Rangers held talks with Francesco Farioli a year before hiring Philippe Clement with the Nice boss now labelled a ‘superb’ coach on the back of an impressive start to life in France’s Ligue 1.
If Philippe Clement is as close to a sure-thing as Rangers could get – a three-time winner of Belgium’s Jupiler League title – then Francesco Farioli would have been pretty much precisely the opposite.
At the age of 34, Farioli is 15 years Clement’s junior. He has only been working as a head coach since 2021 too. But the mere fact that he landed one of the most high-profile jobs in French football while still barely out of short trousers is proof of how highly the ambitious Italian is regarded across the continent.
According to The Athletic, Rangers held talks with a then-33-year-old Farioli before making the well-meaning-but-flawed decision to hand the reigns to Mick Beale in 2022. There is no telling how differently things would have panned out for the Gers if they had bet the farm on Farioli instead, of course, but Roberto de Zerbi’s one-time assistant is certainly living up to the promise that could tempt some to label him Italy’s answer to, say, Julian Nagelsmann.
Rangers had Francesco Farioli talks
“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.”
A very modern sort of tactician, Farioli models himself on Pep Guardiola, Mikel Arteta and Marcelo Bielsa. The influence of all three is clear to see in the way his Nice side go about their business too, with their inverted full-backs and their dominant possession play.
‘He is superb’
“We have a balance, with full-backs that can invert, and I find it really interesting,” Ghisolfi adds. “It’s intellectually stimulating to discover a different way of playing and a very defined style of play.”
Farioli, who spoke openly about his interest in a move to Scotland, has Nice second in Ligue 1. The Sir Jim Ratcliffe-backed club are the only unbeaten team in the division, and stunned Paris Saint-Germain 3-1 at the Parc des Princes in September.
As it transpired, that would not be the only time Ratcliffe defeated Qatar…
