In the early morning of May 14, Beijing time, in the 35th round of Serie A, Salernitana won 1-0 at home to Atalanta with a decisive goal in injury time in a rainy battle, not only hurting the opponent's dream of qualifying for next season's Champions League, but also announcing the team's 99.99% relegation. In fact, if it weren't for direct relegation rival Spezia's upset defeat of AC Milan in this round, Salernitana could have announced successful relegation three rounds in advance, but for now, Salernitana is still 8 points ahead of the relegation zone, and relegation is only a theoretical possibility.
However, just 4 months ago, in the 18th round of Serie A, when Salernitana lost 2-8 away to Atalanta, almost all Italian media pronounced the "death sentence" of the "Seahorse Legion", when the "Torino sports newspaper" said, "Last season Salernitana returned to Serie A after 22 years and finally narrowly relegated in 17th place in the league, but this season their relegation fate can not be reversed, Serie A is too difficult for them." Sure enough, Salernitana's subsequent 4 games with 1 win and 3 defeats and only 3 points, the team's downward trend seemed unstoppable, and in desperation, the club made the decision to change coaches, and Paolo Sousa, who had coached Tianjin, replaced Nicola as the new manager of Salernitana.
However, Sousa's arrival did not immediately have the effect of "changing coaches like changing knives", and he lost the first game of his team to Lazio the Blue Eagle. However, in the second match, Salernitana beat Monza 3-0 at home, and the morale-boosting "Seahorse Army" began an incredible journey, and Salernitana remained unbeaten with 1 win and 8 draws in the next 9 rounds. Salernitana's unbeaten run ended until the last round of league defeats to Empoli, but they still set the longest unbeaten run in Serie A this season with 10 rounds.
In the 13 league games led by Sousa, Salernitana has a record of 3 wins, 8 draws and 2 defeats, although it seems that 17 points in 13 rounds is not much, but in fact, every 1 point obtained by the team is quite high: Salernitana not only drew with Sampdoria and Spezia, forced AC Milan, Inter Milan, Napoli, Fiorentina, won many games such as Atalanta, but also a classic example of defeat with weakness. Among them, Salernitana's 1-1 draw away from Napoli directly disrupted Napoli's home celebration of wanting to be crowned the new king of Serie A 6 rounds earlier.
In addition to the real scores, Salernitana's game content and spirit also excited the fans. When attacking, Salernitana often takes the moment to strike across the board, which makes opponents very uncomfortable, and the attack with 18 goals in 13 games is efficient enough; When defending, Salernitana interprets the strategy of deep defense to the extreme, the team not only maintains a dense defense in its own half and the entire defensive area, but also goes as deep as possible into the opponent's half to completely block the opponent's attack. In 13 games, Salernitana conceded 14 goals may seem like a lot, but the opponent's 10.3 shots on goal caused a goal, which is enough to show how tough the team's defense is.
In addition, whether at home or away, whether it is tailwind or headwind, one can see a strong team that is united, works together and strives for victory, which is very different from the team's performance in the first half of the season. It can be said that the arrival of Sousa has fundamentally changed Salernitana's technical and tactical system and game temperament.
Succeeding Cannavaro in Tianjin, Sousa failed to leave class early. After leaving Tianjin, his coaching career was also not smooth, and he failed to win the general recognition of fans in Ligue 1 Bordeaux, Poland national team and Flamengo in the Baja Ligue 1. When Sousa took over Salernitana in February, he signed a short-term contract with the club. However, with Salernitana's breakthrough progress, the club have long considered signing him to a long-term contract. Cannavaro, who also returned to Italy this season and coached Serie B team Benevento, left class early. It is worth mentioning that Sousa and Cannavaro are both proud protégés of legendary Italian coach Lippi, and they have both been vigorously promoted by the "silver fox" and helped to get on the horse and send them a ride, but now their coaching careers are in a recovery period and the other is in a bottleneck period.
Although there has been speculation that Sosa, who is once again making his name in Serie A, will climb another branch after this season, after leading the team to a victory over Atalanta, Sosa's words seem to reassure Salernitana fans, "I like to coach here, it has always felt good here. In fact, everything we do now is preparing for the future, and the performance of the players gives me more confidence and expectations. I know the president of the club is ambitious and I want to lead a team that can constantly improve and break through the top of the team and bring joy to the fans and ourselves. ”
Image from Paul Sousa Social Media The copyright of the image belongs to the original author