Maurizio Sarri Biography, Age, Height, Wife, Net Worth, Family

On the ball, Sarri's teams are known for playing an attractive, exciting, and attacking-minded brand of football, based on retaining possession, movement off the ball, and lots of quick, short passes on the ground; this style has come to be known as "Sarri-ball" or "liquid football" in the media, while L'Équipe has described it as "vertical tiki-taka". The Italian encyclopaedia Treccani instead coined the term "Sarrismo" to describe the offensive and spectacular style of football that Sarri's teams play. Sarri's teams' modern, innovative, and creative playing style, as well as their mentality, ability to move up the pitch quickly on counter-attacks and score many goals, has won praise from several pundits, players, and managers, including Pep Guardiola and Cesc Fàbregas; in 2018, former manager Arrigo Sacchi praised the style employed by Sarri's Napoli side as "the most important thing seen in Italy in the last 20 years". However, despite receiving plaudits for his tactical approach to the game, he also initially came under criticism from some in the sport for his failure to win a title as a manager, until leading Chelsea to victory in the Europa League in 2019; he has also been accused in the media of being stubborn and tactically inflexible at times. When defending off the ball, Sarri's teams often employ an aggressive use of energetic pressing, tight lines, and pressure high up the pitch in order to win back the ball quickly. Throughout his coaching career, Sarri has adopted several formations, such as the 4–3–1–2 or the 4–2–3–1, but he later came to be known for using a "free-flowing, possession based 4–3–3 system" during his time with Napoli. During the 2016–17 season, following the departure of Gonzalo Higuaín to rivals Juventus and an injury to the club's main striker Arkadiusz Milik, Sarri frequently deployed Dries Mertens in a false nine role, seemingly positioned as a lone centre-forward, rather than as a left winger, where he had previously faced competition from Lorenzo Insigne for a starting role; as a result of Sarri's tactical change, Mertens's goalscoring output increased dramatically.