At 34, the Italian has just been appointed coach of Nice on Friday. It carries an ambitious speech but has few references at the highest level.
It was no small feat, but Nice hired a younger coach than Didier Digard, who was relieved of his duties at the start of the month. The club announced on Friday June 30 the appointment of Francesco Farioli, 34, as its head for next season. The transalpine technician will thus manage players older than him, like Dante (39 years old) or Kasper Schmeichel (36 years old). However, this is not necessarily the main curiosity around this choice: in addition to his age, Farioli is not far from being an unknown. If the anomaly is likely to be erased in the next few hours, he did not even have, on the evening of his signature, a Wikipedia page in French.
His profile contrasts sharply with the previous coaches recruited by Ineos, majority shareholder of the Aiglons since 2019. With the exception of the temporary workers Adrian Ursea (December 2020-May 2021) and Didier Digard (January-June 2023), the British group was until -there follower of flashy nominations. Christophe Galtier, then reigning French champion, in 2021 and Lucien Favre, in particular passed by Borussia Dortmund, in 2022, had thus succeeded each other on the Riviera bench, without real success.
Despite expensive recruits and multiple announcement effects, the Ineos project has never taken off. Over the period, Nice did no better than a fifth place and failed to develop a game identity. The appointment of Farioli therefore looks like a change of gear. “He has a modern style and a work methodology in which we recognize ourselves”said, in this sense, the Nice sports director Florent Ghisolfi, in a press release from the club.
University thesis, Qatar and Türkiye
President Jean-Pierre Rivère, for his part, praised the “professional and human qualities” of a trainer able to print “his mark in his previous experiences”. On the tails side, his CV nevertheless seems meager and unpompous: Farioli coached Karagümrük (March-December 2021) and Alanyaspor (December 2021-February 2023), two mid-table Turkish clubs. He obtained decent results there, but without any real bang.
On the face side, the Tuscan is however distinguished by multiple experiences that his young age could mask. Like his future counterparts Will Still (Reims) or Carlos Martinez Novell (Toulouse), the former goalkeeper did not have a career as a professional footballer, and devoted himself, from the age of 21, to to his training as a coach. This induces a theoretical dimension, since Farioli devoted a thesis to “the philosophy of the game, the aesthetics of football and the role of the goalkeeper” during his studies at the University of Florence.
The new Nice coach also trained goalkeepers in small Tuscan clubs, before an atypical first choice leading him to Qatar. He worked there for two years (2015-2017) with the Aspire Academy, a training center intended to train future Qatari internationals for the 2022 World Cup, until he was spotted by Roberto De Zerbi, a successful Italian coach.
Haise, last coach appointed by Ghisolfi
The latter, now in Brighton (sixth in the Premier League with an exciting game) integrated Farioli into his staff at Benevento then Sassuolo, as goalkeeper coach, before he flew on his own in Turkey. The principles of maestro De Zerbi strongly inspired him and seduced the Nice staff.
“Possession, aggressiveness with and without the ball, ability to defend very high, verticality, presence in the opposition box… he shapes his teams with the intensity we are looking for”, schematized Florent Ghisolfi in the press release. The sports director, who arrived from Lens during last season, himself embodies this new start desired by the Gym.
This bet remains very risky, because nothing guarantees that Farioli will succeed in France, but recent history tends to judge him with a certain leniency. Before the Italian, Ghisolfi’s last coaching choice, Franck Haise, also looked like a gamble. In three years, he led Lens from Ligue 2 to the Champions League. This same C1 who has fled the Gym since the arrival of Ineos.