Former Tottenham set-piece coach Gianni Vio has emerged as a hero for the USA this week during their Copa America opener against Bolivia on Sunday.
When former Chelsea and current AC Milan midfielder Christian Pulisic played his part in a short corner routine less than three minutes into the match against Bolivia, he received the ball from Timothy Weah and the USA captain pushed the ball to the edge of the penalty area before unleashing a ferocious curling effort into the top right corner of the net.
The 25-year-old ran to the bench to celebrate and searched up in the stands before finding who he was looking for and he pointed with both hands to one man in the stands. It was Vio.
The 71-year-old Italian set-piece expert was a popular figure at Spurs in the 2022/23 season as a freelance coach under Antonio Conte, working on the club’s attacking set-pieces, before departing last summer under the change of regime. The former banker has spent the past 20 years studying set-pieces, drawing up more than 5,000 routines, and has been credited with improving the fortunes in dead ball situations of various clubs as well as Robert Mancini’s Italian side as they won the European Championships in 2021.
Since leaving Tottenham Vio has been working with both Watford in the Championship and with the American national side. After Sunday evening’s 2-0 win against Bolivia at the expanded Copa America, Pulisic praised the Italian coach.
“Shout out to Gianni on that one who had a really nice play drawn up,” he said in an interview with Fox Sports. “We had the idea if they only brought one out [to defend the corner taker] we’d take that two-on-one and basically the idea was just to shoot at the back post and things can happen. Sure enough, it went in.”
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In the 2022/23 season with Vio in charge of set-pieces, Spurs scored 16 goals from dead ball situations, the joint second-most in the Premier League with a league-leading 5.9 per cent of their goals coming from set-pieces. Last season, with a different style of football under Ange Postecoglou and with coach Ryan Mason taking over attacking set-piece duties, Spurs scored 11 goals from dead ball situations.
Postecoglou explained last season why it’s not an area where he would “feel comfortable” about bringing a specialist into and has never done during his near three-decade coaching career.
“I’ve never had a specific set-piece coach. I’ve always had someone who’s responsible for that. I always think it’s better if that’s somebody who’s a part of the coaching staff because then that’s an extension of how we play our football,” he said in March this year. “I don’t separate set-pieces from everything else we do, in terms of the team we want to be. It all hopefully links in.
“Here we’ve split the roles between Mile [Jedinak] and Ryan Mason in terms of defensive and attacking set-pieces and they put a lot of work into it with the analysis staff. I’m sure every club does. Some have gone down the specialised route which I understand. It’s just it’s not how I work. I always try to create a collective environment for everything we do, so that nothing is separated. I wouldn’t feel comfortable bringing in specialists for one particular area. Just for the way I work more than anything else.”
For Postecoglou, it’s all about the quality of the set-piece taker and in that regard he has both Pedro Porro and James Maddison able to whip the ball into the opposition box.
“Delivery is vital. Last week wasn’t great. Madders is usually good at them but I thought we had a lot and I know Mase was pretty disappointed with that,” said the Tottenham head coach.
“There are always areas you can improve and those guys practise. It does help. As much as the organisation, you still need somebody who can execute. If you’ve got, and I’m going back a bit here, David Beckham on a free-kick, you don’t need a set-piece coach.”
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