Andrea Pirlo has it all to prove at Sampdoria
Andrea Pirlo likes a challenge.
The former AC Milan and Juventus midfielder was appointed as the new Sampdoria Coach this week, signing a two-year contract with a club set for a tough 2023/24 campaign.
The Blucerchiati were relegated last season after finishing rock bottom of Serie A, years of financial mismanagement finally hitting home after owner Massimo Ferrero was arrested by Italian police as part of ongoing investigations into corporate crimes and bankruptcy back in 2021.
Ferrero had already been replaced as club President by former player Marco Lanna, but nothing could prevent Samp from losing their top flight status after they won just three games last term.
With former Leeds United owner Andrea Radrizzani having reached an agreement to buy Sampdoria, their short term future is secure, and there should be no more issues like the unpaid wages which threatened to harm them even more in recent months.
But Pirlo will need to quickly transform Samp’s fortunes on the field if he is to oversee a return to Serie A, taking over from ex-Inter and Lazio midfielder Dejan Stanković who left last month following their relegation.
Tough tasks are nothing new to Pirlo of course, the 44-year-old returning to Italy after a season in Turkey, where he had been in charge at Fatih Karagümrük. He left their with three games to go and earned a seventh-placed finish, an outcome that left everyone involved feeling hugely underwhelmed.
The Coach will certainly feel like he is at a crucial crossroads in his managerial career, that previous role being only his second on the bench following the 2020/21 season he spent in charge at Juve.
In a neat twist of fate, his first game as boss of I Bianconeri was a 3-0 win over Sampdoria not long after the initial shock of his appointment had worn off. Indeed, just a week earlier, it had been revealed that Pirlo would be in charge of the Juve under-23 side that plays in Italy’s third tier, only for the departure of Maurizio Sarri to see the club propel him into the top job.
A fourth-placed finish plus winning both the Coppa Italia and Italian Super Cup were deemed to not be enough for him to continue, a decision that looks increasingly erroneous in retrospect as his successor Max Allegri earns worse results with better players.
Speaking at a press conference to introduce Pirlo on Wednesday, owner Andrea Radrizzani laid his ambitious plans for restoring the club’s lost sheen.
“We managed to save Sampdoria from bankruptcy which would have killed half of the city of Genoa,” Radrizzani told reporters. “This is just the beginning, now we must talk about football.
“We are here to present the first steps of our projects, who are Andrea Pirlo and Nicola Legrottaglie, our Head of Performance.
“We want to have medium and long-term targets. I think of the Sampdoria of the 1990s that gave emotion and joy to fans. That’s why we picked a coach that wants to keep possession and has a defined identity.
“There are characteristics of the Samp of the ‘90s that I want to bring back.”
Given that ‘Doria won the Scudetto during those halcyon days but now reside in the second tier, that will be no easy feat, but the new boss seems more than ready to accept the test that lies ahead.
“I wanted to start again from the bottom in Turkey and we did good work there, it helped me to grow as a coach,” Pirlo told reporters at that same press conference. “Now I am far more experienced.
“It’s very different, being a coach to a player. When I started this profession, I was fortunate to do it from an extremely high level. I went to Turkey in order to start again from scratch and challenge myself, because I knew there was little chance of really doing well.
“Now we cannot promise that we’ll go straight into Serie A, but that has to be the dream. I have always thrown myself into every challenge with great enthusiasm, giving my all. I am not frightened of anything.”
Sampdoria have provided him with a chance to prove he can become a successful Coach, and the fanbase will demand results immediately.
Andrea Pirlo likes a challenge? He’s got one.