Was catenaccio really just parking the bus?

When people say a team is "parking the bus", they often mean catenaccio. They are usually wrong, and the real story is more interesting. In Italian, catenaccio means door-bolt, and it describes a highly organised back line focused on nullifying the other side's attacks.

Its ancestor was Swiss, not Italian. Austrian coach Karl Rappan, in charge of Switzerland in the 1930s and 1940s, played a sweeper called the verrouilleur, literally the one who locks the door, just in front of his goalkeeper. His team would often sit back and defend, which let it beat stronger or fitter opponents. In Italy the idea was reworked from the English W-M, which Italians called the sistema, and one writer notes that the modification was designed to help smaller teams in Italy.

The key innovation was a libero, a sweeper behind a line of three defenders, who recovered loose balls, nullified the striker and double-marked when needed. The other was the counter-attack, mainly built on long passes from the defence.

Its most famous coach was Helenio Herrera, whose Inter of the 1960s used a 5–3–2 with four man-marking defenders tied to the opposing attackers and an extra sweeper for loose balls. Inter won three Serie A titles and two European Cups under him. Critics said it produced few goals and was dull. Herrera replied that most of the people who copied him copied him wrongly: they forgot the attacking principles. He had Picchi as sweeper, but also Facchetti, the first full-back to score as many goals as a forward.

Then came Lisbon in 1967, where Celtic beat Inter 2–1, and many called it a victory for football over catenaccio.