The top 10 was full of legendary names – Alex Ferguson, Bill Shankly, Pep Guardiola, Johan Cruyff, and Arrigo Sacchi will be known to most football fans.
Helenio Herrera, who placed eighth, although hardly obscure, is not as famous as some of the other illustrious figures mentioned.
A new book on the legendary coach by Spanish-based Irish author Richard Fitzpatrick seeks to make Herrera’s story more widely known.
Born in Buenos Aires in 1910, Herrera also spent part of his upbringing in Casablanca, Morocco.
While he worked in a different era, it is easy to see parallels in his story with modern coaches like Guardiola and José Mourinho.
He tended to micromanage and focus on details such as a player’s weight, possessing an obsessive quality far from unusual for the sport’s elite coaches.
“I interviewed Ian Robertson at Trinity College,” says Fitzpatrick. “He’s into neuroscience. He’s written a book about great leaders and the pathological traits they have. And he compared it to somebody like Tony Blair, who is the prime minister [of Britain] for more than 10 years; it’s like cocaine. They’re just so used to the power and getting told ‘yes’ to everything.
“And I think a lot of those elite managers are the same. They’re just so blinkered. And they do display pathological traits, that intense focus, and it’s not healthy, I would say, but that’s the way they’re wired.”
Herrera’s Machiavellian need to succeed at the highest level was also a survival instinct.
“All three of his older brothers died in childhood, living in a shanty town,” Fitzpatrick explains. “His father, having to step over dead bodies walking to work in the morning, the absolute poverty and one of the most insightful people I interviewed for the book was his stepson, Gonzalo Suarez, a famous film director here in Spain. He’s still alive at 91. He said: ‘HH didn’t love football. What he loved was success and making money.’
“That was the thing that was important to him; it wasn’t the love of the round ball. And, understandably, a guy from an environment like that would be so obsessed with money and with getting food on the table, which was bred into him from a young age.
“He didn’t have a childhood, he complained about when school ended because he would just work all the time, being hungry all the time, living in fear of illness, scorpions around, it’s a really hard childhood.
“It was amazing to think he just had this natural intelligence as well. He didn’t go past primary school, yet he could dominate the owner of Inter, who was as wealthy as Aristotle Onassis.”
Helenio Herrera, after winning the Copa del Rey final for Barcelona in 1959, along with some of the players. Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
Herrera’s gifts as a coach did not extend to playing, however. He was an average footballer who competed mainly in France and had an unremarkable career before entering management. A semi-professional, he also had other jobs in those early days.
The young coach’s first big coaching gig was at Stade Français, though it was in Spain where he really established his reputation.
After briefly managing Real Valladolid, his earliest major success was at Atlético Madrid, with whom he won back-to-back La Liga titles in 1950 and 1951.
He then had less memorable stints at Málaga, Deportivo de La Coruña, Sevilla, and Belenenses, before agreeing to take over at Barcelona in 1958.
Having enjoyed substantial success in the 1940s and early ’50s, the Catalan club were in the doldrums. They had been eclipsed by great rivals Real Madrid, who won four titles in five years during a remarkable run in the 1950s that also included five successive European Cup triumphs.
Herrera’s time at Barça was fleeting but impactful. He ended their six-year wait for a league title in 1959 and repeated the feat the next year, while also winning the Copa del Rey in his first full season at the club.
Despite his transformative effect, Herrera departed acrimoniously after two years at the helm. A big factor was his falling out with star player Ladislao Kubala, one of only two players (along with Cruyff) to have a statue at the Camp Nou, and who the board were unwilling to sell despite the coach dropping him from the starting XI.
But this unfortunate situation paved the way for his greatest successes during eight years at Inter Milan, which consolidated his reputation as an all-time great.
“I guess all the ingredients were there,” says Fitzpatrick. “He’d been so successful at Atlético and Barça, he was at the top of his game. He had unlimited funds. They broke the bank to buy Luis Suárez from Barça, the reigning Ballon d’Or winner. So he had an amazing squad at his disposal. But Serie A was the most competitive league in the world, the land of the lira, in the ’60s.
“He had real trouble getting that first Serie A title – the first two seasons; he came up short, his teams burnt out by the end of the season. They went ahead early on and then ran out of steam both times. And finally, at the third time of asking, he won the Serie A title, and then he was on his way. But it was a very competitive league, particularly with Juventus and AC Milan, who won two European Cups in the ’60s. And then there were other powers – Bologna won the league in ’64 and Fiorentina as well.”
