Interview With West Brom Manager Roberto Di Matteo

Roberto Di Matteo spent the best part of six years away from the game after reluctantly coming to terms with the fact that his playing career was over.

Since returning to football in 2008, first as manager of MK Dons and then West Bromwich Albion, he has more than made up for lost time, fast establishing himself as one of the brightest managerial prospects in the English game.

Born in Switzerland to Italian parents, Di Matteo enjoyed a stellar playing career which took him from Switzerland to Italy to England before being brutally cut short by injury. In 1993 he won the Swiss league with Aarau and was named Swiss player of the year, securing a transfer to Italian giants Lazio.

He spent three seasons at Lazio and was called up to the Italian national team for the first of his 39 caps. He went on to represent Italy at the European Championships in 1996 and the World Cup in 1998.

After a falling out with Lazio, he was snapped up by Chelsea manager Ruud Gullit in the summer of 2006. He was soon joined by his Italian teammate Gianfranco Zola, and together the two helped Chelsea to win two FA Cups, the League Cup, and the European Cup Winner’s Cup.

Di Matteo also scored what was then the fastest goal in FA Cup Final history, hitting the back of the net after just 42 seconds against Middlesbrough in a match Chelsea would go on to win 2-0.

He also represented Italy at the European Championships in 1996 and the World Cup in 1998 and would presumably have gone on to collect even more silverware had his career not come to an abrupt end in a UEFA Cup match in his native Switzerland. Di Matteo suffered a triple leg fracture, meaning that, aged 30, he had to face up to the fact that he had played his final match as a professional footballer.

Since returning from his extended absence from the game, Di Matteo has quickly embarked on a successful managerial career.

He was lured out of retirement by MK Dons and took them to the League One playoffs where they were only defeated by penalty shootout. West Bromwich Albion regarded him as the perfect candidate to take them back into the Premiership and Di Matteo gained promotion in his first season at the club courtesy of a second place finish.

In his two seasons as a manager, Di Matteo has finished third with MK Dons and second with West Brom. He has yet to experience failure, but keeping West Brom in the top tier of English football will be the greatest challenge of his managerial career.

If West Brom’s Premiership tenancy it to be anything more than temporary Di Matteo will need to work wonders with what he acknowledges will be a meager preseason transfer budget.

"We are going to have a cautious approach to next season and it has been well documented that we are not going to spend lots of money. We are going to be realistic and we are going to try to use what we have to build a competitive side that can stay up," he said.

Avoiding relegation with a seventeenth placed finish would be regarded as a serious accomplishment but Di Matteo is reluctant to set any specific expectations,

"We are not going to set ourselves a target we are just going to try and do as well as we can and aim for the highest position possible. I am not going to say we want to finish 17th, we are going to try and win as many matches as we can and see where we finish."

He will be joined in the Premiership by fellow Italians Carlo Ancelotti, who is the manager of Chelsea, and Roberto Mancini, who was recently appointed manager of Manchester City.

Another Italian manager, Gianfranco Zola, will be conspicuous by his absence. He was dismissed by West Ham after an unsatisfactory second season, and Di Matteo is disappointed that he will not be able to pit managerial wits against his former Chelsea and Italy teammate.

"He is a good friend of mine and I was sad to hear that he was sacked, but that is part of our jobs, we know that at any time you have a bad run of results you can be sacked. I will be seeing him this summer and we will hopefully enjoy a nice round of golf in Sardinia."

Di Matteo laughed off the suggestion that he and Zola might form some sort of a managerial dream team at West Brom next season. "West Brom already have one manager, I don’t think they need another one."

While Zola’s reign at West Ham might have come to an abrupt end earlier this month, Mancini and Ancelotti are likely to remain at their respective clubs and Di Matteo has a huge amount of respect for both men.

"Mancini is in a different league to me, he has got much more experience and I am not at all surprised how well Chelsea have done under Ancelotti. He was assistant manager to Arrigo Sacchi when I was playing for the national team and he has managed some big teams before and obviously done well so I knew he was a good manager. At Chelsea expectations are very high but he has done an excellent job."

Ancelotti and Mancini are likely to be given multi-million pound budgets to strengthen their already impressive squads this summer. Di Matteo might not have the same sort of resources at his disposal but he is looking forward to the challenge of managing in the same division as some of his compatriots.

"We are excited to be in the Premier League and to be measuring ourselves against the best teams in the world and I am excited to be measuring myself against the best managers in the world because they all work in the Premier League."

All his managerial achievements to date will pale into insignificance if, having got his current side into the Premiership, he can actually succeed in keeping them there. When the new Premiership season arrives in three months time it will bring with it intense expectation and severe scrutiny.

If Di Matteo the manager can thrive under these challenging conditions than he could put the pain caused by the premature ending of his playing career behind him once and for all.