Before moving to Barcelona in 2010, I knew little about Helenio Herrera – or “HH”, as he was known in the world of football – but you can’t escape him if you live in the city and follow football. His name keeps appearing in the pages of Sport and El Mundo Deportivo, Catalonia’s two daily sports newspapers. His antics were legendary. He had no scruples. He was an outrageous character with an Olympic ability to blow his own trumpet. “They say I know everything,” he said, before adding: “It’s not true – I don’t know failure.”
When I mention his name to friends or journalists in Barcelona, they can recite his famous utterances: “We’ll win without getting off the bus,”; “We play better with 10 than 11.″ His words are remembered in Spain, as they are in Italy, in the same way British football fans remember, say, Bill Shankly’s quip: “Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it’s much more serious than that.”
HH was a mysterious man. There was something enigmatic about him, an undealt card. During his life, no one knew if he was from Buenos Aires or Casablanca or what year he was born. The world was his country. He carried passports from France, Morocco, Italy and Spain, and spoke several languages.
A trail of rumours followed him into the grave about doping and match-fixing. He was full of contradictions: a violent man who practised yoga for 50 years; a man with devastating charm but no friends. He was a football revolutionary. So much of the modern game is influenced by him. He was a mentor to Fabio Capello and Jock Stein, although his relationship with Celtic’s legendary manager soured.
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Seventy per cent of Capello’s coaching ideas came from HH
Capello, the former England manager, played under HH at AS Roma from 1968 until 1970. Capello was HH’s lieutenant on the pitch – and never forgot HH because of the faith he showed in him. Capello’s knees plagued him throughout his career, but HH never withdrew his backing. Indeed, he instilled in Capello unbreakable self-belief, the idea that he should never fear an opponent.
“I liked Helenio a lot. I always have,” said Capello. “He changed football in Italy in his era. His teams played with greater speed, with original ideas. He did things differently to any of the other coaches I worked with. He was 10 years ahead of them in his thinking. He was more forward-thinking, an innovator. He got players to interchange positions. He was great at getting the team moving without the ball.
“His training sessions were very demanding. Everything was done at pace. He had lots of energy. He always held to his belief, his mantra: ‘As we train, so we play’ – if you maintain high standards, things will go well. It stuck with me. With other coaches, training was more relaxed. It was done at a slower pace. Helenio’s obsession was that everything must be done at speed. Other coaches focused more on physical work, less on technical aspects. He was the first coach I worked with who did everything with the ball. He didn’t care about endurance training. Every drill, always with the ball."
HH wasn’t Capello’s friend, however. “Helenio only worked. He lived for football. He was a perfectionist. He was excellent at preparing for matches. On the morning of a game, he pulled players aside and spoke with them individually, highlighting things to be mindful of – what an opposition player might do. He could convince players. He would grab a player by the chest: ‘You are the strongest!’“
Few coaches can match Capello’s CV as a coach. He won league titles with every club he managed – Milan, Real Madrid, Roma, Juventus (although his two titles with Juve were revoked because of the Calciopoli scandal). When it came to coaching, HH was Capello’s North Star. He was HH’s greatest pupil. He put into practice lessons learned at the feet of HH. He brought HH’s basic structure for how a team should be set up into coaching himself: midfield and defence must form a solid block, freedom for the forwards.
“Helenio always fought for his players, to protect the team,” said Capello. “Seventy per cent of the things I did in coaching, I learned from Helenio. I took his ideas completely on board in my work as a coach. He had ideas from the future. I can see things that people do now that he did a long time ago. He showed me things I hadn’t seen before. He influenced so many people. He took our game as a nation to another level.”
HH taught Capello that football matches were won with the brain, not the feet. Capello took into management HH’s guiding principle – that a coach must control his players. He must dominate them. Total respect. Footballers learned to do what they were told and not to ask why. The spirit of HH never left him.
On how HH cajoled footballers
Joaquín Peiró soldiered with HH on several fronts – with Spain in the 1962 World Cup; as one of HH’s La Grande Inter team, which won back-to-back European Cups in 1964-65; and with Roma, Peiró’s last club as a player. HH drove Peiró to despair, but Peiró couldn’t resist his coach when he turned on the charm. Once, for example, Peiró lost his place in the starting XI.
“He didn’t let me play,” said Peiró. “I hated him. We didn’t talk to each other. He didn’t speak to me. But when it happened that he needed me because the guy who had taken my place was injured, or for some other reason, he was diabolical. He transformed. From Monday to Saturday, he would take me aside as if we were bound by an affectionate relationship. He would tell me that I was the best. And I fell for it. I believed him. I went on to the pitch very motivated, galvanised.”
On how HH motivated a depressed goalkeeper
There are so many stories about HH that don’t stack up, like, for example, the rumour he played for the Argentinian club River Plate (he left Buenos Aires aged three and played his professional football career in France). There are preposterous, laugh-out-loud yarns and details that are difficult to verify. He was capable of anything.
There is a story, for instance, about his time coaching in France in the 1940s. He had a good goalkeeper in his squad and one who was so-so. The good one was abandoned by his wife, and he got depressed to the point he didn’t want to play an important match on a Sunday. HH hatched a plan. He told his good goalkeeper he spoke with his wife, and he convinced her to come to the stadium for the game and to wait afterwards so they could talk things through.
The goalkeeper agreed to play the match. When he went out on to the pitch before kick-off, there was a woman in the VIP section of the stand with dark sunglasses and a headscarf who shook her head enthusiastically and waved at him. The woman wasn’t his wife, but a double HH paid to act the part. HH’s team won the match. The goalkeeper was outstanding. Nobody knows what happened afterwards when the goalkeeper found out he was duped. HH left France shortly afterwards, lured to the big leagues in Spain.
I asked Pere Escobar, who wrote a book about HH as part of Barça’s centenary celebrations in 1999, what he made of the story. “Is that goalkeeper story true? I don’t know. Is it possible that it’s something Helenio would do? Yes. Is it something Zinedine Zidane or Pep Guardiola would do? No. Guys from the street have a spark about them. Footballers from Argentina who grew up playing on dirt patches are called potreros. Like Maradona scoring a goal with his hand. He did it without thinking. If you’re hungry, you’ll find bread wherever you can. If you don’t have a football, you’ll steal one.”
[ Ken Early: It would be best for all concerned if Pep Guardiola called it a dayOpens in new window ]
HH would have killed for his mother
In the early 1950s, while managing Atlético Madrid, HH received a telegram after a derby match against Real Madrid. His mother had died during the game. He returned to Casablanca to bury her in a small graveyard. Days later, an Atlético fan made the mistake of insulting his mother with too much persistence during a match: “Herrera, you’re a bastard! You son of a bitch! You f**k with your mother!”
After the game, HH inquired about the fan. He was told where he could be found on the club’s premises. HH tracked him down. As soon as HH saw him, he lurched. He started kicking and punching, beating him like a rented mule. The fan stumbled backwards, retreating in terror, grabbing chairs to protect himself and hurling anything he could get his hands on at HH.
[ Jock Stein: From miner to European championOpens in new window ]
A strange thought dropped into HH’s head. He wanted to embed a billiard ball into the fan’s mouth. To shut him up. Luckily for the fan, Larbi Ben Barek – Atlético’s star forward – intervened. He managed to calm HH down enough to give the fan a chance to flee down a staircase. With his life and his teeth intact.
♦ HH: Helenio Herrera – Football’s Original Master of the Dark Arts by Richard Fitzpatrick (Bloomsbury) is available to order in hardback, audiobook and ebook now
