Carlo Carcano: Italy’s Forgotten Genius

In this guest article, Paul Grech looks back at the career of Carlo Carcano, who built the first great Juventus side and worked alongside Vittorio Pozzo to help Italy win the 1934 World Cup. Grech’s book, The Forgotten Genius of Italian Football, is out now in English and Italian.

For over eighty years his record stood unmatched. Between 1930 and 1934, Carlo Carcano led Juventus to four consecutive league titles overcoming the various challenges of player departures and rivals’ investment in squad strengthening to remain on top. 

This was not the Juventus of today but a club that before Carcano’s arrival was still in the shadow of city rivals Torino. The Agnelli money helped, naturally, but it wouldn’t have had the same impact without Carcano. Proof of that lies in the long list of great managers who have graced Italian football since without getting close to replicating a similar feat before Massimiliano Allegri managed to equal (and, eventually, beat) Carcano’s record in 2018.

Yet Carcano was much more than a manager.  His views were visionary, starting from his focus on physical preparation of players through to the then almost unheard study of opposition teams in order to better prepare for games.  

Nothing about his success was accidental.  Everything about him denotes a manager who should be of legendary status.

And yet today his name is hardly remembered; his inclusion in the Juventus hall of fame came almost as an afterthought.

Everyone seems to have forgotten this footballing genius.

***

Carlo Carcano’s career in football started at Alessandria FBC.  Now a team languishing in the lower reaches of Italian football – as it has for the past fifty or so years – that of Alessandria was once one of Italy’s great sides. Under the guidance of Englishman George Arthur Smith, Carcano developed into one of the club’s leading men; the first Alessandria player to be capped for Italy and someone appreciated as much for his intelligence as for his technical abilities.

This intelligence made him an obvious choice to take over as manager at Alessandria and, once he did, proved himself to be quite good in the role.  Indeed, Carcano’s style caught Vittorio Pozzo’s (the legendary Italy national team manager) attention who pointed at him as someone who proved that there were good Italian coaches at a time when many clubs still turned to foreigners.  “That you can place the utmost faith in local coaches for discipline, for coaching and for organisation of play is proven by an example for all: Carcano,” he said.

Pozzo’s faith in Carcano was such that he added him to his staff as a special assistant as Italy triumphed in the 1934 World Cup.

By that point Carcano had led Juventus to four league titles and they were on track to retain do so once again the following season when, suddenly, in December the local paper announced that Carcano was no longer in charge. 

The same paper wrote plenty about the chosen successor (former player Carlo Bigatto) but nothing on why Carcano had been replaced. A few months later Carcano briefly joined Genova, then heading for promotion in the Serie B, and then, in 1941 he took over at Serie C Salernitana.  Even after the end of the World War, jobs were hard to come by for him.

How could it be that one of the most successful managers in the history of the game had disappeared without leaving a trace?

It would take years for a reason to emerge: his (rumoured) sexuality. 

At the time, homosexuality was not accepted in Italy with the fascist party ruling that Italian men were too virile to be gay.  Even so, it wanted to eradicate what it saw as a disorder by decrying any mention of it.

And, in a way, it managed.  At the time no one ever came out and confirmed that Carcano was indeed gay.  Still, the mere possibility that he was homosexual cost him his job and career.  Who knows what he would have achieved had he been allowed to lead the team?

Such was the shadow of this possibility that his role in the successes has never been fully celebrated and that of Carlo Carcano is a name that has been allowed to be forgotten.  

It is to football’s shame that this is so.

Paul Grech has written an e-book that delves into the fascinating details of Carlo Carcano’s life,  The Forgotten Genius of Italian Football, which you can learn more about by reaching out to the author himself here.  

Paul is also the author of Cultured Football, a free newsletter which picks the best five football related articles you would probably enjoy reading.