League Focus: Set-Pieces Still Key to Success in Serie A

Maurizio Sarri opens a cigarette packet and lights up another one. He’d rather discuss the novel he’s reading. Empoli’s coach has a great passion for literature, particularly the works of Charles Bukowski. One wonders if he enjoys the TV show Californication. “Thanks to him I discovered John Fante,” he tells La Repubblica. “Now Mario Vargas Llosa. Guilty as charged. I’m late to him.” 

Sarri knows what’s coming next. Journalists always ask him the same old questions. About how he worked in a bank until he was 40. “I handled transactions for Montepaschi between great institutions and worked in London, Germany, Switzerland and Luxembourg.” About his smoking habit. “I’ve stopped counting,” he sniffs. “You can’t smoke on the bench anymore, but at the Castellani there are no barriers and there are always fans who pass me one for a drag. And anyway I get sent to the stands so often I don’t have to go long without one.”

And then there’s what he insists is a “legend”, an urban legend. “I don’t know how this rumour started,” Sarri told Radio Sportiva. It claims he has a little black book in which diagrams and instructions are scribbled for 33 original set-pieces. “I’m fed up with it,” Sarri sighs. There’s more to him than this. But still the curiosity remains. “There aren’t 33,” he clarifies, “and besides everyone does them. In pre-season we studied one a day. And on Saturday we choose four or five.” 

You’d think Empoli’s opponents would have figured them out by now. “If they learn them, I change their names rather than the schemes,” Sarri explains. Is it too much like hard work? Not to him, it’s not. “Hard work is getting up at six in the morning to go to the factory,” he says, coming over all Springsteen. “All you need to do here is synchronise the movements and the timing.” And Empoli’s set-pieces are executed with the fine accuracy of a Patek Philippe. 

Both their goals arrived from these situations in Sunday’s surprise 2-1 win over in-form Lazio. Sarri really can’t stand how his success is reduced to this aspect. Why not instead concentrate on the good football his team plays? The young players he develops? It’s something he’ll have to live with because it’s hard not to remark on how his side’s set-pieces are so often the difference for the promoted side. Consider this: 66.7% of Empoli’s goals this season have come from dead-ball routines. That’s 8 of 12. Only Sampdoria have scored as many in Serie A. 

Misdirection, blocks and screens are their forte. Check out, for instance, Empoli’s second goal against Milan in late September. Mirco Valdifiori takes a quick free-kick, Francesco Tavano pulls wide to receive, drawing Nigel de Jong, Daniele Bonera and Mattia de Sciglio out of the middle of the penalty area, where he neatly flicks the ball back inside for Manuel Pucciarelli to score. Catching Milan out with these ploys isn’t difficult. It’s their Achilles heel. But Empoli deserve credit. At times their plays look like something you’d see an NFL team run. 

Samp’s do as well. Watch back their opener away to Cagliari in mid-October. Sinisa Mihajlovic had four of his players line up behind Zdenek Zeman’s wall. As Angelo Palombo goes to take the free-kick, they simultaneously move to come back onside and act like offensive linemen, stopping the Cagliari defenders from tracking any runners. Paulo Avelar, for instance, goes to follow Manolo Gabbiadini but is taken out by Stefano Okaka. Left alone in front of the goalkeeper, the Samp striker makes no mistake and scores. 

Mihajlovic has always appreciated the set-piece. No one has scored more free-kicks than he has in Serie A history [28], at least until Andrea Pirlo curls in another couple to match his record. Mihajlovic’s focus on them really began to sharpen as a coach however following his appointment at Catania. Inheriting an existing staff, he got to work with a set-piece specialist by the name of Gianni Vio.

Like Sarri, he also used to work in a bank, the Unicredit branch in Mestre to be precise, and would design original dead-ball routines in his spare time. Collaborating with a fellow enthusiast Alessandro Tettamanzi, he published a book entitled ‘Plus 30%’ with an accompanying CD-Rom to illustrate how football teams could find an edge through careful attention to free-kicks and corners. It was all very niche and underground but, one day out of the blue, Vio received an email from Walter Zenga. 

“I got to know him in 2005 when I coached Red Star Belgrade,” Spider Man recalls. “As a goalkeeper I had always been a fanatic about dead-balls. We exchanged emails, drawing up schemes as if it were a naval battle. I then took him on all of my experiences abroad.” Part-time to begin with, Zenga would have Catania owner Nino Pulvirenti fly Vio down from Venice on his budget airline Wind Jet. The impact was immediate. In his first game in charge, Catania scored twice from corners to record an improbable 3-0 win over Napoli. 

Imaginative in their conception, some were outrageous. One free-kick in particular against Torino became famous. A wall was set up to defend it, but the Catania players in it did the unexpected. They dropped back and formed one of their own, unsighting goalkeeper Matteo Sereni. Before running back onside Catania striker Gianvito Plasmati, now at Leyton Orient, pulled down his shorts as another distraction. All the high-jinx unnerved Sereni to such an extent that Giuseppe Mascara, who had been standing over the free-kick all this time, took advantage of the confusion to cooly aim a shot into the bottom corner. 

Mihajlovic was grateful for the experience to work with Vio. In the relegation zone when he arrived, a combination of his psychology, the signing of Maxi Lopez and Vio’s playbook meant they not only survived but finished 13th. Vio definitely made good on the promise of his first and second books [Set-piece: the 15-goal striker] as Catania scored 17 from dead-balls, 38.6% of their total. The following season under Marco Giampaolo and Diego Simeone, they were even more productive with half of their goals [20 out of 40] coming from dead-balls. The high point came in 2011-12, however, as even though the coach changed, Catania’s threat remained the same. They scored 27 or 57.4% of their total from these situations. 

Vio had surpassed himself. Is it really any wonder Vincenzo Montella insisted on the guru coming with him to Fiorentina when he left Sicily? In Vio’s first season at the Artemio Franchi, he put his name on the Viola as 29 of their goals were well-rehearsed free-kick and corner tricks. It was only a matter of time before a big club came calling. 

Milan headhunted Vio this summer. His absence has been felt in Florence. In addition to losing top scorer Giuseppe Rossi again to injury, Fiorentina could have done without being deprived of their other ‘striker’. Interestingly only one of their 10 goals this season has come from a set-piece. In the meantime, Milan have scored 6 - or 30% - of their overall total. If only Vio could teach Pippo Inzaghi’s team how to defend them… 

Joking aside, details like this matter, particularly for clubs like Empoli and Catania who don’t have the resources to buy a centre-forward capable of scoring 15 goals in the top flight. Serie A has always been a place of great tactical innovation. It’s now the go-to league to study the variation and sophistication of the set-piece.

What do you make of teams focussing on scoring from set-pieces? Is it better to ignore them and prefer scoring from open play? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below