Marcello Lippi

Born on 12 April 1948 in Viareggio, in northern Tuscany, Lippi began his professional career as a defender in 1969, in the role of sweeper. He spent most of his playing years with Sampdoria, where he played consecutively from 1969 to 1978, except for a year on loan at Savona. In 1979, he joined Pistoiese, being part of the Arancioni's promotion to Serie A. He finished his playing career with Lucchese.

Early career

Lippi retired from active football in 1982, at the age of 34, to pursue a coaching career. Despite never having played for Italy at senior level, Lippi gained experience playing in his country's top flight as a central defender for Sampdoria. His rise to the top of the managerial tree also began at the Genoese club, where he started as a youth-team coach. After various stints in Italy's lower divisions, he became a head coach in Serie A in 1989 with Cesena. Lippi then moved on to Lucchese and Atalanta. The turning point for Lippi came in the 1993–94 season when he led Napoli to a place in the UEFA Cup.

Juventus

With his success at Napoli, Lippi became a managerial target for the top Serie A clubs, with Juventus ultimately winning the race to secure his services. He won the Serie A title and the Coppa Italia in his first season at the club, also reaching the 1995 UEFA Cup final, with a team that included players who would play an important role in the club's future successes, including Gianluca Vialli, Fabrizio Ravanelli, Roberto Baggio, Alessandro Del Piero, Angelo Peruzzi, Angelo Di Livio, Moreno Torricelli, Didier Deschamps, Paulo Sousa, Antonio Conte, Alessio Tacchinardi and Giancarlo Marocchi, as well as Ciro Ferrara, a player Lippi had previously coached at Napoli and who later acted as his assistant with the Azzurri. He made the team less dependent on the individual plays of Baggio, and also helped Vialli and Ravanelli rediscover their…

In his book Il Gioco delle Idee: Pensieri e Passioni da Bordo Campo (A Game of Ideas: Thoughts and Passions from the Sidelines), Lippi outlined his coaching philosophy. He emphasizes the importance of team spirit and unity. He likens a psychologically well integrated team to the functioning of a psychologically healthy family. On the strategic aspect of coaching, he emphasizes the importance of mutual relations between players. Players must all follow the same plan and play for each other, "not" for themselves. Lippi argues that "a group of the best players do not necessarily make for the best team". What is more important, he argues, is that the tactical plan or formation is one that allows each player to maximize (1) his utility for his teammates and (2) the expression of his full potential. Lippi also sat the choice of tactical formation is constrained by the qualities of the team's players. Thus selecting the best possible team not only requires finding the right combination of players for the chosen formation, but also finding the right formation for the chosen players. Regarded as one of the best and most successful managers of all time, in 2013, James Horncastle, while writing for ESPN, described Lippi has a coaching style and tactical prowess with the following words: "[His] coaching education is broader than most. He worked before, during and after the revolution brought by Arrigo Sacchi. So think of him as a bridge between the old gioco all’italiana and the new, a…

Manager

Juventus Serie A: 1994–95, 1996–97, 1997–98, 2001–02, 2002–03 Coppa Italia: 1994–95 Supercoppa Italiana: 1995, 1997, 2002, 2003 UEFA Champions League: 1995–96; runner-up: 1996–97, 1997–98, 2002–03 UEFA Super Cup: 1996 Intercontinental Cup: 1996 Guangzhou Evergrande Chinese Super League: 2012, 2013, 2014 Chinese FA Cup: 2012 AFC Champions League: 2013 Italy FIFA World Cup: 2006 Individual

UEFA Club Coach of the Year : 1997–98 Serie A Coach of the Year: 1997, 1998, 2003 Panchina d'Oro (2): 1994–95, 1995–96, 2006 (Special Award) IFFHS World's Best National Coach: 2006 IFFHS World's Best Club Coach: 1996, 1998 Onze d'Or Coach of the Year: 1997 World Soccer World Manager of the Year: 2006 Excellence Guirlande D'Honneur by the FICTS Italian Football Hall of Fame: 2011 Chinese Football Association Coach of the Year: 2013 World Soccer 13th Greatest Manager of All Time: 2013 ESPN 15th Greatest Manager of All Time: 2013 France Football 16th Greatest Manager of All Time: 2019 FourFourTwo 13th Greatest Manager of All Time: 2023 Globe Soccer Coach Career Award: 2017 Golden Foot Award Legends: 2018

Orders

CONI: Golden Palm of Technical Merit: Palma d'oro al Merito Tecnico: 2006 3rd Class / Commander: Commendatore Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana: 2006

Records

First Coach to win both UEFA Champions League and World Cup First Coach to win both UEFA Champions League and AFC Champions League Lippi and Vicente del Bosque are the only two Coaches…