Around Europe: Well-travelled Pescara manager has a reputation for creativity

Zdenek Zeman. AFP file

Zemanlandia. It sounds an exotic place, the kind you can imagine featuring in the make-believe world of JRR Tolkien or perhaps JK Rowling.

It is a magical football kingdom, one that moves from one Italian city to another. And usually thrills, at least for a little while.

The phrase “Zemanlandia” first came into Italy’s sports pages dictionary almost 30 years ago when a maverick, plain-speaking, chain-smoking manager propelled low-budget club Foggia up two divisions and into the top half of the Serie A.

He had an exotic name, Zdenek Zeman, and some original ideas about how the sport should be played. He was a bold ambassador of flair in a land whose standards were held in high regard but where the stereotype was of iron defences and careful tactics.

Zeman will turn 70 in early May, by which time the empire of Zemanlandia may have established another new territory.

When Pescara, bottom of Serie A, called Zeman to take over from dismissed Massimo Oddo this month, they could offer him not much more than sentiment laced with wild optimism.

He had worked with the coastal club before, guiding them to promotion from Serie B in 2012. Pescara won the division with a spectacular goalscoring record, 90 goals in their 42 fixtures.

The Pescara who reached out to him five years later could hardly look less dynamic. They were not just at the foot of the table but apparently anchored, on nine points from 24 games. They had not won a single game and had a goal difference of minus 33.

Yet it took the Czech-born wizard two days on the training pitch and five minutes on the pitch to turn the wasteland of Pescara’s 2016/17 season into a fertile, lush Zemanlandia.

They were a goal up last weekend against Genoa five minutes into the first game of the 23rd coaching appointment of his long career. From there, they hardly looked back. Three-nil by half time, the utter transformation was completed by a 5-0 scoreline come the final whistle.

His key instruction to his players reportedly had been: “Go out and enjoy yourselves.”

Zeman explained the obvious elan of the performance, albeit against a team on a dreadful run of form, with a phrase straight out of Zemanlandia’s manifesto. “Enjoyment is also an important part of the game,” he said.

Though he has a reputation for martial fitness regimes, Zeman has almost always prioritised football with flair and lined up attacking formations.

“If you promise entertainment, there is nobody better,” former Roma sporting director Franco Baldini once said.

His jobs in Rome – twice with Roma and once with Lazio – brought Zeman closest to commanding the sorts of squads that could aspire to major prizes. Titles, though, eluded him.

For all the goals his swashbuckling teams scored, they tended to leak too many at the other end. But he will always have a unique place in Italian folklore, not just as the ringmaster of dazzling shows but for standing up to the establishment.

It was Zeman’s words, in a magazine interview in the late 1990s, that helped launched an investigation into Juventus’s extensive use of prescription medicines as aids to endurance. “Italian football needs to get out the pharmacy,” he said.

Since then, Juventus fans have felt antipathetic towards him, and there will be some shrill chanting from the away fans when the Italian champions come to Pescara in mid-April.

If the dream of survival in the top flight is still alive at that stage of the season, the wily old fox will have worked miracles. At the moment, though, he has set Pescara’s targets more modestly.

“You can do down, and you can go down with dignity,” Zeman said ahead of tomorrow’s trip to mid-table Chievo. “There is a difference.”

• Player to watch – Presnel Kimpembe: He will for a long time be remembered as the man who stopped Lionel Messi. And he did it on his Champions League debut. Barely 11 days on from leaping to obscurity to ovations, Presnel Kimpembe prepares for a part in his first French classique, Marseille against his Paris Saint-Germain.

• Deep-end debut: It was a matter of hours before PSG hosted Barcelona in the last-16 of the Champions League that head coach Unai Emery learned his captain Thiago Silva would not be fit enough to play. He called up 21-year-old Kimpembe – 'PK' to his pals – who had never played a minute of Champions League football.

• When 'PK' outshone Piqué: As a Barca defence marshalled by the acclaimed Gerard Pique conceded four goals, PK's impeccable work kept PSG with clean sheet. Messi, remarkably, was allowed not a single shot on target, his moves anticipated skilfully by the novice defender.

• Homegrown hope: The plaudits for Kimpembe from around Europe last month were appreciated particularly by PSG's backroom staff, delighted to see a footballer who has emerged from their academy thriving. Big-budget PSG, backed by their Qatari owners, have gained their recent successes with largely imported players. Kimpembe may usher in a new trend.

• Academy advances: Indeed, L'Equipe, the French sports paper, heralded the routing of Barcelona with the headline: 'PSG speak with a French accent', because, by the end of the game, five Frenchmen were on the pitch in the Ligue 1 champions' colours, three of them nurtured by the club.

• Russia on the horizon: Last October, despite his few outings for PSG's first team, he was called up to the senior France national squad. Although Kimpembe has yet to take the field for Les Bleus, he has talked about his desire to play in a World Cup, perhaps in Russia next year. Two years ago, he nursed that dream with DR Congo, for who he qualifies through his parents. He played for Congo's under-20s, but then accepted the invitation to represent for his native France.

• Cool and composed: Kimpembe, who at 1,83m is no skyscraper of a centre-back, likes to play the ball out from defence, and has been encouraged in that by his former PSG colleague, David Luiz, and by Thiago Silva. "He is a complete player," said Pierre Mankowski, his coach with the France under-21s. "He's quick, intelligent, works hard on his anticipation, and he's technically very good."

• Soaring value: PSG are determined those assets should remain theirs. Aware of growing interest in him from Premier League clubs since the summer, they gave him a new contract at the end of the year. His shift from junior pay-scale to senior apparently raised his salary more than 2,000 per cent.

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