The eccentric superstitions of Chelsea boss Sarri revealed

It was never easy to find recordings of amateur football games in the Nineties but with help from my friends in television I would arrive every Monday evening at Maurizio Sarri's house with two VHS videocassettes of the team we were going to face on the following Sunday.

Then I would have dinner with Maurizio, his wife Marina, son Nicole and goalkeeping coach Mirko Tinagli and we would talk.

Mirko had been an amateur full back not a goalkeeper but when Maurizio started in the ninth tier of Italian football in 1991 he convinced his friend, who worked at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, to start reading books and watching videos about goalkeepers.

Together they also planned their first summer of fitness training in the Palagio woods which are part of a farm now owned by Sting.

At each of those dinners I learned something. For each tactical question Sarri had an answer and he could demonstrate it with facts.

I was not surprised when he climbed so quickly through the ranks of non-league football.

As a journalist, I worked with several of the top Italian coaches and he was different. I got to know him well.

Fabrizio Mazzini, one of those who played for Sarri at FC Stia, his first coaching role, said: 'His tactical ideas were a novelty for the amateurs.'

So were his superstitions. 'One Sunday before the game we drank three coffees and we won,' said Mazzini. 'After this, he forced me to drink three coffees every Sunday for fear of breaking the spell.'

Maurizio tried to hide his superstitions when he moved into the professional game.

Luca Rialti, another of his players at Stia, recalled how —when they were in a car together and came to a hair-pin bend — he always had to light a cigarette, otherwise he thought the next game would not go well.

At Sansovino, Sarri would always park his car in a certain place.

Once, when a player unknowingly occupied his parking space, he moved the offending vehicle by pushing it with his. Andrea Rossi, a player at Sansovino, tells the story of how they won an away game and Maurizio demanded that the same bus driver returned for the following trip.

Sarri refuses to cross the white line on to the pitch. In Italian non-league, when the benches were on the opposite side to the dressing rooms, he could often be seen making his way behind the goals when the teams had already started playing.

More recently, when Napoli played against Roma in 2016, Sarri's team were unbeaten in 22 league games at home.

Someone told Roma boss Luciano Spalletti about Sarri's superstition to always be the last to enter the stadium.

So Spalletti pretended to go out and then hid and when Sarri was about to go out, Spalletti suddenly reappeared behind him.

Sarri saw him and tried to go back but it was too late. Roma won that match 3-1.

Sarri is so meticulous about everything and his work is so detailed, he leaves nothing to chance.

Ever since he was in the minor leagues he spent so much time on the set pieces — corner kicks, penalties and even throw-ins.

I gave him the nickname 'Mr 33' not because he had 33 set-pieces but there were a lot and this was an easy number to remember and the nickname stuck.

One of the turning points in his career came in 2003 when Arduino Casprini, the ambitious president of Sangiovannese, put his faith in Sarri, a coach who smoked so much and had never trained professionals before.

Casprini offered to pay Sarri 30,000 euros a year, more than double what he was earning at Sansovino.

He led Sangiovannese up into Serie C, the third tier of Italian football, for the first time, and won both derbies with Montevarchi for the first time in 51 years.

One of his key players was Francesco Baiano, who played for Derby County from 1997-99.

'He is one of the best coaches I have had,' said Baiano. 'The way he prepares the matches, with meticulous work, very careful with attention to details, I would say that it is unique.'

Maurizio has changed some things since those years. Not the time he dedicates to football but some of his convictions.

In 2010, after he had been sacked three times and was not having a great season in Grosseto, I asked him why he did not try to play with three midfielders as Jose Mourinho had done when he won the Treble with Inter.

Maurizio, who played for many years with 4-2-3-1, said: 'I don't think I will ever do it because it is harder to cover the width of the pitch with three midfielders.'

Two year later, at Empoli, he was successful with 4-3-1-2 and then he moved on to 4-3-3 at Napoli.

On Saturday, he probably would not know what to do without the playmaker in front of the defender.

Proof perhaps that only great men have the courage to change their minds.

Fabrizio Ferrari was speaking to Matt Barlow.