Innovative and intense: What 'one of greatest coaches' Inzaghi will bring to Al Hilal | OneFootball

There is change coming to Al Hilal.

That’s self-evident in the appointment of Simone Inzaghi to replace Jorge Jesus in the dugout. Replacing a Portuguese manager with one from Italy will always result in a different view of football. The beautiful game, after all, is in the eye of the beholder.

But there is more to it than just the nationality of the manager. Otherwise stereotype would dictate that a bit of catenaccio is headed for Riyadh, which those that have followed Inzaghi’s coaching career would attest is not his style.

Fresh off taking Italian giants Inter Milan to the UEFA Champions League Final – a second appearance as manager at European club football’s showpiece competition – the 49-year-old arrives in the Roshn Saudi League with a glittering reputation.

Despite Inter’s 5-0 loss in the final to Paris Saint-Germain, he is known for his innovative tactical approaches.

A Serie A winner with Lazio during an impressive playing career that also saw him capped for Italy, Simone Inzaghi is the younger brother of Filippo, probably the better known of the siblings for his time with Juventus and AC Milan, not to mention winning the FIFA World Cup with Italy in 2006.

But those who knew Simone from a young age say he was always the more talented, with a view of the game that made coaching a natural post-playing path for him.

"Simone was technically stronger than Filippo. No doubt. He had more quality; he was unlucky in his career," Giovanni Trainini, one of Simone's first coaches, was quoted as saying by the BBC last year.

For what it’s worth, his brother agrees, recently labelling Simone, who is two years younger, as “one of the greatest coaches ever”.

There might be some hyperbole and brotherly love attached to those quotes, but you won’t find many who don’t have Simone Inzaghi high on their list of great modern-day managers, especially after leading Inter Milan to the UEFA Champions League final twice in the past three years.

What makes him so revered is his flexible and adaptable approach to tactics, where defined formations are mere numbers on a page; his style is more fluid, where defenders maraud forward, midfielders drop back, and full-backs are pressed high up the pitch.

In traditional terms, Inzaghi likes to set up in a 3-5-2 formation, but flexibility and rotations are the key. His priority comes in moving the ball around to exploit space, whether that’s done by short-passing between the lines, or sucking teams in and hitting them over the top.

They attack as a team and defend as a team. It makes an Inzaghi side incredibly difficult to play against when you could find the central defender high up in the attack, or the striker dropping back to occupy space and drawing opposition defenders out.

Take, for example, the fact that 20 different players provided an assist for Inter Milan in Serie A last season - the highest of any of the top teams in Europe, where around 15-16 is the average. Only FC Barcelona, with 19 different players, came close.

Al Hilal, for what it’s worth, had 15 different players provide an assist in the recently concluded RSL campaign. Captain Salem Al Dawsari not only led the 2024-25 RSL in assists, but heads the competition's all-time list, too.

It’s a style of play that demands a lot from the players, particularly the defenders - and it’s no surprise to see Al Hilal already go into the transfer market to snap up Ali Lajami from rivals Al Nassr.

Clearly, the design was to deepen their central-defensive stocks alongside the likes of Kalidou Koulibaly, Ali Al Bulayhi and Hassan Al Tambakti.

But, while it’ll be new ground for almost all the Al Hilal squad, there is one player that knows Inzaghi, his philosophy and his demands, intimately: Sergej Milinkovic-Savic.

The Serbian played under Inzaghi for little more than five seasons in the Italian capital, winning the Coppa Italia in 2018-19 and the Supercoppa Italia in 2017 and 2019, while also being named Lazio’s Player of the Season in Inzaghi’s final campaign with the club.

Milinkovic-Savic’s best years in Italy were spent during Inzaghi’s Lazio tenure, which should give Al Hilal fans plenty to be excited about as they look ahead to both the new season and this week's FIFA Club World Cup.

The inaugural expanded tournament, now comprising 32 teams, kicked off on Saturday in the United States; Al Hilal open their Group H account four days later, with a mouth-watering clash against Real Madrid in Miami.

If that’s quite the debut for Inzaghi, in Milinkovic-Savic, he already has an acolyte.

“I made great progress from all points of view thanks to him, both as a player and as a man,” the midfielder told Serbian media in 2022. “We had an excellent relationship, [and] as far as his abilities are concerned, just look at his results at Inter.”

Those results speak for themselves.

A Serie A winning coach in 2023-24, twice a UEFA Champions League finalist, twice a winner of the Coppa Italia, and three times a winner of the Supercoppa Italia in 2021, 2022 and 2023; the last two of which were won, ironically, in Saudi Arabia.

And it’s in the Kingdom, at an expectant Al Hilal, that a coaching journey that boasts numerous high points continues.