Orlandi: De Zerbi showed coaching prowess early on

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Former Albion man was aware of Roberto De Zerbi as an emerging coach in Italy.

Charlie Hanson

2023-11-14T09:30:00Z

Andrea Orlandi made 56 appearances for Albion.

When former Albion man Andrea Orlandi was winding down his playing career in Italy’s Serie B with Novara during the 2017/18 season, an analyst he was staying in the same hotel as insisted he checked out the training sessions of an up and coming Italian coach.

Orlandi said, “Me and the analyst used to watch Roberto De Zebri’s training sessions when he was the coach at Foggia in the Italian third tier, and the analyst would say ‘this guy is amazing’. When you saw the clips of his Foggia team play, you knew the coach was going to be amazing.

“Then he went to Benevento and Sassuolo. In Serie A he was able to play a style of football that they would usually say no to - "this isn’t how you should play" – attacking and looking after the ball. In Italy, 80 per cent of the teams play the same style; the same pattern of play ‘give the ball to the wing-back and he will run…’ every team does the same.

“By being provocative at times is how he became successful at Sassuolo. Then the way he spoke as well in his press conferences, he was so sure of himself.

“He’s a fantastic motivator and coach, he’s the next big thing in football. It’s great to have him at the club and hopefully Albion will be able to keep him for a long while. He’s impressed me, but he has probably gone beyond my early expectations.”

Speaking on the Official Brighton & Hove Albion Podcast, Orlandi saw De Zerbi’s desire to challenge the big teams as a similar approach to the way Albion have worked in the Premier League.

“It was because he couldn’t challenge bigger teams with bigger budgets, so he was doing something similar to what we did here, something different.

“It was what we did at Swansea City where we went from League One to the Premier League with a lower budget than a lot of teams. We played differently and that’s how we were successful.

Roberto De Zerbi has won 26 of his 56 matches in charge of Albion.

“But he was very different to everything in Italy. It was shocking and it was great. Me, coming from Spain, I fell in love with it! I thought that I would love to meet him one day.

Roberto’s mercurial qualities as a coach was something Andrea says was a part of the Italian’s makeup as a player.

“He as a player was a number ten, he was left-footed player and he had this magic about him, they would call him anarchic. Managers wouldn’t play him because ‘he doesn’t fit the system’ and he probably thought, 'well, I am going to be a coach and I am going to be different.'

“He was different as a footballer, he has the same magic and charisma in coaching.”