page_title: Vittorio Pozzo
section_title: Style of management and tactics: the Metodo system
hierarchical_section_title: Vittorio Pozzo / Style of management and tactics: the Metodo system
context_page_description: Vittorio Pozzo was an Italian footballer, manager and journalist.
  The creator of the Metodo tactical formation, Pozzo is regarded as one of the greatest managers of all time, and is the first person to guide a national team to two FIFA World Cup titles as coach, leading the Italy national team to victory in the 1934 and 1938 FIFA World Cups. Nicknamed Il Vecchio Maestro, he also led Italy to a gold medal at the 1936 Olympic football tournament, and managed the Italian championship squads of the 1930 and 1935 editions of the Central European International Cup.
context_section_description: Until the 1930s, a common tactic in football was the so-called pyramid of Cambridge, which is a 2–3–5 in the shape of inverted pyramid that had its apex in the Keeper. The design of this scheme is given to the team of the famous British university, and its launch is due to Blackburn Rovers, who applied it for the first time in the 1890s, and winning five league cups. For over 30 years this form experienced uninterrupted luck in the British Isles and, by extension, the world. In the years after World War I, by evolution, from the pyramid, two tactical systems originated simultaneously: the WM, or 'sistema', practiced by the Arsenal side of Herbert Chapman, and the 'metodo', whose fathers are commonly identified as Vittorio Pozzo and his friend and rival Hugo Meisl, who served as the manager of the Austria national football team for 25 years.
  Pozzo and Meisl developed the idea of an array with two defenders as full-backs and a player in a central position in front of the defence, between the two half-backs, who effectively functioned as a central or defensive midfielder, who was a key component of the system; this position was known as that of the centre-half-back, or centromediano metodista in Italian, and was seen as a precursor to the regista or deep-lying playmaker role, as the metodista's responsibilities in Pozzo's system were not entirely defensive but also creative. As such, the metodista was not solely tasked with breaking down possession, but also with starting attacking plays after winning back the ball. Compared to the sistema, the forward displacement of the central defender gave more support to the half-backs. Finally, the retreat towards the median of the two 'inside forwards' of the pyramid (also called "mezzali," or "half-wings," in Italian – not to be confused with wing half-backs) gave rise to a formation of the type 2–3–2–3, or "WW", because it repeated the form of these letters on the field. The metodo system was well–suited to highly technical teams whose strategies were predominantly based on a slower game made up of possession and much short passing on the ground, in contrast to the English sistema, which favoured faster, more aggressive, and athletic gameplay.
  Pozzo was also known to be a pioneer in his use of pre-tournament training camps.
caption: The Metodo of Vittorio Pozzo
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