A few years ago, when Roberto De Zerbi was beginning to establish himself as one of Europe’s most exciting young managers, he would go to bed with a notepad and a pen. The best tactical ideas are born when you are dreaming, he says, and the Italian would often wake up during the night to write down what he had seen in his mind.
Those ideas are fully formed now, and he no longer feels the need to scribble away in the early hours, but that does not mean De Zerbi has stopped dreaming. Brighton’s head coach is a man of considerable ambition, leading a club with enormous potential, and this season remains alive with possibility for him and his players.
De Zerbi is invariably described as obsessive, intense and fiercely competitive. That much is obvious to anyone who has seen him on the touchline this season, and in the fact that he has been shown two red cards in the past two months. But there is another word that he would use to summarise his approach to coaching, and indeed to life: authentic.
“I have only one face,” he says. “On the touchline, in a press conference, with my children, with my staff, with the players. I don’t love changing myself. I don’t want to, and I think that is the best part of myself. You can like me or you can dislike me, but for sure no one can say: ‘he is not true’. And to convince people to follow you, you have to be only one person.”
Since replacing Graham Potter in September, De Zerbi has turned an impressive team into an exceptional one. Brighton are now consistently producing some of the most intricate and progressive football of any team in England, and are regarded by many as favourites to win Sunday’s FA Cup semi-final against Manchester United.
It has been a triumph of collective coaching and individual development, and proof that Brighton was the right choice for De Zerbi when the vacancy appeared after Potter had left for Chelsea.
“I respect Potter,” he says. “But I am not Potter. The first thing I spoke about with Tony Bloom [Brighton’s owner] was that I wanted to understand if he wanted another Potter, or Roberto. I can’t be Potter. I can be Roberto and I can do what I know, what I believe.
“Before I met with Tony I studied Brighton for two days, for 18 hours a day. The players, the games. With my staff, I analysed the squad, to see if there were the right conditions. We thought it could be the right opportunity.”
De Zerbi’s impact has been so pronounced that many Brighton supporters fear he will not be there for long. At this rate, a bigger club with a bigger budget will surely come for him soon. Pep Guardiola said recently that De Zerbi is “changing many things in English football” and such comments will be noticed by executives across the continent.
For now, Brighton must simply enjoy him while they have him. The same is true of his players, who are thriving in a possession-based system in which every detail counts. De Zerbi is so focused on the finer margins that he has taught his players to control the ball with their studs, rather than their feet, in order to attract more pressure from the opposition (he likes to tempt his opponents out of their defensive shape).
The idea came to him from one of his former players, Foggia’s Antonio Vacca, and he has had similar discussions with Pascal Gross at Brighton this season. “I love it when that happens,” he says. “I don’t want my players to be like robots, like PlayStation. I want them to understand, to decide on the pitch what they have to do.”
After a 15-year playing career spent mostly in the second tier of Italian football, De Zerbi was first noticed by the wider world when he turned Sassuolo into one of the most watchable teams in Italy. From there he impressed at Shakhtar Donetsk, before departing as a result of the Russian invasion. He spent five days in a bunker in Kyiv, having refused to leave the country until all of his Brazilian players were safely out of Ukraine.
“Football gave me everything, and I give football everything [of me]” he says. “It is my work, my passion and my history. I don’t like it when people take from football, and then don’t give the same back.”
There have been times this season when De Zerbi’s wide-eyed touchline passion has become problematic, and it is tempting to wonder how long he can work so obsessively. After matches, he goes for dinner with his staff to discuss the game. There is no switching off, and he does not want there to be.
“My father transferred the passion of football to me when I was a child,” he says. “I have been a fan, I have been a ball boy, a youth player, a player and a coach. But I started in football as a fan and I can’t forget that.
“I have not yet understood how I can relax in my life, but I feel good. I don’t know how many years I can work in football, but it is OK. I can work like this. I don’t love playing golf, or other sports, to relax. I don’t need that.”
