Wellington Phoenix coach Giancarlo Italiano delivered a fascinating press conference ahead of his side’s Australia Cup Round of 16 clash against Melbourne City on Sunday.
The rookie head coach spoke candidly about a range of topics and answered an open first question about his progress at the club by voluntarily admitting that the level of the day’s training session was not at the standard he desired.
“It’s been going very well. We have our ups and downs. Today, I was a little bit frustrated with the boys, I thought in terms of the consistency where they’ve been at for the whole pre-season, I thought today dropped off a bit,” Italiano told reporters.
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“I’m not sure if that’s because of the game that we’re playing on Sunday, maybe a little bit of nerves or just maybe their mind is more focused on the game than at training. Apart from that its going really well.
“I let them know about it today. I have high standards, the coaching team have set a very high bar. We feel that whenever they’re short that they need to understand that they need to maintain that at all times. Not just three sessions and then two poor sessions, they need maintain that at all times. They need to have a good baseline.”
Italiano is preparing for his first season ever as a senior head coach and is one of the first Isuzu UTE A-League bosses ever to take the reins without a playing career behind them.
Early signs suggest that he may have a penchant for brutal honesty in his engagements with the media.
Asked about the style of football his Phoenix side will be playing this term, he responded: “That’s a difficult question to answer simply.
“We’ve basically restructured all our trainings, in terms of value and goal setting, just the culture around the team. It was important to put my own brand on the style and the way we wanted to move forward. We basically started from scratch.
“We carried on some good things that were implemented previously but the main focus is on having more of the ball, being more positive, pressing a lot more, so it has been quite challenging but also very rewarding when it works.
“… The buy-in has been very good. I feel that the existing players also have been playing the old system for quite a long time, what was needed was maybe… I always say to my players ‘its evolution, not revolution’. The evolution is based on what we did before but with a new mix, new ideas.
“Those existing players so far have enjoyed it immensely. The feedback is very positive. I feel that even though we’ve had limited games, for the moments we’ve put it together, it looks really good.
“The frustrating part is the fact that because we haven’t had a huge amount of games, it’s been harder to get where we need to in anticipation of the A-League season.”
Quizzed further on whether geography had caused that frustration, Italiano elaborated.
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“There are two things. The lack of games against quality opponents really comes down to costs,” he explained.
“Living on the other side of the Tasman, it can be quite an expensive exercise. Taking that into effect when I took the job, one of my main focuses was making training very competitive. So there’s always a punishment-reward outcome.
“We wanted to create an atmosphere that was game realistic all the time. We had a lot of internal games now, training is more focused towards games now than it is training and that is to compensate for that factor. To be fair, the internals we have are quite intense, probably more intense than the games we’ve played so far.
“It’s no disrespect to the teams we’ve played so far, it’s just when you play against teams that don’t have that same energy or quality, what tends to happen is your standard drops to where they’re at.
“I’m not sure if that’s inexperience on our part; a really good team can really dominate and increase that quality. Because it’s a new system, I think it’s going to very up and down, and hopefully be alright for the season.”
Considering the 40-year-old was his predecessor Ufuk Talay’s right-hand man last season, it would not be unreasonable to suggest that Wellington may roll out a similar style this campaign.
However, when asked what fans can expect from his team this term, Italiano suggested we may be seeing a very different looking team in yellow and black.
“My main focus is on command of the game and (that) means we need to have the ball the whole time,” he said.
“It also means that when we don’t have the ball, in order to establish command we need to press and win the ball as quickly as we can, regain it so we can get into a positive part of the pitch and get rewarded.
“What you’ll see is a lot of combination football, a lot of emphasis on keeping the ball. A lot of emphasis on distorting the ball and finding space for our attackers. What you’ll also see – it will be a gradual build-up, you won’t see the end product on Sunday – but the defensive effort will be related to more of a press than a block.
“Obviously there will be times where the players are gassed and they have to block, but it will be more of an emphasis on keeping the ball in the attacking half.”
Wellington’s squad is coming together ahead of the upcoming campaign with the arrivals of Mohamed Al-Taay (Newcastle Jets), Jack Duncan (Newcastle Jets), Lukas Kelly-Heald and Fin Conchie, but Italiano’s comments suggest they may head into the season with a foreign spot unfilled.
“At the moment, I would say its kind of cooled off in terms of bringing in another foreigner,” he said.
“What we have available, in terms of centre-backs I think they can fill that role adequately and its also a really good opportunity for us to give these younger players a real opportunity.
“I think it ties in well with what the club wants to do with producing our own players. I said when I first got the job and the last couple of press conferences that the focus will be on developing Kiwi players through our academy.”
