DUSSELDORF — Not many people had Slovakia down to provide the biggest shock of the opening round of Euro 2024 group games.
But Ivan Schranz’s match-winning strike in Frankfurt, which ended a 15-match unbeaten run for Belgium, wasn’t the unlikeliest part of this story.
It wasn’t long ago that the very idea of Slovakia manager Francesco Calzona leading a country at a major tournament would have seemed a fantasy.
The Italian’s story is an unorthodox one. Aged 31, he was still playing amateur football for Tegoleto in Tuscany while working full-time as a coffee salesman.
In his own words, he was “happy doing that job” until a chance meeting with a friend-of-a-friend willing to give him some financial advice changed everything.
The name of the acquaintance? Maurizio Sarri.
Calzona quickly spotted what he later called Sarri’s “fanatical” interest in football during their chats and in 1999, he had an idea.
“He was my financial adviser, but we always ended up talking about football,” Calzona explained.
“Tegoleto fired their coach and asked me to be the player-manager. But I just wanted to play so I suggested Sarri for the job. He had a great season and that’s where everything was born.”
It was quite the journey. For almost 20 years, Calzona operated as Sarri’s right-hand man as the pair worked their way up the Italian football ranks together.
From Avellino to Arezzo, Grosseto to Sorrento, they journeyed through the lower leagues before making their breakthrough at Empoli in 2012-13, taking the Tuscans into Serie A for the duo’s first crack at the top flight.
It was a huge success. Sarri’s efforts at Empoli earned him the Napoli job, and Calzona went with him. It wasn’t long until “Sarriball” exploded into European football lexicon, as a mesmerising Partenopei side came gut-wrenchingly close to the Scudetto, finishing second to Juventus with 91 points.
It was after that near-miss, in 2018, that the two parted ways, Sarri heading to Chelsea, Juventus and Lazio as Calzona became an assistant at Cagliari and then under Luciano Spalletti back at Napoli.
What came next took everyone by surprise. In the summer of 2022, Calzona stepped out of the shadows to be appointed Slovakia coach after the country’s all-time top scorer, former Napoli charge Marek Hamsik, backed him.
“He was fundamental,” Calzona said. “He took a big risk by putting my name forward. This shows his greatness. He believed in me and the federation gave me a chance.”
“If I had a son, I would want him to be someone like Marek Hamsik,” he later added.
Hamsik is working under Calzona at Euro 2024 and the love-in goes both ways.
“His way of motivating the team has struck me, he always uses the right words on and off the pitch.” Hamsik said. “He’s similar to Sarri tactically.”
It’s hard to argue with the results, too.
Calzona guided Slovakia to Euro 2024 qualification as group runners-up behind Portugal. He has won 10 of his 19 games in charge, losing only four, and Slovakia’s winning streak now stands at three games without conceding a goal.
What’s more, he achieved all that while spending the final four months before the Euros juggling Slovakia duties with his first managerial job at club level. And not just any job.
In February, Calzona received a call from a familiar voice when Napoli president Aurelio De Laurentiis invited him back to steady a rapidly sinking ship following a disastrous start to their Serie A title defence.
De Laurentiis hired and fired two coaches, Rudi Garcia and Walter Mazzarri, after Spalletti’s summer exit, before calling on Calzona to rescue their season.
It was a big ask – and it showed. Napoli picked up just three wins under their third boss of the season as they plummeted to 10th, ending 2023-24 on a seven-game winless run.
Calzona subsequently departed as Antonio Conte took the reins in Naples, leaving him to fully focus on Slovakia once more.
The opening win over Belgium puts Slovakia in a strong position to reach the knockouts for only the second time in their history, with Ukraine fresh off a 3-0 humbling to Romania up next in Düsseldorf on Thursday.
Slovakia’s remaining two games, against lower-ranked opponents than Belgium, could also provide an opportunity for the world to see why some have compared Calzona’s style to his long-time partner-in-crime Sarri.
“Going onto the field against any opponent, we try to play,” Calzona said before the tournament.
“If the opponent proves to be superior to us, we hold up our hands, give them a round of applause and go home.
“Our main goal was to get to the Euros. One of the goals now will certainly be to play beautiful football and make these people proud, because we’ve had a great following at recent matches. [Another goal] is certainly to continue to the next round. That would be the icing on the cake.”
After just one game, Calzona is almost there. He has come a long way from flogging coffee around the picturesque hilltop towns of Tuscany.