00:03Italy's 1938 World Cup win was captured so wonderfully with this striking photograph,
00:09all eyes naturally drawn to the stern man holding the Jules Rimet Trophy.
00:17Vittorio Pozzo was not just the mastermind to Italy's back-to-back World Cup triumphs
00:22in 1934 and 1938 but is widely credited as the author of the WW or 2323 formation known as the
00:31Metodo. A widely traveled student of the game, Pozzo lived in Manchester at the turn of the
00:39century, played in Switzerland and developed the Metodo through one of four stints as Italian coach.
00:48It was the framework from which the Azuri built its reputation as the first defensive giant of
00:54international football. Pozzo also turned his revered captain Giuseppe Meazza from a pure
01:01striker to an offensive midfielder or inside forward. The pair forming a brilliant brains trust for the
01:081938 campaign. Il vecchio maestro, the old master, first coached Italy at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics
01:18and his longest stint was from 1929 to 1948, a term which included an Olympic gold medal in Berlin
01:26between his two World Cup triumphs. Today's coaches would perhaps find it strange that for much of
01:33his life he was also a journalist with Turin newspaper La Stampa, a fascinating character on football's greatest stage.
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