Overview
The story of football's most notorious coach, Helenio Herrera, and the part this master of the dark arts played in the game's first, mysterious 'white death'.
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Nicknamed 'Il Mago' (the Wizard) after bringing European Cup glory to Internazionale in successive years, Helenio Herrera was hailed as one of the finest minds in football. This explosive biography explores the enigma of an incredibly charismatic figure: a philanderer, charlatan, trash-talker and serial winner mired in controversy, whose stellar career was halted by the death of one of his star players and his subsequent trial for manslaughter.
'HH', as he was also known, revolutionised football coaching. He prepared his teams meticulously, was obsessed with his players' mental toughness and introduced idiosyncratic psychological techniques. He made his name as a coach in Spain in the 1950s, winning La Liga twice with both Atlético Madrid and Barcelona, but it was his move to Inter in 1960 that propelled him to stardom.
Shelving the attacking football that had won him plaudits in Spain, at Inter Herrera perfected the catenaccio system, an ultra-defensive strategy that strangled Italian football in the 1960s. His team, which included libero Armando Picchi, Italian icon Giacinto Facchetti, the great midfielder Luis Suárez and international forward Sandro Mazzola, won three Scudettos in the mid-1960s and were only denied a third European Cup by Jock Stein's Celtic in 1967.
Comprehensively researched, HH reveals how Herrera surrounded himself with sinister men, including Dezsö Solti, a former kapo for Dr Josef Mengele in Auschwitz, and was the original master of the game's dark arts. The psychological warfare he waged against other teams has seen him portrayed as the 'original José Mourinho' and he was distrusted by his peers, such as Santiago Bernabéu, and Bill Shankly, whose Liverpool side controversially lost to Inter in the 1965 European Cup semi-final.
Herrera also exerted enormous mental and physical pressure on his own players. In Spain he introduced a regime of performance-enhancing drugs, and he continued this practice in Italy, which eventually led to his downfall. Having joined Roma in 1968, his role in the untimely death of their young striker, Giuliano Taccola, brought scrutiny of his methods. Taccola's 'white death', or heart failure associated with alleged doping, led to Herrera being charged with manslaughter and his coaching career never recovered.
Featuring interviews with those who knew Herrera well, including Fabio Capello, Sandro Mazzola, Ian St. John and Denis Law, HH is a fascinating story of deceit and intrigue, bloodshed, sex and glorious football, set against the backdrop of the Franco dictatorship in 1950s Spain and 1960s Italy's la dolce vita era.
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