When Francesco Farioli was holding talks over the Rangers post a year ago – interviewed prior to the appointment of Mick Beale in 2022 – the narrative around one of Europe’s most exciting young coaches was that the fresh-faced Italian was more a purist than a pragmatist.
Francesco Farioli, after all, had worked alongside the free-wheeling Roberto de Zerbi at Sassuolo. In an interview with to Sky Sports, he spoke openly about his admiration for Pep Guardiola. Marcelo Bielsa and Mikel Arteta too. Three coaches who have built their reputation upon the foundations of exciting, attacking, possession-based football.
Flash forward to November 2023 however, and the fact that Farioli’s Nice side currently boast the best defensive record in Europe’s top five leagues paints a rather different picture about a man who could have taken over from Giovanni van Bronckhorst in the Rangers dugout 12 months earlier (The Athletic).
Francesco Farioli held Rangers talks
After spells in Turkey with Fatih Karagumruk and Alanyaspor respectively, Farioli took over at an ambitious, deep-pocketed Nice side in June. The impact the 34-year-old has made across the Channel, meanwhile, has Farioli’s appointment already looking like the best decision of the Sir Jim Ratcliffe era, an often underperforming Nice side unbeaten and top of the Ligue 1 table with seven wins (including one over Paris Saint-Germain) and four draws from 11 games.
Rangers, in the same number of fixtures, have been on the losing side three times already.
No team in Europe’s major leagues, meanwhile, has been breached on fewer occasions. Nice have conceded only four goals in Farioli’s tenure.
“We met with him, just like we met with around 10 other managers. We were amazed,” Nice’s sporting director Florent Ghisolfi tells Jerome Rothen’s Enflamme podcast on RMC Sport.
“He is superb. Someone who has strong convictions and who has different ideas that you don’t often see in France. (Farioli’s) is a slightly different style of play. There are lots of teams that want possession and to control the game, but he also searches for stability.”
Top of the table
The final line sums up Farioli’s approach in the Nice dugout.
That remarkable defensive record is not borne out of parking the bus, but of remaining organised out of possession and controlled with it. Two attributes Rangers were often found to be lacking during the final few months of the Beale tenure, the Glasgow giants opting for the ‘safe’ appointment of Steven Gerrard’s former assistant as Nice reap the benefits of a far riskier approach.
