Simone Inzaghi turned 40 on Tuesday, a milestone age, often a prompter of self-scrutiny, what-have-I-achieved, where’s-my-career-going sorts of questions.
Inzaghi did not have much time for all that. He had just been propelled towards a major career milestone.
He was taking his debut practice session as interim coach of Lazio, the club he played for the majority of his elite career, where he won a Serie A title and from where he was called up for his handful of Italy caps.
It is a big jump of a promotion, direct from the youth team. It came suddenly, after Stefano Piolo was sacked after the heavy defeat to Roma in the capital derby.
On being appointed, Inzaghi received a heartfelt message of encouragement from a contemporary who knows exactly what it is like to be elevated from coaching a major club’s youth team into the furnace of grown-up Serie A.
“You deserve the chance,” it read. “With your passion and your ability, it’ll be rewarding.”
The best wishes came from his brother, Filippo, alias ‘Pippo’ to most of his friends and fans, or ‘SuperPippo’ on many occasions during his distinguished playing days.
The older of the Inzaghis — he is a little more than two-and-a-half years Simone’s senior — has always been the more celebrated.
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Pippo spent 17 years scoring goals in Serie A and a decade-and-a-half doing so for Juventus and AC Milan in prestigious European competitions.
He was 40 years old when, in June 2014, he was rewarded for his impressive work with Milan’s ‘Primavera’ — youth — squad with an invitation to take over from his former Milan teammate Clarence Seedorf as coach of the first team.
His adventure lasted a season, which is longer than Seedorf’s did, and may turn out to be no shorter than the period in charge of Sinisa Mihajlovic, Pippo’s successor, who guides Milan into this weekend’s match against league-leaders Juventus with doubts around his future.
Milan are seventh in the table, so on course to fall short of the requirement set to Inzaghi last season and Mihajlovic this one: qualify for the Uefa Champions League. Only the top three in Italy can.
The plot thickens further. Lazio, for whom Mihajlovic played and shared with Simone Inzaghi the success of the 2000 scudetto — the club’s standout triumph of the modern era — are believed to be interested in his credentials as their coach, should he leave Milan.
Inzaghi, meanwhile, auditions for the permanent role over the remaining seven matches, starting at Palermo on Sunday, of eighth-placed Lazio’s up-and-down season.
He will come into the job with the backing of a majority of laziali, the supporters who remember him commanding a first-team place at centre-forward in a competitive, talented, well-funded squad in 1999-2000, and hitting 19 goals across all competitions in that season. He was never quite the deadly finisher that Pippo was but he had his moments, notably scoring four times in a single Champions League match against Olympique Marseille.
Pippo, though, scored twice in a winning European Cup final for Milan. He won 47 caps for Italy and even coincided with his brother in the Italy forward line, briefly.
They look as if they could be twins, but in most respects Simone has always been very much the junior partner, not so incisive in the six-yard box as Pippo, and with fewer trophies.
They are a little like Italy’s version of the Neville brothers, senior Gary and junior Phil, players at Manchester United and England, and as of last month, sacked as coaches by Valencia, where they had been working in tandem.
But Simone Inzaghi now has a chance to emulate his older brother as a first-time coach in Serie A. Pippo has outlined to him to the perils, and he will hope his little brother is given a better chance to overcome them than he was at Milan.
PLAYER OF THE WEEK — LEROY SANE (SCHALKE)
After a dip in form recently, Sundays’s Ruhr derby against Borussia Dortmund, gives Schalke’s German prodigy Leroy Sane the stage to show he is up to big-match expectations.
Sporting genes
Leroy comes from a distinguished sporting family. His mother, Regina Weber, is a former German international rhythmic gymnast, who won a bronze medal at the 1984 Olympic Games. His father, Souleyman Sane, played more than 50 times for Senegal as a striker and spent his career in German and Austrian football, scoring prolifically for middle-ranking clubs.
Germany’s gain
Souleyman was brought up in France because his father, a diplomat for the Senegal foreign office, was posted there when his son was four. But Souleyman served his obligatory military service in Germany, where he then settled and met his wife. Hence his three sons grew up in Germany. All of them have French and German citizenship and enrolled young with Schalke’s respected youth academy.
Rapid rise
Leroy switched to nearby Bayer Leverkusen’s youth set-up from the ages of 12 to 15 but returned to Schalke in 2011. Three years later, he made his full Bundesliga debut, aged 18. Flamboyant on the ball, and with an eye for goal and the unexpected pass, he played in over a third of Schalke’s Bundesliga matches in 2014/15, hitting three goals.
Breakthrough
Last summer he was picked for the Germany Under-21s before the World Cup holders’ coach Joachim Low handed him his senior international debut last November. He earned that cap thanks to a storming start to the season for Schalke, for whom he has started 17 matches — out of 28 — in the Bundesliga.
Ruhr Revelation
He scored in three successive games in September. His goals and assists have been worth 11 points to a club still just a point off fourth place and Uefa Champions League qualification going into this weekend. But he was benched in February, his form tailing off.
MATCH OF THE WEEK — BARCELONA v REAL SOCIEDAD
Barcelona must overturn a terrible run of results away to Real Sociedad in recent years to prevent losing their grip on the Spanish title race when they visit Anoeta today.
Despite tasting defeat for the first time in 40 games on their last Primera Liga outing at home to Real Madrid last weekend, Barca still hold a six-point lead over Atletico Madrid with Real a further point adrift and just seven games remaining.
However, the European champions have not won in their last six trips to San Sebastian, including defeats in the last three seasons in the league.
“We have shown in recent years that we can beat Barca and we can do it again on Saturday,” Real Sociedad’s former Real Madrid midfielder Asier Illarramendi said yesterday. “This team can beat anyone when we play well. Until it [the title race] is mathematically decided, Barca will have to fight, and I am sure Atletico and Real Madrid won’t give up.”
Barca have particularly bad memories of their last visit to Anoeta as a 1-0 defeat plunged the club into crisis and left coach Luis Enrique on the verge of being dismissed.
Luis Enrique had left Lionel Messi and Neymar on the bench as a punishment for arriving back later than their teammates from their Christmas break.
Barca recovered in style from that setback to land the treble six months later, but their quest to become the first side to retain the Uefa Champions League could play a role in the coach’s selection as they hold a 2-1 lead over Atletico heading into the second leg of their quarter-final tie on Wednesday.
Luis Suarez scored both Barca’s goals against Atletico on Tuesday, but the Uruguayan will definitely miss out as he is suspended and will likely be replaced by Munir El Haddadi.
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