Who is Alberto Bollini, the coach who led Italy under 19 to victory in the European Championship

That there is still life on the football planet Italy has confirmed it by the Under 19 national team, winner of the European title, led by one of the great masters of national youth football: as soon as he turned 57, Alberto Bollini he put the icing on an expertly prepared cake in a career that has seen him among the great protagonists of our nurseries since the mid-1980s, when he toiled on the fields of northern Italy. The European title has not only projected him on the national news, but also places him as the main candidate for the Under 21 bench, which remained free after the second early elimination remedied by Paolo Nicolato. Carmine Nunziata, coach of the Under 20 runner-up world champion, seemed the favourite, but Bollini could have placed the overtaking at the last corner: certainly a particular parable for two coaches who, in recent years, have exchanged benches immediately close to the Under 21 in the hierarchy of the blue youth.

On your personal bulletin board, Bollini can already boast two Primavera championships, both won with Lazio: the first in 2001, at the helm of a solid team but far from crammed with prospects, which had its theoretical star in Daniel Ola, a very strong central defender physically unable to find space at the top levels, and instead saw the blossoming two other defenders, Di Cesare and Domizzi. The second in 2013, arrived after leading Sampdoria to fight for the title in 2007 as well as Lazio itself in 2012, two championships lost in the final against Inter. In the 3-0 win over Atalanta, the faces on the cover were those of Danilo Cataldi and Keita Balde Diao.

In the Under 19 team he wanted a top-level staff, always in complete harmony with Maurizio Viscidi, coordinator of the youth national teams, and the fact that he took part in the last Nations League finals within the technical group alongside Roberto Mancini does not he only increases his cards in view of the decision relating to the Under 21 bench, given that the coach of the senior national team will have a say in the choice. Moreover, for him it would not be an absolute first time: in October 2020, in fact, he found himself catapulted at the helm of the Azzurrini on the occasion of a gigantic outbreak of Covid that had affected Nicolato’s squad, winning a crucial match against Ireland effectively coaching an Under 20 with very few players aggregated from the older squad.

As also demonstrated during the European Championships that have just ended, with changes to the game system implemented on the basis of the needs and study of the opponents, Bollini makes tactical readings one of his strengths: he was able to bring a first-team approach to the youth teams he coached. He is a man of action, silent, in some ways shy (even with a past as a columnist in Rai), far from the spotlight by nature and will, a very skilled manager of young people also in terms of personality: he knows how to get the best out of them and not it is a coincidence that in these hours social networks are full of congratulatory messages from many of those guys met in the various experiences of these years. The perfect profile to relaunch a national team that has been far from past glory for too many years.