When the word manager is pronounced in Italy in reference to football teams, one can only think of Italo Allodi, because he left his mark on all the teams where he worked, from Angelo Moratti’s Inter to Giampiero Boniperti’s Juventus, from Corrado’s Naples Ferlaino and finally the 10 years spent between the national team and the technical center of Coverciano.
Index
Career
As a young man he played in various Serie C teams without achieving great results, it will be as sports director starting in 1956 that he will come to the attention of Italian football. From 1956 to 1959 he worked for Mantova and then moved to Inter until 1968 where he contributed significantly to the creation of Angelo Moratti’s great Inter. Team that won three league titles, two champions cup and two intercontinental cups. He discovered several players who determined the birth of this great Inter admired and feared all over the world. It was the Inter of: Sarti, Burgnich, Facchetti, Bedin, Guarneri, Picchi, Domenghini, Jair, Mazzola, Suarez and Corso.
From 1970 to 1973 he worked at Juventus where he won two championships. In 1974 he was called by the president of the federation Artemio Franchi, initially to take care of the national team leaving for the German World Cup and was subsequently appointed director of the technical center of Coverciano. From 1982 to 1985 he was sporting director of Fiorentina and then from 1985 to 1987 adviser to the president of Napoli Ferlaino where he contributed to the victory of the first Scudetto of the Neapolitans.
Italo Allodi the King of the Market
There have been many transfer market hits by Allodi, from Suarez to Jair and Corso at Inter, from Bettega, Causio, Furino, Zoff and Cuccureddu at Juventus. Furthermore, among the many negotiations there was also the one to bring Pele to Inter who didn’t go in goal for a while. In the market of those years he wove relationships and moved players to his liking so much that he was called the king. When he went to Juventus he only stayed for three years, because his strong decision-making personality came into conflict with that of the president Gimpiero Boniperti.
In the Federation
In 1974 he was given the task of managing the technical center of Coverciano and also in this role Allodi left his mark, as he had done in his work with Inter and Juventus. Invents the super course for coaches which determines the issue of the license to coach among professionals and creates the football university, taken as an example all over the world so much so that it is also called by the Bocconi University of Milan to hold conferences for its students.
End of career
After his work in the federation he was called by Fiorentina but did not leave his mark, later in 1985 he became personal adviser to President Ferlaino and made an important contribution to winning the first Scudetto for the Neapolitans. Meanwhile in 1986 a scandal broke out in Italian football and Allodi was among the people involved but was completely exonerated. Because of the problems born from this scandal, he had serious health problems that forced him to abandon his job.
After thirty years as an absolute protagonist, the story of the greatest innovator in the management of a football club ended and from that moment the story of another manager who will be a protagonist in the transfer market will begin: Luciano Moggi. Italo Allodi due to health problems passed away in 1999 in a clinic in Florence at the age of 71. He ended up in oblivion forgotten by that world to which he had given everything and this was very painful for him. In remembering him, many sports directors and coaches owe him so much for what his way of managing football clubs represented.
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