Zona mista

Zona mista (Italian pronunciation: [ˈdzɔːna ˈmista]; in English language: "Mixed Zone"), often referred to as Gioco all'italiana ("The Game in the Italian style"), is a tactic used in Italian association football mainly from the second half of 1970s to the mid-'90s. The introduction of this system has been attributed to Luigi Radice and Giovanni Trapattoni, then coaches of Torino and Juventus, respectively. The tactic reached the highest sporting level with Trapattoni's Juventus becoming the first club in history to reach the European Treble having won the three seasonal UEFA competitions and, in 1985, the first European side to win the Intercontinental Cup since it was restructured since years before, and the Italian national team, managed by Enzo Bearzot, which won the FIFA World Cup in 1982, for the first time since 1938, with outstanding participation from the Blocco-Juve; making both teams between the greatest in sport's history.

Regarded as the tactical evolution of catenaccio, zona mista requires each outfield player to perform, systematically and simultaneously, the zonal marking and continuous attack on the spaces characteristic of totaalvoetbal, but also engaging in the defensive individual marking characteristic of Italian football. In this system, a player who moves out of his position is replaced by another from his team, thus retaining the team's intended organisational structure, and each player performs a different function. Several players, such as the libero, the wing-back (terzino fluidificante), the winger (ala tornante) and the box-to-box midfielder (mezzala) simultaneously play roles in both defense and attack, while the playmaker (regista/trequartista) (e.g. Michel Platini, Lothar Matthäus or Roberto Baggio) regularly runs to the opponents' box to try and score. This flexibility made it much more versatile, fluid and offensive than the rigid standard scheme used in Italy at the time. Although it is one of the first to use four defenders, zona mista is aesthetically more related to formations which succeeded it: 3–5–2 and an asymmetric 4–3–3 system.

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