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Sandro Mazzola and Helenio Herrera in training with Inter Milan. Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
With considerable help from the likes of Suarez, Sandro Mazzola, Giacinto Facchetti and Mario Corso, Herrera won three Serie A titles, two European Cups and two Intercontinental Cups in three years.
They also fell just short of a third European Cup triumph, losing 2-1 to Celtic’s ‘Lisbon Lions’ in the 1967 final.
Yet Herrera’s success was controversial.
Doping and Italian football have had a long association. At the turn of the century, Italian judge Raffaele Guariniello investigated the suspicious deaths of 70 professional footballers over four decades to determine if their fatal illnesses could be connected to use of doping substances.
Herrera has long been under a shadow of suspicion, most notably facing allegations that he gave his Inter players amphetamines in their pre-match coffee.
“Doping was endemic in Serie A in the 60s,” Fitzpatrick says. “It was endemic in European football.”
“Match fixing is the same thing. Dezso Solti, HH’s fixer, was working for other clubs around Europe at the same tricks. In ’73, he was busted for match fixing for Juventus against Derby County. So he was doing it with other clubs as well as Inter.
“Liverpool could probably feel aggrieved, losing that 1965 European Cup semi-final [against Inter]. The circumstantial evidence suggests that the ref in the second game, José María Ortiz de Mendíbil, was bribed.”
Roma fans remember Giuliano Taccola in March 2019. Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
Yet Herrera’s darkest moment occurred at his next club, Roma. Twenty-four-year-old striker Giuliano Taccola tragically died after a game against Cagliari that he did not play, suffering a seizure in the dressing room and dying on the journey to the hospital.
The official cause of death was heart failure due to pneumonia, with Herrera among others accused of culpability, leading to him being investigated by police and the judiciary.
Taccola had been told to train by Herrera when he was clearly unwell, and in the leaked 1971 report into Taccola’s death, the manager was criticised for this behaviour and for refusing to heed the advice of Roma’s doctors.
Although the document concluded that while Herrera was guilty of “elements of culpable conduct due to negligence or imprudence,” his actions weren’t responsible for a “causal role in the death” as the player had not passed away during a training session or match.
“It’s really important to stress that the dogs on the street knew that [Taccola] had heart disease in Italian football going back to 1964, five years before he died,” Fitzpatrick adds.
“Fino Fini, the chief medic in Italian football, he knew, Genoa, his first club, knew, the medics at Roma knew about his heart condition.
“Yet he was exposed to doping at Genoa. Exposed to doping at Roma – Carlo Petrini, a Genoa teammate, saw him writhing on a gurney table after one game, like a dog with rabies. And he was asking out loud about all the injections they were given at the time. Why did nobody speak up when he died?
“Fabio Capello came out and said: ‘We are treated like robots, they’re just flogging us to death.’ So a lot of culpability lies with Herrera. That’s why he ended up in the dock on trial for involuntary manslaughter.”
The death overshadowed Herrera’s time at Roma, where he failed to replicate his success at Inter.
The coach briefly returned to Inter, though a 1974 heart attack ended that stint prematurely.
He had brief spells with Rimini and Barcelona between 1978 and 1981, winning a Copa del Rey with the latter, but Herrera’s best days were behind him.
In 1997, he passed away at the age of 87 from heart failure.
A 1994 file photo of Helenio Herrera, three years before his death at 81. Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
And despite all the controversies, Herrera’s influence on football and its evolution is undeniable. It was true especially in a financial sense. When he took over at Roma in 1968, Herrera reportedly became the highest-paid manager in the world, with a contract worth an estimated £140,000 per year.
“He’s remembered as the godfather of catenaccio, and, interestingly, catenaccio was a problem for him when he got to Italy,” says Fitzpatrick. “He wasn’t devoted to it, but he needed to adapt to it to create more space on the pitch.
“And in many ways, he’s forgotten. I mean, football nerds would know him; he would always be cited in the top 10 managers of all time. But I think what was interesting was that he was the first celebrity coach, he had a status way above [others] and in financial terms. His peers, the great managers in British football in the ’60s, Busby, Shankly and Jock Stein didn’t make any money. But he was very well off; he was really well paid. And he insisted on being well paid. He was paid as much as the Milan coach and sporting director combined. And they were winning two European Cups in the ’60s.
“And he was more famous than Alfredo Di Stefano. So he really elevated the status of coaches in football clubs. Shankly’s predecessor at Liverpool was just known as a player liaison officer. He had zero status in the club, but that all changed because of coaches like HH.”
‘Helenio Herrera – Football’s Original Master of the Dark Arts’ by Richard Fitzpatrick is published by Bloomsbury. More info here.
