A TALL, elegant player, whose chiselled features and attacking defensive work at full back were a feature of the Inter teams of the 1960s, Giacinto Facchetti played 94 times for Italy, and was captain for 70 of those appearances. Plucked from obscurity at his local club in Treviglio by the visionary Inter coach Helenio Herrera, who saw in this young giant una colonna fondamentale della mia Inter, Facchetti had played at wing and centre before moving to full back, where he pioneered for Inter an attacking role in that position.
Facchetti was at the heart of Herrera’s philosophy of catenaccio (door bolt) which came to characterise Inter’s method in the period 1963-71 when the team won four Serie A titles. The strategy involved getting in an early strike — and goal — before “locking up” the game by getting as many players as practical behind the ball, thus making an equaliser from the opposition an extremely difficult proposition. The Inter of that era broke its opponents hearts.
Yet the formula produced a game that combined watertight defence with sudden exhilarating strikes, of which Facchetti was a master. As such he was a pioneer in the role of the attacking full back which is integral to the modern game.
Though heavily built at 85kg, Facchetti suprised opponents with the speed and acceleration of a man whose 100-metre time was 11sec.
Giacinto Facchetti was born in 1942 at Treviglio in the province of Bergamo in the Lombardy region. He began his footballing career with his local club, Trevigliese, where he played as a forward.
Advertisement
The arrival at the Treviglese ground on a day in 1960 of Herrera, then manager of Inter, was to transform his fortunes. Herrera saw something in the potential of the young player which dovetailed with his own aspirations for a style of play to make Inter well nigh unbeatable, and he whisked Facchetti off to Milan, where he made his debut as a full back in the 1960-61 season.
Over the next ten years Facchetti was to establish himself as one of the greatest defenders in Italian football in his era. He helped Inter to the Italian championship in 1963, 1965, 1966 and 1971 in a career for the club in which he played 476 matches and scored 78 goals.
For Italy his 94 appearances included three World Cups, those of 1966, 1970 (where his team was runner up to Brazil, losing the final 4-1) and 1974. He was in the team that won the European Championship in 1968, and he also won two European Cups with his club in 1964 and 1965.
After retiring as a player he went into management at Inter, of which he had been president since January 2004.
Advertisement
Giacinto Facchetti, footballer and president of Inter Milan, was born on July 18, 1942. He died of cancer on September 4, 2006, aged 64.