To most of those at Stamford Bridge on Thursday night he was just another face in the fuel-affected crowd of 18,196, but it transpired early yesterday evening that 48 year-old Claudio Ranieri was at Chelsea for a very good reason - he is their new manager. Chelsea made their announcement last night, thereby ending for good the unhelpful speculation that either Frank Rijkaard, Terry Venables or George Graham would succeed Gianluca Vialli, dismissed on Tuesday.
After watching Graham Rix and Ray Wilkins supervising Chelsea 1-0 UEFA Cup win over St Gallen, Ranieri's first game in charge will be tomorrow against Leicester City, opposition who will let Ranieri know for sure that he has arrived in England. He has become Chelsea's fourth manager in as many years.
He has done so from the far from impressive position of being the last coach sacked at Atletico Madrid, who were relegated after Ranieri left. But that would appear to happen to all managers who work for Jesus Gil and Ranieri had built a formidable cv for himself before then, most notably recently as the man who constructed the present Valencia team, beaten in last season's European Cup final.
Hector Cuper is the Valencia coach but it was during Ranieri's two years there that Valencia emerged into the stylish, strong team they are now. Before that, Ranieri had worked with varying degrees of success at Cagliari, Fiorentina and Napoli.
In Naples nine years ago Ranieri worked well with a young Gianfranco Zola and at Atletico he was responsible for the purchase of Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink from Leeds. Both are now influential members of the Chelsea dressing-room and both are likely to have been consulted about Ranieri's talents.
They are said to include an ability to cope with pronounced egos - Ranieri was in charge of Gabriel Batitusta at Fiorentina and Ariel Ortega at Valencia - and it should help him when talking to his new chairman Ken Bates.
