A state of sadness dominated Italy, at the beginning of this week, after the departure of the old veteran coach Carlo Mazzoni, one of the most famous symbols of Italian football, the former technical director of the clubs of Rome, Naples, Brescia and Bologna.

Mazzoni, who was nicknamed "Poor Trapattoni", passed away at the age of 86, when he was born on March 19, 1937, and the Italian Football Association decided to observe a minute's silence before the Italian league matches this weekend.

Guardiola in Mazzoni shirt

"We say goodbye to a true icon of Italian football," said Gabriele Gravina, president of the Italian Football Federation. And after he put an end to his modest football career in the late sixties of the last century, Mazzoni moved to training on his way to setting a record by supervising 792 matches in the Italian League, over the course of nearly 4 decades during which he supervised 15 clubs without winning any major title.

But despite his lack of trophies, Mazzoni was a highly respected coach in Italian football.

Mazzoni is considered the reason for discovering the legend Francesco Totti, and then becoming one of the most important symbols in the history of the capital's wolves and the Italian national team. He is also considered a role model for a large number of coaches, including the Spanish genius Pep Guardiola, coach of Manchester City.

Mazzoni promoted Totti for the first time to the first team at Roma in the early 1990s, and he also played the role of his spiritual father in his career when he was in its infancy.

He was also influential in the career of midfielder Andrea Pirlo, when the latter was on loan to Brescia from Inter in 2001, and Mazzoni managed to change Pirlo's position from an advanced playmaker in the "10" position to a late playmaker in the "8" position, in order to He could include him alongside Roberto Baggio.