble. After all, a gamble

implies there is something to

lose.

For Europe’s Superclubs, a Coaching Résumé Is Overrated

RORY

SMITH

ON

SOCCER

Zinedine Zidane guided Real

Madrid to another title in La

Liga this season. Maurizio

Sarri, left, was fired as coach of

Juventus after his team stum-

bled in the Champions League.

GABRIEL BOUYS/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES

LUCA BRUNO/ASSOCIATED PRESS

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. —
The Belmont Stakes champion Tiz
the Law added the Travers Stakes
to his winning résumé on Satur-
day, making him the favorite to
win the postponed Kentucky
Derby next month and then possi-
bly to claim the sport’s 14th Triple
Crown with a Preakness victory in
October.
A New York-bred son of Consti-
tution, Tiz the Law ran away from
Caracaro down the stretch of what
is known as the Midsummer
Derby, winning by five and a half
lengths at Saratoga Race Course.
Tiz the Law, ridden by Manny
Franco, covered the mile-and-a-

quarter distance in two minutes
and 95-hundredths of a second,
paying his backers $3 on a $2 bet.
It was the sixth victory in seven
starts for Tiz the Law, and the
$535,000 first-place check pushed
his career earnings past $2 mil-
lion.
The “Graveyard of Champions,”
as Saratoga is called, truly felt like
a cemetery on Saturday as specta-
tors were barred from the
grounds. Instead, people tailgated
in makeshift party lots near the
track or watched the Travers from
the porches of nearby bars.
Generally, though, the race-
course’s nickname has been
earned through huge upsets. It
was there that the Triple Crown
winner Gallant Fox was beaten by
the 100-1 shot Jim Dandy in the
1930 Travers and that Secretariat,
another Triple Crown champion,
was defeated in the 1973 Whitney
Stakes by a horse named Onion.
More recently, a colt named Keen
Ice ran down the 2015 Triple
Crown champion American
Pharoah in the Travers.
Tiz the Law’s victory and his
jockey were especially popular at
the Horseshoe Bar across the
street from the clubhouse turn
and with the grooms, hot walkers
and other members of thorough-
bred racing’s invisible work force.
The colt’s trainer, the 82-year-

old Barclay Tagg, entrusted a

horse of a lifetime to Franco, 25,

who gave Tiz the Law an inexperi-

enced ride last fall in the Kentucky

Jockey Club Stakes. Franco got

stuck inside in traffic and could

not get out of it in time, finishing

third.

“The Kentucky jockeys kind of

schooled Manny in that one,” said

Jack Knowlton, the managing

partner of Sackatoga Stable,

which owns Tiz the Law.

More seasoned riders wanted

the mount on Tiz the Law, but

Tagg and the Sackatoga partners

stayed with Franco, who re-

warded their faith by working

harder at his craft.

“They made me a better

jockey,” Franco said.

The Travers victory validated

Sackatoga Stable’s ambitious

schedule for Tiz the Law, one that

mirrored itineraries of some of the

sport’s greatest horses.

The Triple Crown champions

Sir Barton (1919), Omaha (1935),

Whirlaway (1941), Count Fleet

(1943) and Citation (1948) each

competed in a race between the

Preakness and the Belmont, typi-

cally the final two races in the se-

ries. All but Omaha were victori-

ous.

The coronavirus pandemic,

which has reshuffled seasons for

many sports, has thoroughly up-

ended the thoroughbred racing

calendar. Instead of the Kentucky

Derby serving as the first leg of

the Triple Crown on the first Sat-

urday in May, the Belmont Stakes

took the leadoff spot for the first

time in history, on a Saturday in

June.

Tiz the Law’s victory in the

Travers was particularly sweet

for Knowlton. In 2003, he oversaw

a New York-bred gelding, Funny

Cide, who made the Sackatoga

partnership semifamous by win-

ning the Kentucky Derby and the

Preakness.

Knowlton, who lives in Sarato-

ga Springs, and many of his part-

ners were heartbroken that year

when Funny Cide got sick and was

scratched the day before the

Travers.

Saturday’s victory was just the

latest bit of consolation. After the

Belmont victory, Knowlton and

his 34 current partners sold Tiz

the Law’s stallion rights in an

eight-figure deal with Coolmore

America’s Ashford Stud. Knowl-

ton would not reveal the exact

price, but he acknowledged that

Sackatoga would receive bonuses

if Tiz the Law were to win the

Travers, the Derby, the Preakness

and the Breeders’ Cup Classic,

which is scheduled for November.

Now Sackatoga, Tagg and

Franco will head to Kentucky with

a colt that has been the best 3-

year-old in the nation.

“It’s just so exciting,” Knowlton

said. “When I saw this perform-

ance, it blows me away.”

Tiz the Law Rules the Travers and Takes Aim at the Kentucky Derby

By JOE DRAPE

The Belmont

champion breaks

away down the stretch

for an easy victory.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY CINDY SCHULTZ FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Tiz the Law (6), with Manny Franco aboard, was in the middle of the pack after breaking from the

gate in the Travers. After the race, horse and rider headed to the winner’s circle, guided by the sta-

ble foreman Juan Barajas and Jack Knowlton, managing partner of the stable that owns the colt.