44 today, Filippo "Pippo" Inzaghi may be managing at a moderate level at Joe Tacopina’s backed Venezia. His return to AC Milan as a manager may have ended in a damp squib. But he will be long remembered as one of the most prolific strikers in Italian football.
If it all took off during his sojourn at Atalanta, it was sustained periods at Juventus and Milan that elevated him to the pantheon of great Italian footballers. But what is it that led a player of average height and not of any genuine pace to become such a commanding presence in both domestic and international football in his home country?
There are two traits that stand out when Pippo Inzaghi’s career is considered. The two things that contributed to his phenomenal goal scoring record. Endeavour and intelligence. And how he fused these together.
One of Sir Alex Ferguson’s most memorable quotes was attributed to Inzaghi.
"That lad must have been born offside."
The reputation for being caught out by linesmen with regularity was less about his tendency to wander into offside positions and more to do with how he played the game.
Inzaghi played the game on the edge. On the shoulder of defenders and on the cusp of the offside line. He was aggressive and busy; but most of all he taunted defenders. Taunted them in the sense that he was hard to live with. Whether they should try to hold their line and allow him to find himself in trouble, or to stay with him, because for all the times he may have been caught offside, there were all the times his gamble paid off.
It wasn’t merely this though that made him stand out at from an early age at his hometown club of Piacenza. It was his innate intelligence. His positioning, his nous. His awareness inside the box. For that was where he spent his time. In the box. Not a player who would run wide or deep, he did his work in the face of defences. And if it didn’t click for him as one might have expected at Parma, at Atalanta, he made his mark.
Positional sense, graft and a tendency to finish with precision and style. This is what endeared him to the faithful at the Stadio Atleti Azzurri d’Italia. His coach at Atalanta, Emiliano Mondonico said of Inzaghi, “It’s not Inzaghi who is in love with goals; it’s the goals that are in love with him.” The two went hand in hand.
And that continued. For club and country. A world cup winner in 2006, the infamous Champions League defeat to Liverpool in 2005 was soon forgotten in the shadow to the victories of 2003 and 2007. Two league victories with Milan and one with Juventus as well as the Italian Cup with the Rossoneri.
It was, however, how Pippo played the game that lives in the memory. How he played with aggression, only to change his positioning, create a sliver of space and hammer home an opportunity. These are the memories that live in the minds of people who remember you.
