“Clown and genius, buffoon and ascetic, rogue and model father, sultan and faithful husband, swaggering fool and quiet achiever, delinquent and competent, megalomaniac and health fanatic. Herrera is all of the above and more.” So said Italian football journalist Gianni Brera in 1966, as Herrera took Inter to their third Serie A title in four years, a spell that also brought two European Cups. The Argentinian, by this stage, had already changed football in completely unrecognisable ways, and put in place practices that echo through to the modern game. He was perhaps the first modern manager.
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An unspectacular player, Herrera finished a limited career in Casablanca and France in 1944-5 with a knee injury, in only his twenties. Ever determined, Herrera himself later claimed that this was an advantage as he took his first steps into coaching – “My advantage is that big-star… do not know how to teach someone what they naturally did with so much grace. Not in my case.” He joined Stade Francais as manager, and then moved to Real Valladolid and around the Iberian peninsula building his reputation, including two league titles with Atletico Madrid, before Barcelona decided he might just be the man to break Real Madrid’s stronghold on La Liga.
Madrid had won four league titles in five years when Herrera turned up at their greatest rivals. They had poached the great Alfredo di Stefano from under the Catalans’ nose, a player that Herrera would describe as the greatest of all time – “If Pele is a lead violin, then Di Stefano is an entire orchestra”. But for the disciplined manager, organisation and obedience trumped any individual ability. He immediately introduced three physically demanding training sessions per day, and in only the first he caused a player to vomit through exertion. There were no excuses for missing either. When one player complained of feeling sick, he sent them back out to the training pitch. Another turned up in a plaster cast, and Herrera broke it off himself. Discipline was absolute.
Results were immediate. Helped by the discipline, Herrera’s forensic detail and his habit of riling up opposition fans so much before a match that, he hoped, they would be too tired to rally against his players, they beat Real Madrid 4-0 in his first match, and won the league in his first season. That meant Barca could take their place for the first time in the European Cup, but problems were beginning to bubble under the surface. Tensions arose between the Argentinian and star striker Laszlo Kubala, whose style was anathema to the disciplined approach Herrera was implementing, but was so popular that some stories claim the Camp Nou was built specifically to host the number of fans desperate to watch him play.
Barcelona’s progress in the European Cup went well, until they met Madrid in the semi-final. Kubala was dropped, and Barcelona lost 3-1. They lost the second leg as well, and despite winning the league for a second successive season, Herrera left the club. The Catalans would have to wait until 1974 before their next title.
Italian football was a very different place in 1960 to the world we know now. Managers were never in the press, and received low pay, and fan culture was practically non-existent. Herrera changed both, initially by signing a huge contact – on a par with his star players – at Inter Milan.
Discipline was instilled again, but this time there were no exceptions. Striker Antonio Angelillo, a hero whose record the previous season, was shipped out immediately because of concerns about his personal life. Armando Picchi, the imperious sweeper, questioned Herrera just once and found himself playing for AS Varese. He suspended a player for telling the press “we came to play in Rome”, rather than “we came to win in Rome”. In their place Herrera signed players he trusted, and who trusted him completely, like Luis Suarez, who followed him from Spain. Players would be taken to hotels for three days at a time, for intense training camps away from any distractions, and worked as hard as Herrera could manage.
Alongside this harsh, almost military discipline (Gerry Hitchens said that leaving the club “felt like leaving the bloody army”), Herrera cultivated and emphasised the importance of the fans, getting involved in the creation and continuation of fan clubs and supporters movements. John Foot claimed, in 2006, that Herrera had invented Ultra that so dominates Italian fan involvement today.
Herrera’s time at Inter started slowly, finishing 3rd and 2nd in his first two seasons, behind city rivals Milan and Herrera’s counterpoint, another charismatic, disciplined thinker, Nereo Rocco. Rocco, it could be argued, adapted the Caternaccio from the sweeper system invented by Karl Rappan in Switzerland, but Herrera is the man most synonymous with it. In his third season, Inter won the Scudetto for the first time since 1954, and the Argentinian was nicknamed The Wizard. His Inter side (nicknamed Il Grande Inter) entered the European Cup for the first time.
The campaign was the model of discipline for which Herrera strived. They kept a clean sheet against Everton in the first round, and would keep four more en route to the final. There they met Herrera’s Spanish rivals Real Madrid, in the final chapter of their glorious golden era, with Puskas and De Stefano coming to the end of their careers. Sandro Mazzola ended a quiet first half with a spectacular strike from the edge of the area to give Inter a half-time lead, before Aurelio Milani doubled it mid-way through the second half. Madrid scored one back from a corner, before Mazzola added a second to ensure Herrera’s revenge for 1960 was complete. And make no mistake; this was just as much about Herrera’s revenge as it was about Inter’s first European Cup.
The most defining characteristic of Herrera’s teams is win at any cost. And when we say “at any cost”, we mean it. Inter successfully defended their European Cup in 1965 in a match that “was not a win for purists”, according to UEFA. More controversially though, were the semi-finals. Inter lost 3-1 at Anfield and Bill Shankly, he claimed, was told that he would never be allowed to win in Milan. They lost, 3-0, in a match that has become infamous. One goal was scored directly from an indirect free-kick. Another was kicked out of the goalkeeper’s hands as he tried to kick it out. Both were beyond ridiculous. Both stood.
The decline started the following season. Inter lost in the 1966 European Cup semi-finals to Real Madrid, and then lost the final in 1967 to Jock Stein’s Celtic. They also lost the Scudetto on the final day. In 1968, they had slumped to fifth and Herrera left, his legacy intact but his team, apparently, in tatters. “After many years we were somehow used to it, but, by that stage, even we had reached our breaking point” reported Tarcisio Burgnich.
Herrera always claimed that his Catenaccio was misunderstood, and that his side was far more creative and progressive than he was given credit for. Regardless, his legacy stretches for half a century into Italian football, taking in the pragmatic styles of Giovanni Trapattoni, Cesare Maldini, and Fabio Capello (whose 1993/4 Milan team won the Scudetto scoring just 32 goals). More importantly, Italian football’s “win at all costs” mentality has loomed large over the game, from the accusations of Brian Clough against Juventus in 1973, to the to the Calciopoli scandal of 2006. Without the disciplined Argentinian, you have to wonder how things might have been different.
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