In De Zerbi protege Farioli, Ajax have one of football's most fascinating managers
Sure, there are more successful young coaches in the world such as the well-known Julian Nagelsmann or the lesser-known Will Still from Lens, but few of them have studied philosophy at university.
Farioli did so at the University of Florence, and I do not mention this fact just for the sake of it. In his thesis, he discussed the role of football in society as a certain ideal of beauty and the importance of the game for humanity.
In it, he also did not fail to criticise the current concept of football, where business dominates, and instead tried to highlight the childlike joy of playing itself. As a former goalkeeper, he then placed the role of goalkeeper at the centre of his thesis, which he philosophically compared to the human journey through life.
De Zerbi's apprentice
Why did I start with this only partly football-related introduction? It is mainly to show that Farioli is a very thoughtful person, but one who has managed to combine his academic career with coaching.
In fact, in his early days, he was a goalkeeping coach at the Qatari youth academy Aspire Academy. Although the nation still lags behind its goals in the world of football and fails to produce many interesting footballers for the world market, Farioli used his philosophy when working with young people here.
In an unorthodox way, then, thanks to the publication of an analytical article about Foggia for Wyscout, Roberto De Zerbi learned about his work and soon recruited him as a goalkeeping coach at Benevento.
Farioli can therefore be considered a pupil of De Zerbi, under whom he worked for just under three years. In the words of Farioli himself, it was a very intense job, often finishing well after midnight, and he considers it a wonderful time. Even some of the players during Farioli's later coaching stints said they studied De Zerbi's Brighton game before games.
He started his own coaching journey again in a rather unconventional way at Turkish side Fatih Karagumruk before leaving during the 2021/22 season for Alanyaspor, with whom he managed to leapfrog Karagumruk in the table to finish fifth.
Although Alanyaspor didn't fare well in the league the following season and Farioli left the club after the 23rd round, the team's deterioration doubled after his departure and Alanyaspor stayed up by a mere point in the league.
So, the Turkish adventure didn't end particularly gloriously, but Farioli was fortunate that French side Nice decided to restructure after a not-so-successful season.
While Farioli preferred a 4-1-4-1 formation in Turkey and even experimented (not very successfully) with playing three centre-backs at the end of his time at Alanyaspor, he established his characteristic 4-3-3 formation in the south of France. Although the archives say that this formation was offensively oriented, the truth is that Nice scored the fewest goals of any team in Ligue 1 (40).
Nice's defence however was the best in the competition, and I'll come back to Farioli's philosophy here. According to him, the beauty of football is not only in scoring goals but also in great defensive work, great passing and goalkeeping.
Ironically, it was only in Nice that the Italian coach completed his professional coaching licence.
The first Italian coach at Ajax
After his success with Nice, who he led to fifth in the league, securing the team's direct qualification to the Europa League group stage, a move to the Dutch giants followed. He became the first Italian coach in Ajax's history.
The club has been struggling hugely in recent years, and even this season have not been completely sun-drenched, but Ajax have made real progress under Farioli.
At the moment, they are fifth in the league, but they have a game in hand, and while the Europa League playoffs were not smooth sailing, with them only beating Panathinaikos in a very long and thrilling penalty shootout, they swept away Jagiellonia Bialystok in both matches before beating Besiktas 4-0 in the opening match of the league phase.
While the man's journey from philosopher to big-club coach is an interesting story, what's most important is how Farioli actually sets up his team.
At Nice, he built a very characteristic system of playing out from the goalkeeper, where five players are positioned inside and on the edge of the box. The interchange of positions between the full-back and the winger is important, with the full-back moving inside and opening up space for the winger, who then gets space to pass to one of the central midfielders or to an onrushing full-back.
This scheme thus ensures a smooth transition from the defence to the midfield, but at the same time there is a relatively high risk of misplaced passes and losing the ball.
The role of the full-back is also important in the construction of attacks, where they tuck into the middle of the pitch in a rather unconventional way, creating a passing option for the centre-backs and allowing the midfielders to move up the pitch more.
In the offensive phase, Farioli prefers to position five players behind the opposition's attacking line and use quick vertical passes through to the three midfielders. The wingers stay wide and stretch the play, and the midfielders have room to dribble into the opponent's half. Farioli's Nice were also keen to use quick direct counter-attacks with fewer passes.
If compact attacking in a 4-3-3 formation failed then after losing the ball, Nice would switch to a deep block in a 5-4-1 scheme with a condensed midfield and relatively open space on the flanks. The fact that this system was used is evidenced by the aforementioned low number of goals scored in the league.
At Ajax, he has had to change some things tactically but we will definitely see some of these tactical elements against Slavia in Prague.
Slavia will have to be careful of the young Belgian winger Mika Godts and their defence must not overlook the dangerous striker Brian Brobbey. Ajax also have experienced international Davy Klaassen at their disposal.