In 'Being Vanni Sartini', local journalist Felipe Vallejo sits down with Vancouver Whitecaps FC head coach Vanni Sartini to chat about the Italian's life on and off the pitch. The final of three feature articles is below:
To become a good coach is no easy feat. It requires more than just a strong tactical understanding of the game, and more than the know-how of applying it, of which Vanni Sartini has both.
It also requires one to be a good leader, capable of making good decisions that will affect and determine your team’s direction in and out of the games. It is a piece of wisdom that Sartini learned from his time working under Davide Nicola several years ago at Livorno and Bari. Nicola is currently the head coach of Serie A side Cagliari.
“I learned a lot about being a professional coach from Davide [Nicola],” recounted Sartini. “About how to be strong in terms of projecting, but still not being shy to show that you care. About how to be secure of your convictions, but at the same time taking advice from everyone.”
Sartini spent 18 months with Nicola across both stints at the Italian clubs, but the greatest lesson that Nicola taught him was to always have a community around you, one that includes your staff, the players, the stakeholders and even the media. All of them are part of the project, and all of them are important to the project’s development.
It was a notion that resonated with Sartini, especially given how perfectly it fits with his own collectivist mentality.
It is no secret what Sartini’s personal political philosophy is, and in turn should be no surprise how much it shapes his playing philosophy.
The 'Caps are arguably one of the most ‘pure’ zonal marking teams in the world, by Sartini’s own admission. Their plan instructs them to not deviate from their zonal organization, not get dragged out of their structure, and have faith that the players around them will do their job for the team.
It is a playing style that relies on the team as a whole to do their individual job, no matter how small, and to never get in each other’s way. In theory, it's one of the more effective ways of playing football, but in practice it is as fragile as it is powerful; one player, acting out of selfishness or individuality, can collapse the system and make it easy for the opposition to break-through and score.
Of course, Sartini recognizes that his game system, like his political one, has its pitfalls. Even as an idealist, he acknowledges that there will be occasions where his game plan will break down.
But for Sartini, having flaws does not make it fit to abandon your ideals. It should only make you strive to be better.
“If you look at my game plan, I have over 250 slides detailing in every moment of where the ball is, what everyone does” Sartini explains. “Is it always going to go perfectly? No. But you need to work towards that because if you do 60% of it today, and tomorrow you do 61% of it, it means you are doing well.”
Progress also means recognizing when something is working, and being willing to make compromises. However, it also means that you have to be capable of drawing hard boundaries around your core principles.
“There will always be inconsistencies [in your philosophy] but what you have to do is to draw lines on non-negotiables, because if you pass a non-negotiable, then you go against your philosophy. And it can happen like that in the game, and in real-life.”
His biggest tactical non-negotiable is his dedication to zonal marking. That means no matter how much attention it gets, Sartini will never falter on his steadfast implementation of this tactical philosophy. This may upset a few and have them mistake it as pure stubbornness, but Sartini is a coach that embodies what he coaches. If he turns back on his philosophy, it's like turning his back on himself. That is why he has his non-negotiables, but that does not preclude him from compromising principles outside of them.
“I always say that I’m like the Supreme Court,” joked Sartini. “I wrote the Constitution. You cannot do a law against the Constitution. But you can create whatever law you want within the framework of the Constitution. If you want to try something different, why not?”
He often points to his coaching staff, with his assistant Michael D’Agostino as well as analysts Andrew Foster and James Grieve, as an important part of his success at the club. They buy into his philosophy and give him different perspectives and solutions to any problems that might come their way. But most importantly of all, they are leaders of the team that can help translate what they plan on paper into the product on the pitch.
“You need to have areas of leadership, because I cannot lead everywhere. If you micro-manage everything, it’s over,” explained Sartini. “You need hierarchy, of course, because you need someone to take a decision and responsibility, but you need the process behind that, and the process needs to be as inclusive and collaborative as possible.”
At this point, one might wonder what the goal of Sartini may be with his style being so collectivist and all-encompassing. One may ask where does silverware come into this? The truth may seem ridiculous on the face of it, but what Sartini strives for is perfection. It is the same desire that fueled him as a youth when he was enamoured by learning and embarked on the pursuit for ultimate knowledge. And while silverware could certainly follow with such ambitious mindsets, what he wants beyond that is his team to be as perfect as they can be, week in and week out. After all, he already has three Canadian Championships to his name, as well as a Cascadia Cup.
Such ambitions may also be misconstrued as naivety, since many people believe that one can never reach perfection. Reality always has its flaws, and nothing will ever go exactly according to plan all of the time. For Sartini, it's not about actually reaching perfection. In his case, what is important is to strive for perfection. It is the journey that one undertakes as soon as one decides to try to become the best they can possibly be.
Like Aristotle with his Pursuit of Happiness, he wants to be able to have his team play as well as they possible can so that when they all look back on their time at the club, they can definitively say that they gave it their all and became the best version of a team they could possibly be.
In the end, who doesn’t want that?
