Former Algerian player Faouzi Ghoulam has revealed a number of amusing anecdotes from his time during Maurizio Sarri's tenure with the Italian team, noting that the coach was not only focused on achieving victories but also imposed additional goals on his players.
Ghoulam said: "Every time he would give us extra tasks, winning alone was not enough for him. He would ask us to clear the stadium of fans. If you watched one of the matches from that period closely, you would notice that we sometimes looked at the stands to see if the opposing team's supporters had started to leave."
"He added: 'If we reach the 70th minute and the fans are still in the stadium, we were expecting extra training on Tuesday. And if we were leading 2-0 or 3-0 and continued to press, that was because of this rule, as we knew that as long as the match remained open, the fans would stay in the stands, and thus there would be consequences for us.'
The Algerian full-back continued his account: "For this reason, when we scored the third goal in the second half, we were running to retrieve the ball as if we were trailing, and the opposing team players looked at us in astonishment, which is understandable."
Ghoulam spoke about one of his memories in the Champions League, explaining that Sarri asked his players to play in a continuously attacking manner, to the extent that he "did not want the ball to reach our half."