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The legendary manager who was blamed for the tragic death of his player
IN 2023, FourFourTwo magazine selected the top 100 football managers of all time.
The top 10 was full of legendary names – Alex Ferguson, Bill Shankly, Pep Guardiola, Johan Cruyff, and Arrigo Sacchi will be known to most football fans.
Helenio Herrera, who placed eighth, although hardly obscure, is not as famous as some of the other illustrious figures mentioned.
A new book on the legendary coach by Spanish-based Irish author Richard Fitzpatrick seeks to make Herrera’s story more widely known.
Born in Buenos Aires in 1910, Herrera also spent part of his upbringing in Casablanca, Morocco.
While he worked in a different era, it is easy to see parallels in his story with modern coaches like Guardiola and José Mourinho.
He tended to micromanage and focus on details such as a player’s weight, possessing an obsessive quality far from unusual for the sport’s elite coaches.
“I interviewed Ian Robertson at Trinity College,” says Fitzpatrick. “He’s into neuroscience. He’s written a book about great leaders and the pathological traits they have. And he compared it to somebody like Tony Blair, who is the prime minister [of Britain] for more than 10 years; it’s like cocaine. They’re just so used to the power and getting told ‘yes’ to everything.
“And I think a lot of those elite managers are the same. They’re just so blinkered. And they do display pathological traits, that intense focus, and it’s not healthy, I would say, but that’s the way they’re wired.”
Herrera’s Machiavellian need to succeed at the highest level was also a survival instinct.
“All three of his older brothers died in childhood, living in a shanty town,” Fitzpatrick explains. “His father, having to step over dead bodies walking to work in the morning, the absolute poverty and one of the most insightful people I interviewed for the book was his stepson, Gonzalo Suarez, a famous film director here in Spain. He’s still alive at 91. He said: ‘HH didn’t love football. What he loved was success and making money.’
“That was the thing that was important to him; it wasn’t the love of the round ball. And, understandably, a guy from an environment like that would be so obsessed with money and with getting food on the table, which was bred into him from a young age.
“He didn’t have a childhood, he complained about when school ended because he would just work all the time, being hungry all the time, living in fear of illness, scorpions around, it’s a really hard childhood.
“It was amazing to think he just had this natural intelligence as well. He didn’t go past primary school, yet he could dominate the owner of Inter, who was as wealthy as Aristotle Onassis.”
Herrera’s gifts as a coach did not extend to playing, however. He was an average footballer who competed mainly in France and had an unremarkable career before entering management. A semi-professional, he also had other jobs in those early days.
The young coach’s first big coaching gig was at Stade Français, though it was in Spain where he really established his reputation.
After briefly managing Real Valladolid, his earliest major success was at Atlético Madrid, with whom he won back-to-back La Liga titles in 1950 and 1951.
He then had less memorable stints at Málaga, Deportivo de La Coruña, Sevilla, and Belenenses, before agreeing to take over at Barcelona in 1958.
Having enjoyed substantial success in the 1940s and early ’50s, the Catalan club were in the doldrums. They had been eclipsed by great rivals Real Madrid, who won four titles in five years during a remarkable run in the 1950s that also included five successive European Cup triumphs.
Herrera’s time at Barça was fleeting but impactful. He ended their six-year wait for a league title in 1959 and repeated the feat the next year, while also winning the Copa del Rey in his first full season at the club.
Despite his transformative effect, Herrera departed acrimoniously after two years at the helm. A big factor was his falling out with star player Ladislao Kubala, one of only two players (along with Cruyff) to have a statue at the Camp Nou, and who the board were unwilling to sell despite the coach dropping him from the starting XI.
But this unfortunate situation paved the way for his greatest successes during eight years at Inter Milan, which consolidated his reputation as an all-time great.
“I guess all the ingredients were there,” says Fitzpatrick. “He’d been so successful at Atlético and Barça, he was at the top of his game. He had unlimited funds. They broke the bank to buy Luis Suárez from Barça, the reigning Ballon d’Or winner. So he had an amazing squad at his disposal. But Serie A was the most competitive league in the world, the land of the lira, in the ’60s.
“He had real trouble getting that first Serie A title – the first two seasons; he came up short, his teams burnt out by the end of the season. They went ahead early on and then ran out of steam both times. And finally, at the third time of asking, he won the Serie A title, and then he was on his way. But it was a very competitive league, particularly with Juventus and AC Milan, who won two European Cups in the ’60s. And then there were other powers – Bologna won the league in ’64 and Fiorentina as well.”
