Helenio Herrera

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Helenio Herrera
Helenio Herrera Elgrafico.jpeg
Helenio Herrera, 1964
Personnel
birthday April 10, 1910
place of birth Buenos Aires ,  Argentina
date of death November 9, 1997
Place of death Venice ,  Italy
size 175 cm
position Defense
Men's
Years station Games (goals) 1
1931-1932 Racing Club du Maroc
1932-1933 CASG Paris
1933-1935 Stade Français Paris
1935-1937 OFC Charleville
1937-1939 Excelsior AC Roubaix
1940-1942 Red Star Olympique
1942-1943 Stade Français Paris
1943-1944 ÉF Paris-Capitale
1944-1945 SM Puteaux
Stations as a trainer
Years station
1944-1945 SM Puteaux
1945-1947 Stade Français Paris
1947-1948 Stade Français Paris
1948-1949 Real Valladolid
1949-1952 Atlético Madrid
1952 CD Málaga
1953 Deportivo La Coruña
1953-1956 Sevilla FC
1956-1958 Belenenses Lisbon
1958-1960 FC Barcelona
1960-1968 Inter Milan
1962 Spain
1968-1970 AS Roma
1973-1974 Inter Milan
1978-1979 Rimini Calcio
1980 FC Barcelona
1981 FC Barcelona
1 Only league games are given.

Helenio Herrera (born April 10, 1910 in Buenos Aires , † November 9, 1997 in Venice , Italy ) was an Argentine - French football player and coach . During his time in France, he was also granted Argentine citizenship, which he received on December 12, 1934 at the age of 24.

He became known for his success with Inter Milan in the 1960s. By advocating the catenaccio , the discipline fanatic was given the nickname "Football's gravedigger".

youth

Herrera was in the Argentine capital Buenos Aires , the son of Spanish born parents, where his father was a Spanish anarchist , into exile had fled. At the age of four, he went with his family to Casablanca ( French Morocco ), where they took French citizenship .

Player career

Helenio Herrera began playing football at a club called Roches Noires before playing for the championship of what was then the French protectorate of Morocco with the bourgeois French Racing Club du Maroc from Casablanca . In 1932 he went to mainland France to CASG Paris . Until the outbreak of World War II , Herrera (also known as HH) was active for various first and second division clubs: Stade Français Paris , OFC Charleville and Excelsior AC Roubaix . During his time at Roubaix he was one of the most successful goal scorers in the first division in the 1937/38 season . Even during the Second World War and the occupation, the game was maintained in occupied France, so Herrera played for Red Star Paris , Stade Français, ÉF Paris-Capitale and SM Puteaux. From 1944 he worked as a player- coach for Puteaux before he had to give up his playing career a year later due to a knee injury and devoted himself solely to coaching. As short and unspectacular as his playing career was, the more successful and varied his time as a coach should be.

Coaching career

Herrera's first coaching station after Puteaux was Stade Français Paris , whose ambitious management wanted to win the championship . From 1945 to 1948 he pursued this goal with the Parisians in vain.

Now he turned his back on France after 16 years and went to Spain , where he first coached Real Valladolid before moving to Atlético Madrid , where he celebrated his first title. In 1950 and 1951 he won the Spanish championship with the red and white from Spain's capital. At Atlético he built a team around the legendary French playmaker Larbi Ben Barek and was able to break through the supremacy of Real Madrid and FC Barcelona for a short time. After further positions in the Primera División at CD Málaga , Deportivo La Coruña and Sevilla FC , he trained CF Os Belenenses from Portugal's capital Lisbon for two years .

In 1958 he returned to Spain and became the new coach at FC Barcelona on April 22nd . Here he had a top team under him again, with players like László Kubala , Luis Suárez , Zoltán Czibor , Evaristo , Sándor Kocsis and Antoni Ramallets . In 1959 he won the championship and Copa del Rey double . In 1960 he defended his title in the league and Herrera's fourth Spanish championship. But after disputes with the club management and star player Kubala, the club management ended their engagement after two years at Kubala's insistence. Because of his method of dealing with players, he has been referred to by both the local and international press as "the slave driver of the Río de la Plata ".

