Toro is at an unexpected crossroads, between seasonal balances and future decisions. Two coaches, two different stories, but the same burning need for redemption. In soccer, sometimes it is precisely from pain that the desire to try again is reborn
Torino, la curiosa scelta per la panchina: i due candidati condividono lo stesso dramma (LaPresse) – serieanews.com
It is ending as no one would have expected, Paolo Vanoli’s adventure on the Torino bench. The former Venice coach had lit the fuse at the beginning of the season, with a Torino that, for weeks, looked down on everyone in the standings. A dream, a blaze, a run that had bewitched even the most skeptical. Then, as always happens in these cases, a single event was enough to turn everything upside down: the injury of Duván Zapata. From there on, a slow descent.
The January market gave some breathing room: the grafts of Elmas and Casadei had rekindled some hope, brought freshness, ideas, running. But the ending was vacation village-like. Toro, already safe for weeks, pulled the plug and lost one game after another, until it finished eleventh, bypassed by Como and joined by Udinese. On paper, given the mid-season chaos, it would not even be a disaster. Instead, between Cairo and Vanoli, something broke.
President Urbano Cairo’s latest statements leave little room for doubt. The initial enthusiasm has dissolved, the relationship has soured. Vanoli, who had been one of the most surprising coaches of the season, is in danger of quietly leaving the scene, without even time to fully understand why. But such is soccer: it takes little to go from being the surprise of the year to a name to be dismissed.
Casting for the new coach has already begun. Cairo and Vagnati have two names at the top of the list, and here comes the curious detail. On the one hand, Rino Gattuso. Old ball of the president, already probed in the past, and now perhaps ready to really try the adventure in granata. On the other, Francesco Farioli, 35, an emerging talent in Italian soccer, one who has already built an international reputation and whom many see as the future.
Gattuso e Farioli, che delusione: entrambi sconfitti all’ultima giornata
But there is one thing that unites these two candidates: both come from tremendous disappointment. Farioli, with his Ajax, lost the title in Holland at the last corner, burned by PSV. An atrocious mockery. Gattuso, on the bench of Hajduk Split, experienced virtually the same nightmare: in the race for the Croatian title until the very end, and then mocked right at the last turn. Two sporting pains, two fresh wounds, two coaches now in fierce need of redemption.
Gattuso e Farioli, che delusione: entrambi sconfitti all’ultima giornata (AnsaFoto) – serieanews.com
Of course, at Toro you don’t come to play for the Scudetto. But you can build something, you can try to move up a level. Look at what Bologna and Atalanta have done, teams capable of becoming annoying for everyone and, every now and then, even take the chance to go to Europe. It needs planning, it needs patience. It needs, above all, to choose the right person.
Gattuso brings with him character, grit, experience. He is a locker room man, someone who can turn on his players. Farioli, on the other hand, appeals to many teams because he is the image of new soccer: fresh ideas, innovative tactics, an international outlook. Two different paths, two gambles. Yet, in the end, both linked by that recent void, that mad desire to take back something that, by a whisker, has escaped.
For Torino, choosing one of them means betting not just on a coach, but on a history to be rewritten. And who knows, maybe right there where the pain ends something beautiful can begin.
This article Torino, the curious bench choice: the two candidates share the same drama appeared in its original version first on SerieANews.
