Words matter. These are the best Roberto Di Matteo Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I believe in passing football with a purpose. You have to be physically strong and sometimes, in some games, you have to be more direct because that style requires it. We will prepare our teams to be ready for all situations.
It’s a daily plan to solve the problems thrown at us and emerge stronger. You pick things up on the way, and you even learn from the players you work with, but your overall philosophy doesn’t change.
It was something I always wanted to do, to own a restaurant, because I love food. But particularly when I first moved to London, because I was on my own – I was single, away from my family, so it seemed very important, to have a place where you could go to meet friends and eat.
I still did some things in football, but I needed to get away from the game. I needed closure. And once I felt I’d achieved that, the hunger came back. That fire in your belly, the desire to feel the adrenaline at the weekend. That’s when I felt I was able to go again.
Pre-season is a lot of hard work and no player really enjoys it, but you look forward to the start of the season when the competitive games start.
I wouldn’t lie and say it’s not disappointing to have reached so many semis and a final and not won the Champions League.
You have to kind of sustain a level of performance in the Championship to be able to come out of it at the end of the season.
I don’t forget my roots. My father was an emigrant from Italy who worked in a steel factory. My mother worked part-time. When my father came home she would go out to work, cleaning offices.
Obviously you do get influenced by former managers. That’s normal. You try to build your own coaching philosophies. I’ve played for Arrigo Saachi, Dino Zoff, Zdenek Zeman, Gullit, Vialli and Ranieri.
I simply do not know what the future will hold, but I will accept what it brings me.
I had a very traumatic end to my career so I didn’t think I would become a manager then. As the years pass by the fire in you, the hunger, the desire for success comes back.
I had a great career, to go from a small town in Switzerland to play for the Italian national team was a dream come true. So was playing for Lazio and Chelsea, winning trophies. When I look back I am very grateful for what I had, rather than what I missed.
But I do love to cook. When I have a dinner party I like to invite loads of people, then I would just do like a salad buffet, with some snacks and cold meat and lots of different salads.
It doesn’t matter what country but I need to be challenged by it. I need to feel the ambition of the club. You need to have a good relationship, with the board and with the owner.
We were under pressure at West Brom to get promoted and to stay up, even if, at a big club like Chelsea, the pressures are more highlighted by the public scrutiny you’re under. It’s part of our job, that pressure, and I cope with it well.
Food was always such an important part of my family life when I was growing up.
There was not much money around, but my sister and I were happy. All the sports facilities were 10 minutes’ walk from my house and the school system was very good.
Pierluigi Gollini is a highly-rated goalkeeper in Italy, he’s young, a good shot-stopper, he comes for crosses, he’s good with his feet.
I’ve experienced being a manager and I would love one day to do it again.
In all I had 10 operations, nine within six weeks. Then one to remove the rod I had in my tibia a year later. I still have problems. I can do a little bit on the pitch, but the day after I feel it. And it is not going to get better.
Some of my worst moments in football have been losing semi-finals, the Barcelona game in 2009 probably more than most. But you have to take it and bounce back.
What I believe is that we need a united group, people who are willing to fight for the club in the Championship. They need to put their services into the good of the team, for the good of the team.
Every session we do we try and talk about the way we want to play, I try to organize the sessions in a way that the players can understand the way I want them to play.
I’m generally an optimistic person.
It’s the biggest challenge for any manager to play against the best team in the world, but for every player as well.