- Associated Press - Thursday, November 30, 2017

ROME (AP) - He reads Charles Bukowski, wears retro spectacles, and hunches over to jot down notes on a small pad during matches.

Maurizio Sarri seems like a throwback to another era of football coaches but his vision of the game is at the sport’s vanguard.

If Serie A leader Napoli is going to win its first title in nearly three decades, a large part of the squad’s success will be attributed to a manager who is the ultimate anti-establishment character.

Not since Arrigo Sacchi arrived at AC Milan 30 years ago has Italian soccer seen a coach so revolutionary, someone willing to attack relentlessly with free-flowing ball movement and constant running that comes across as an evolution of Pep Guardiola’s tactics.

So it’s no wonder that Guardiola, the Manchester City coach and former Barcelona manager, is among the biggest admirers of “Sarrismo,” the Italian media label for Sarri’s teachings.

Before and after City beat Napoli twice in the Champions League this season, Guardiola heaped praise on Sarri and Napoli for displaying “the most beautiful football in Europe.”

Sacchi, now an editorialist for the Gazzetta dello Sport, wrote recently that Sarri and Guardiola “are two sons of the same idea,” who impose their tactics “via innovation and the sensibility that only real coaches have.”

“Football is music for them, a form of art: They have a positive vision which makes them naturally open to the future,” Sacchi added. “They are two geniuses who help the evolution of this beautiful sport.”

Part of the mystique surrounding Sarri is that he toiled in relative obscurity in the lower divisions and provinces of Italian soccer for decades before finally reaching the top division in 2014 via promotion with Empoli at the age of 55.

When Napoli handed Sarri his first elite job in 2015, he wasn’t even the first choice of club president Aurelio De Laurentiis.

Never a professional player, Sarri began his coaching career with amateur squads in Tuscany. He worked in a bank by day and coached at night.

Sarri rarely lasted long in one place, often fired after only a month on the job for clashing with club ownership.

Born in Naples to Tuscan parents - his father worked in the now-abandoned Italsider steel factory in the city’s Bagnoli area - Sarri has belatedly become a fan favorite at San Paolo Stadium.

Along with one huge banner featuring an image of club great Diego Maradona, Napoli’s “ultra” supporters in the Curva B also wave a banner with an image of Sarri’s bespectacled face.

Yet Sarri remains uncomfortable with all of the adulation.

“If I quit now, nobody would remember me because I have won nothing so far,” he said. “Comparisons with Arrigo Sacchi are an insult to him. He won and changed the entire world of football with his footballing philosophy.

“Players like (Marco) van Basten, (Ruud) Gullit and (Frank) Rijkaard became great players after working with Sacchi,” Sarri added. “His lessons will be remembered for many years, for a hundred years.”

Sarri, however, has been responsible for transforming players like Dries Mertens, Lorenzo Insigne and Jose Callejon into world-class strikers.

It was Sarri’s stroke of genius that made Mertens the standout center forward that he is today, moving the diminutive Belgium international from the wing to a “false 9” center forward position following an injury to Arkadiusz Milik early last season.

It was in Sarri’s first season at Napoli that Gonzalo Higuain resurrected his career by scoring 36 goals to break a 66-year-old Serie A record.

Higuain transferred to rival Juventus for an Italian-record 90 million euros ($100 million) and could - broken hand permitting - face Napoli on Friday in what is being billed as a potentially decisive match in the title race.

Six-time defending champion Juventus trails Napoli by four points entering the game at San Paolo.

A victory for Napoli would be a massive achievement for Sarri - and for “Sarrismo.”

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More AP Serie A coverage: https://apnews.com/tag/SerieA

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Andrew Dampf on Twitter: www.twitter.com/asdampf

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This story has been corrected to show Sarri was promoted to the top division in 2014, not 2012, and that he was 55, not 53.

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