The worst kept secret in football is out and Carlo Ancelotti has been unveiled as Chelsea manager.
The former Milan player and coach is from a rural background but don’t let that fool you as he commands respect and does not suffer fools gladly.
The Champions League is the holy grail for Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich, and Ancelotti coached Milan to two wins in the world’s top club competition.
It is uncanny that Ancelotti will once again be working with an aging team and he is a respecter of age, which means the elder statesmen at Stamford Bridge, probably do not have too much to worry about.
Will language be a barrier and lead to Ancelotti’s downfall? Having listened to his first English interview, Ancelotti is not too bad.
This will come as a shock to those who believed he could not speak a word of English and would be relying on a translator to get his message across in the dressing room.
Claudio Ranieri took the Chelsea reins with pigeon English but managed to survive in the job and eventually improve his English vocabulary but famously used the word S*** when asked about the state of the pitch at Stamford Bridge.
We were told that Luiz Felipe Scolari’s moderate English was one of the reasons for his downfall as Chelsea manager but there appeared to be more to it than that.
Training sessions were allegedly stale and the players were not stimulated, this was compounded by a dreadful stab at zonal marking.
Scolari had been out of club management for seven years and this showed; so enter Guus Hiddink to put a smile on the faces of the Chelsea squad.
Although Hiddink was an undoubted hit on the Fulham Road during his brief tenure, this will not bother Ancelotti.
He will do things his own way and comes highly rated to Chelsea courtesy of the flattering words of Andriy Shevchenko.
Chelsea say big money will be available for the right signing and it will be fascinating to see just who Ancelotti may attempt to sign from Serie A.
I hope Ancelotti gets whoever he wants because we do not want the same line trotted out again that Scolari’s time may have been different, if he had landed his No.1 target Robinho before the start of his one and only season at Chelsea.