During the winter transfer market Bologna sold their star, the offensive midfielder Alessandro Diamanti, to the Chinese Guangzhou Evergrande. The Italian international will join his ex coach in the Azzurri team, Marcello Lippi.

They are both countrymen from Tuscany. A painful loss for the rossoblu fans, but the offer from the “dragon” was simply impossible to reject for a small club like Bologna: € 6,9 millions. A good deal. Not only from an economic point of view. The whole Bologna's manoeuvre could benefit from Diamanti's loss.

Why? Ask Phil Jackson, arguably the greatest coach in the history of team sport with eleven NBA titles with the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers: will he put the team first or a super player like Michael Jordan? He will give you the example of how the wolves attack, in-group and not as an individual, and will tell you that the power of the wolf comes from the group and not from a super wolf like Jordan or Kobe Bryant. The attacking plays of a team will become predictable if all the balls are directed to its super wolf.

This happened to Inter some years ago, when Josè Mourinho after just a year as the nerazzurri's coach understood that, in order to win the Champions League, they should have sold their super wolf: Zlatan Ibrahimović. He was the main target for all the balls that Inter were playing upfont. Their attacking options were few and all the teams knew that in order to win against Inter they just had to stop Zlatan. To replace him they brought two other world-class players, Diego Milito and Samuel Eto’o. The difference was that Inter had more options when attacking their opponents, and that these two players joined the pack, rather than acting as lonely wolves. The payback was incredible: the Champions League.

The same situation happened to Bologna, when their star Alessandro Diamanti, became predictable. All the balls were ending to him, and he seemed not to have enough confidence in his teammates to pass the ball and tried to solve the problems all by himself. In the last three games he was always the player with the highest number of touches: 63, 65 and 99 (source: whoscored.com). In his last matches as a Bologna player, he would dribble one or two- he does have this ability- and go for a shot from distance, almost every single time he got the ball.

But how many matches can you expect to win if you play selfishly? One or two if you are lucky. This will be a chance for Bologna to build a team that can play as a team, with more options to attack and more chances for other players to shine. In their first match without Diamanti, Bologna won against one of the toughest teams in this season Serie A, away against Torino. Then, they lost to Milan only in the last minute, after a clever defensive game. The Felsinei followed the same game plan as against Torino: counter-attacking as a team, not depending on an individual.