Who Is Francesco Farioli?
It seems like everything about Francesco Farioli revolves around breaking the norm.
The 33-year-old manager has quickly attracted the world’s interest through his fascinating and daring tactics in Turkey, but it is best to start before that to understand Farioli a bit better.
His career trajectory is as fascinating as any.
While coaching in Qatar in early 2017, Farioli wrote an article about Roberto De Zerbi’s Foggia, who comfortably won the Serie C that season.
De Zerbi, who is now in the Premier League with Brighton, loved the article and offered the 28-year-old a position in his backroom staff as he joined Serie A side Benevento.
Farioli then followed De Zerbi to Sassuolo before parting ways and heading off to Turkey in 2020.
He began the 2020/21 season as an assistant manager at Alanyaspor and, in March 2021, became the manager of Fatih Karagümrük, where Juventus and Milan legend Andrea Pirlo is currently managing.
At 31 years old, he was the youngest professional manager in Europe when he signed the contract.
On the last day of 2021, Farioli joined his former club Alanyaspor, this time as the manager.
With over a year at the Turkish club now, the Italian’s football ideas are well imprinted in his team.
However, to think of his tactics as a defined concept is inapt.
Similar to his former partner De Zerbi, Farioli’s tactics push the boundaries and challenge the norm.
They prove that in football, there is no tactical end product or end goal.
The world of tactics is in constant change, and Farioli is one of the newest characters leading it.
This tactical analysis aims to provide a complete and in-depth breakdown of Francesco Farioli tactics at Alanyaspor.
The Francesco Farioli analysis will specifically focus on his team’s behaviour in and out of possession, identifying and outlining the key principles and ideas that guide his tactics.
Francesco Farioli Formations
At Alanyaspor, the Italian manager has varied between a 4-3-3 and a 3-4-2-1, with the latter being the most used recently.
However, formations are hardly relevant with Farioli.
According to Wyscout, Alanyaspor has used a total of seven formations this season.
At any rate, the last five are simply variations of the two, representing one of the overarching characteristics of Farioli’s side: fluidity.
Fluidity is hardly news in 2023, but the extent to which it influences Alanyaspor’s structure is fascinating.
It seems that the two shapes are highly considerate of the characteristics of the players.
Although principles guide the collectives behaviour in each stage of possession, there is much room for positional freedom and little for rigid structures.
In fact, these principles allow for such individual liberty to roam in and out of spaces.
In later sections, we will use one phase of possession at a time to explore these principles, their consequences, and why they prove so effective.
As far as line-ups are concerned, Farioli is constantly rotating his starting eleven.
It is hard to be sure from the outside, but it seems his team selection is highly influenced by the environment surrounding the game at hand, whether that is opposition, form, player characteristics, and more.
Al
