Vialli fashioning a culture of hard work at Watford

'In Italy, when supporters want to get excited, they watch English football, because anything can happen. There, everything is slow'

Gianluca Vialli and the players of Watford FC are on the Costa del Sol, their few days of R&R doubtless overshadowed by Sunday's 2-1 home defeat by Manchester City.

That defeat – secured by an 80th-minute own-goal slotted neatly home by the substitute Heidar Helguson when at least a point seemed in the bag – leaves Watford well off the pace in the Nationwide First Division. With 29 games played, they are 10 points away from even a play-off place. Which is not the state of affairs that Vialli envisaged on 1 June last year, when, to the surprise of many, he succeeded Graham Taylor as manager.

Still, he seems sanguine enough. "It has taken us longer to gel as a team than I expected," he says, "so we are behind schedule. But I brought in nine new players and now we do play as a team which pleases me a lot. We can still make the play-offs. And this team is nearly there. The next step is to become more clinical and win games even when we don't deserve to."

The best-known of his many signings include Ramon Vega from Celtic and Marcus Gayle from Rangers, and now there is talk of his old chum Roberto Mancini turning out in Hornets colours, although on Sunday evening Vialli proclaimed it unlikely. Whatever, Watford fans are still catching their breath. It had been an eventful old season even before two players were sent off (including the hapless Helguson) at Millwall last Tuesday. And the jury is still out on Vialli as manager.

I fancy he will win them over. He certainly wins me over. We are talking before the trip to Marbella, in the slightly less sun-kissed surroundings of London Colney, Watford's training ground in the lee of the M25.

"Nice coat, by the way," are Vialli's first words to me. For he is wearing a grey overcoat which rather resembles mine, except that it probably cost five times as much and is certainly worn with five times more panache. He is effortlessly, enviably chic. I too can achieve a look by wearing V-necked grey pullovers and fat tie-knots, but it is the look of a ridiculous, superannuated schoolboy. On him, these things look gorgeously stylish.

Everything about the man is stylish, in fact, with the notable exception of his job.

So, Luca, tell me... as a dazzlingly successful 37-year-old ex-striker with such madly fashionable clubs as Juventus and Chelsea, a Champions' League winner as a player (with Juve) and an FA Cup and European Cup-Winners' Cup winner as a manager (with Chelsea), moreover as scion of a fabulously wealthy family, who was raised in a 15th century castle in Lombardy and now lives in a £4m pad in Hampstead... why Vicarage Road? I mean, I know Sir Elton John is a glamourous chairman and all that, but surely there must be occasions, like drizzly evenings in Walsall, when you think perche (why?).

He lights a cigarette, stylishly of course, and smiles. "That's the question that most of the people who know me asked themselves when I took the job. Why would I go to a club like Watford [he pronounces it 'Watfor', which seems not inappropriate]. I've been in the spotlight for 20 years as a player and manager. So I am not desperate to get headlines, I just want to do what pleases me the most.

"I don't care that I could be on TV more, or that we could have bigger crowds, that's not what being a manager is about. It's about doing the job in the best possible way.

"Obviously the target here is different from Chelsea, but trying to improve the players you have, that is the same. I feel really excited. As a manager I can fulfil my ambitions here. Which is not just to get promoted but to build a firm foundation, so that the club is stable once we do get promoted.

"I want Watford to be a Premiership club like Charlton and Fulham, without relegation worries. So when we sign players, we must make sure they are players good enough to play in the Premiership. Then the core of the team is already here."

These are laudable aims, but 12th in the First Division is no place to be talking about the Premiership. First, Watford must haul themselves up the table, to which end Vialli has been busying himself with things off the field as much as on it.

"I have tried to give the players everything they need to perform at their best," he says, "in terms of the medical department, the fitness coach, and so on. Obviously I have my own ideas, but I need support from the directors. It needs money. I need the directors to believe that what I'm doing is the right thing, and so far I have been given all possible backing."

According to seasoned Watford observers, he has indeed wrought quite a revolution behind the scenes. One local newspaper reporter told me that the club programme now has a "Meet the backroom staff" feature. "If they'd had that in seasons gone by," he said, "they would have run out of subjects by the time they'd done the kit man and the woman who makes the tea. But it's still going, which shows how many people Luca has brought in."

By appointing Vialli, the board was effectively giving its consent to this overhaul of the Taylor regime.

"There were two possibilities when Graham Taylor decided to leave," he says. "Either they could have a typical English manager, or someone with a European style. I told them what I needed, and they told me the budget, and what the club does for the community. After that we talked another few times, then I made my mind up to come."

Since his acrimonious departure from Chelsea (which still seems bewildering when you consider that during his tenure the club won 76 games out of 144, losing 29, and picked up four trophies) plenty of Italian jobs were dangled before him, not least by his old club Sampdoria, where his stature remains almost messianic (when he took Watford to play in a pre-season game against Sampdoria, one local fan practically threw himself in front of the team bus in homage).