Now he has been signed by the traditional Italian club Inter Milan , should stay here for eight years and celebrate the greatest successes of his coaching career. After weeding out Inters superstar Antonio Angelillo , he began building a completely new team. In the first two years the “Nerazzurri” took third and then second place. Not enough for the ambitious and success-hungry club boss Angelo Moratti , who gave Herrera an ultimatum: one more season, then titles had to be created. He also fulfilled his coach's transfer requests and had signed Herrera's favorite player Luis Suárez from Barcelona in 1961 for the then record transfer fee of 250 million lire .

In 1962, in addition to his involvement with Inter, Herrera took over the Spanish national team at the World Cup in Chile . With players like Ferenc Puskás , Luis Suárez, Francisco Gento , Alfredo Di Stéfano and José Santamaría , the coach-fox should ensure a successful World Cup tournament for the Spaniards. But the recipe for success didn't work out; Again, the gruff Herrera had problems with the stars, Spain ended up on a disappointing fourth place and returned home after the group stage. The project was seen as a failure and Herrera returned to his association project with Internazionale.

Back in Milan, Herrera changed his tactics, took a midfielder from the team and placed a cleaner in Armando Picchi behind the defense. In return, left defender Giacinto Facchetti got more freedom. In midfield , playmaker Suárez set the pace, Jair da Costa and Mario Corso were supposed to be the counterattackers on the outside and Sandro Mazzola was a sure enforcer. Herrera was no longer interested in scoring more goals than the opponent; he now focused on conceding fewer goals than the other team. The Argentine put an end to the romantic notions of football: "Nothing but chatter" is the talk of the attractive, offensive game. Because of this pure result football, Herrera was often referred to as the “grave digger of football”, but the success proved him right: he celebrated three championships, won the European Cup and the World Cup twice in 1964 and 1965 . 1967 Herrera stood with Inter for the third time in the final of the European Cup, but lost to Celtic Glasgow 1: 2 (" Lisbon Lions "). This team would later go down in history as La Grande Inter and mark the club's most successful era. In between he briefly coached the Italian national team and also introduced the catenaccio there. After his departure, he was inherited by his assistant coach Ferruccio Valcareggi . Herrera, along with the Hungarian Lajos Czeizler, should be the only foreigner who ever coached the Italian national team.

In 1968, after eight years at Inter, he left to coach AS Roma . There, with an annual salary of 150,000 pounds (equivalent to around 2,620,000 euros today ), he became the best-paid football coach in the world. In the first year he was able to win the Coppa Italia , but soon he had fallen out with President Alvaro Marchini and after a weak season in 1969/70 he was dismissed.

For the 1973/74 season, Herrera returned to Inter to build on the successes from the 1960s with the club. But a heart attack forced him to take a long break, which made it impossible for him to carry out the stressful coaching job. He retired from the soccer business for four years and lived in Venice .

At the end of the seventies he coached Rimini Calcio again for a short time before he was in charge of FC Barcelona for half a year in 1980 and 1981 . In 1981 he was able to win the Copa del Rey again , the last title of his long career.

He then withdrew from football for good and spent the rest of his life with his wife in Venice , where he died in 1997 at the age of 87.

successes

Others

  • Herrera's exact date of birth remained unknown for a long time, as he probably changed his year of birth from 1910 to 1916 in the fifties.
  • Herrera was considered an authoritarian discipline fanatic who liked to lead his teams with a dictatorial hand, which is why he often got into disputes with the respective star players. This went so far that he controlled the private lives of his players.
  • As one of the first trainers worldwide, Herrera used psychology to mentally strengthen his team. So he hung a sign over the door of the inter-cabin with the words: "Class + preparation, athleticism + intelligence = championship."
  • He recognized early on that the support of the spectators for teams can bring an enormous boost in motivation, and therefore pushed the support of the Tifosi as the "twelfth man".

Web links

Commons : Helenio Herrera  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dietrich Schulze-Marmeling, Barça or the art of beautiful play, Verlag Die Werkstatt GmbH, 2nd edition Göttingen 2010, page 72
personal data
SURNAME Herrera, Helenio
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Argentinian-French soccer player and coach
DATE OF BIRTH April 10, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Buenos Aires , Argentina
DATE OF DEATH November 9, 1997
Place of death Venice , Italy