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Ferrara’s Rocky spirit cannot hide the failures of another rookie
Under pressure Juventus boss Ciro Ferrara has come out fighting after a fourth defeat in five matches but it may not be enough for another first-time coach to save his job.
“One of my friends, one of the few I have at the moment, said to me, ‘you are like Rocky’. I am full of punches and blood but I say to my opponent, I am not hurt, punch harder because you are not hurting me,” Ferrara said in the wake of a 3-0 home defeat by AC Milan.
“There is nothing that could knock me down, my mother punched harder.”
His determination is admirable but are Juve now regretting appointing a man with no real managerial experience to replace Claudio Ranieri last May?
In recent times, Barcelona’s Pep Guardiola is possibly the only man to have succeeded in his first big club job.
Ferrara, previously much-loved in Turin as a no-nonsense defender, is in danger of following some other rookie coaches out the door.
Good point. What surprised me is that Ferrara did not seem very frustrated. Instead, he said he did not consider his disappointing experience as a defeat, but as a starting point in his career as a coach.
I don’t know if this belongs more to the resilient nature of a former Neapolitan street kid, or to his genuine belief that coaches are not born, but made.