Who Is Alessandro Nesta?
Last summer, Lazio and AC Milan legend Alessandro Nesta returned from a two-plus year break from football management to take charge of AC Reggiana 1919 in Serie B, with i Granata taking on the second tier having been promoted from Serie C the season before.
Nesta was joining a club that hadn’t participated in Serie B much in recent campaigns.
In fact, since their 1996/97 relegation from Serie A, Reggiana had completed just two seasons (1998/99 and 2020/21) in Italy’s second tier, failing to survive relegation in either of them.
Meanwhile, Reggiana had also played two seasons in Serie D during that same time frame, spending the majority of that just-over-two-decade time frame in the third tier.
Nesta’s side put an end to this trend last season, finishing a respectable 11th place in Serie B, ensuring they’d have a chance to compete in the second tier once more in 2024/25.
Their manager, however, would not be joining them in that conquest, instead taking on a new role as manager of AC Monza in Serie A — perhaps largely thanks to his accomplishments with Reggiana in 2023/24.
The 2024/25 campaign will be the first time that 48-year-old Nesta has the opportunity to manage in the league he bossed from centre-back for many years during his illustrious playing career.
This tactical analysis aims to provide some insight into Alessando Nesta tactics with Reggiana in 2023/24 and an analysis of what can be expected from the legendary centre-back as he takes on the unenviable task of replacing Raffaele Palladino, who’s swapped Monza for Fiorentina next term.
Alessandro Nesta Tactics & Formations
On paper, Nesta’s achievement of helping Reggiana stay in Serie B for the first time since their 1996/97 top-flight relegation seems impressive.
However, it’s also worth bearing in mind that according to Capology, Reggiana had the 11th-highest wage bill in the second tier last season and, per Transfermarkt, the 12th-most valuable squad in the league.
As such, finishing 11th seems about right based on the quality of the squad available and is neither an underachievement nor an overachievement.
Meanwhile, Monza have played in the top-flight for the last two seasons.
While 2022/23 saw them finish 11th with the 11th-highest wage bill and 13th-most valuable squad, per Capology and Transfermarkt, respectively — similar to Reggiana in Serie B last term — in 2023/24, they dropped just one place to 12th on the league table despite then having the fifth-lowest wage bill of Serie A’s 20 teams along with still the 13th-most valuable squad.
Given their drop in wages paid compared to their competition in Serie A last term, Palladino’s achievements appear somewhat more impressive if not quite similar to Nesta’s with Reggiana.
Still, doing this in Serie A will always carry more weight, especially doing so with a particular, identifiable playing style characteristic of a Palladino side, which we broke down in a 2023 tactical analysis of the new Fiorentina boss for 2024/25.
With Reggiana last term, Nesta’s side scored the third-fewest goals in Serie B (38) and generated the lowest xG of any second-tier side (41.8).
Meanwhile, they conceded the seventh-fewest goals in the league (45) and allowed opponents to generate 51.31 xG against them — the ninth-lowest tally in the league.
As we progress into this tactical analysis, we’ll provide an in-depth analysis of Nesta’s tactics, which set his side up to result in what we’ve discussed above.
In-possession
Last season, Reggiana primarily defended in a 5-4-1 and attacked in a 3-4-2-1 shape.
This section of our tactical analysis will focus on their in-possession performance.
Their middle centre-back would sit just in front of the goalkeeper, providing an easy short passing option.
The other two centre-backs would be positioned just on either side of that middle one, with the central midfield duo placed just in front of them, forming a 3-2 base structure in the middle of the park.