But Vialli resisted the offers from Italy, stayed here, and knuckled down to complete a Football Association coaching course.

"I wanted to be a manager in England again," he explains. "So it was better for me to get my coaching skills in an English environment, learning as much as possible about the English philosophy. You learn from playing the game, and watching the game, and from the techniques of other managers, but you have to put all these things together to achieve a coaching method of your own. The FA licence helps you to organise all your thoughts until you have a method"

Again, though, the question has to be asked: why England? "I love sport," he says, softly. "And sport with a capital letter is here. Here and in other English-speaking countries like South Africa and Australia. I love the fact that here you go on the pitch and give it your best, then shake hands with the opposition. And I love the fact that the supporters support their own team instead of shouting against the opponents so much. I love all that. I love football, rugby, golf, and I think England is the home for sport. After being 20 years in Italy, this is where I want to be."

I feel like cheering these impassioned words, but instead ask how he thinks the Premiership compares with Serie A? Or for that matter the First Division with Serie B, since Watford were hammered 4-0 by Sampdoria in that pre-season game.

"In certain ways Italian football is better," he says. "You are forced to become very professional even as a teenager, because expectations are so high, and supporters don't accept anything less than winning. So you go out with a very good professional mentality because nothing is left to chance. You will do anything on and off the pitch to win games. Also, it is very tactical. In a way, too tactical.

"The mentality here is different. During the week the English environment is not as professional. The medical department, the physical side of training, the tactical preparation, the way the opposition is studied, these are not as thorough. But in England you can be sure that once they are on the pitch the players will give it their best and will enjoy themselves. There is no tension like in Italy.

"In Italy they are a bit paranoid. Football is a matter of life and death, and teams go to a hotel for one night or even two nights before every match. In England that's not necessary. And I see that. You've got to trust your players. So the best thing is to find a combination of those two ways, using the right things from both sides. That is what I'm trying to do at Watford."

It is more than five years now since Vialli arrived in English football. It had intrigued him since he was 20, playing at Sampdoria. "I played with Trevor Francis, who was outstanding. We had the impression that English strikers were very powerful but not very mobile, but Trevor was very mobile, a very European player. For me he was an inspiration. He and Graeme Souness set an example to us young boys."

In more ways than one. The story of how Souness pushed the young Vialli into a lake, and how Vialli retaliated by booby-trapping virtually everything Souness touched, is often cited to show that this was not a spoilt rich kid intimidated by the rough-and-tumble working-class football fraternity. He has always fitted in.

He certainly fitted right in at Chelsea. "When my contract was running out at Juventus, I used an agent for the first time after 16 years to find me a new club. Rangers showed the most interest but I wanted to come to London and play in the Premiership. Then [Ruud] Gullit became manager of Chelsea. He called me directly and asked whether I wanted to join. I was obviously very pleased. I knew about Chelsea because [Glenn] Hoddle had been manager and Mark Hughes was there. And in Italy, when supporters want to get excited, they watch English football. Because anything can happen. There, everything is slow, predictable."

Vialli's debut for Chelsea was at Southampton. "We drew 0-0, and I wasn't particularly fit. But I just loved it. Ray Wilkins [his assistant at Watford] keeps telling me that I should have been English because of the way I play."

Management, however, was a different proposition. When Gullit was sacked in February 1998, Vialli was hastily promoted, and quickly had to deploy the knowledge he had picked up from the managers he had worked with, notably Marcello Lippi at Juventus.

"All the managers I had were very good. [Vujadin] Boskov at Sampdoria was so special. He treated me like a son and gave me confidence. But I think it is your last manager who gives you most knowledge, and that was Lippi [tellingly, he overlooks Gullit]. I was with him from the age of 30 to 32, which is when you start absorbing things. He taught me that you can have really skilful players but they have to understand that they must work extremely hard.

"That is what Alex Ferguson has done at Manchester United. They are all special players but what strikes me is how hard they work. That's what I am trying to do here. The starting point is hard work."

Vialli refers to Ferguson again when I ask where he sees himself in three years' time? "In the Premiership with Watford," he says. "But I know that after a few years you need to change the manager, to keep things lively. I haven't thought about what to do next. I have been in football for so long, and I like it very much. But I want to be able to live. Alex Ferguson says that he regrets that he didn't see his children growing up, that he was more worried about Beckham and Giggs than his own sons. I want to learn from Alex Ferguson. I don't yet have children, but I would like them, and I don't want to make life hell for the people around me."

It seems hard to believe that the gently witty, quietly courteous Gianluca Vialli could make anybody's life hell. But if the Watford players continue to under-perform, they might say otherwise.