With considerable help from the likes of Suarez, Sandro Mazzola, Giacinto Facchetti and Mario Corso, Herrera won three Serie A titles, two European Cups and two Intercontinental Cups in three years.
They also fell just short of a third European Cup triumph, losing 2-1 to Celtic’s ‘Lisbon Lions’ in the 1967 final.
Yet Herrera’s success was controversial.
Doping and Italian football have had a long association. At the turn of the century, Italian judge Raffaele Guariniello investigated the suspicious deaths of 70 professional footballers over four decades to determine if their fatal illnesses could be connected to use of doping substances.
Herrera has long been under a shadow of suspicion, most notably facing allegations that he gave his Inter players amphetamines in their pre-match coffee.
“Doping was endemic in Serie A in the 60s,” Fitzpatrick says. “It was endemic in European football.”
“Match fixing is the same thing. Dezso Solti, HH’s fixer, was working for other clubs around Europe at the same tricks. In ’73, he was busted for match fixing for Juventus against Derby County. So he was doing it with other clubs as well as Inter.
“Liverpool could probably feel aggrieved, losing that 1965 European Cup semi-final [against Inter]. The circumstantial evidence suggests that the ref in the second game, José María Ortiz de Mendíbil, was bribed.”
Yet Herrera’s darkest moment occurred at his next club, Roma. Twenty-four-year-old striker Giuliano Taccola tragically died after a game against Cagliari that he did not play, suffering a seizure in the dressing room and dying on the journey to the hospital.
The official cause of death was heart failure due to pneumonia, with Herrera among others accused of culpability, leading to him being investigated by police and the judiciary.
Taccola had been told to train by Herrera when he was clearly unwell, and in the leaked 1971 report into Taccola’s death, the manager was criticised for this behaviour and for refusing to heed the advice of Roma’s doctors.
Although the document concluded that while Herrera was guilty of “elements of culpable conduct due to negligence or imprudence,” his actions weren’t responsible for a “causal role in the death” as the player had not passed away during a training session or match.
“It’s really important to stress that the dogs on the street knew that [Taccola] had heart disease in Italian football going back to 1964, five years before he died,” Fitzpatrick adds.
“Fino Fini, the chief medic in Italian football, he knew, Genoa, his first club, knew, the medics at Roma knew about his heart condition.
“Yet he was exposed to doping at Genoa. Exposed to doping at Roma – Carlo Petrini, a Genoa teammate, saw him writhing on a gurney table after one game, like a dog with rabies. And he was asking out loud about all the injections they were given at the time. Why did nobody speak up when he died?
“Fabio Capello came out and said: ‘We are treated like robots, they’re just flogging us to death.’ So a lot of culpability lies with Herrera. That’s why he ended up in the dock on trial for involuntary manslaughter.”
The death overshadowed Herrera’s time at Roma, where he failed to replicate his success at Inter.
The coach briefly returned to Inter, though a 1974 heart attack ended that stint prematurely.
He had brief spells with Rimini and Barcelona between 1978 and 1981, winning a Copa del Rey with the latter, but Herrera’s best days were behind him.
In 1997, he passed away at the age of 87 from heart failure.
And despite all the controversies, Herrera’s influence on football and its evolution is undeniable. It was true especially in a financial sense. When he took over at Roma in 1968, Herrera reportedly became the highest-paid manager in the world, with a contract worth an estimated £140,000 per year.
“He’s remembered as the godfather of catenaccio, and, interestingly, catenaccio was a problem for him when he got to Italy,” says Fitzpatrick. “He wasn’t devoted to it, but he needed to adapt to it to create more space on the pitch.
“And in many ways, he’s forgotten. I mean, football nerds would know him; he would always be cited in the top 10 managers of all time. But I think what was interesting was that he was the first celebrity coach, he had a status way above [others] and in financial terms. His peers, the great managers in British football in the ’60s, Busby, Shankly and Jock Stein didn’t make any money. But he was very well off; he was really well paid. And he insisted on being well paid. He was paid as much as the Milan coach and sporting director combined. And they were winning two European Cups in the ’60s.
“And he was more famous than Alfredo Di Stefano. So he really elevated the status of coaches in football clubs. Shankly’s predecessor at Liverpool was just known as a player liaison officer. He had zero status in the club, but that all changed because of coaches like HH.”
‘Helenio Herrera – Football’s Original Master of the Dark Arts’ by Richard Fitzpatrick is published by Bloomsbury. More info here.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
book helenio herrera Interview richard fitzpatrick Barcelona Inter Milan