Why Roberto Di Matteo Is The Next Pep Guardiola?

The next Guardiola in the making.....

Irrespective of what happens in RDM's tenure over the next two years, RDM will go down in our history books as one of our most successful managers.And that is simply because he was the first Chelsea manager ever to win the Champions League.The fact that he is a Chelsea legend as a player makes it all the more special. So how does RDM qualify as the next Pep Guardoila ?What I write henceforth is just a hypothesis, it may be proved wrong but it has more chances of being correct than wrong.

The world knows what Guardiola did at Barcelona...

When Pep took over Barcelona, he had inherited a de-moralised team which was being utterly dominated by Real Madrid. The team was always finishing second best to Madrid.And it looked like Barca would never be able to turn the tables on Madrid. Enter Pep. Pep was a Barca legend. And he was a midfielder too. The board trusted him.Why ? Simple because he knew the club inside out and understood what the club wanted and what it stands for. The next 3-4 years, we all know what happened.Barcelona today are widely considered to be the best team in the world and Madrid struggle against them. Yes, Madrid won the league, but that was after a gap of 4 years.
And unless Madrid continue it, it'll be just a flash in the pan and Barca will dominate again.

Now take RDM's situation. I am sure you all would have started seeing  the similarities already.
RDM took over Chelsea at a time when we were lost. We had no direction, we had no formation. We had lost the will to play. We had lost the will to fight.Pride was lost and the season was heading for dooms-day. AVB resembled a harrassed person. One who had lost all control and respect of the dressing room. And his philosophy wasn't working.After endless poor results, and that 3-1 defeat in Napoli, It was clear that something had to be done and so AVB left.Enter RDM. THe club legend. The guy who understood the club ideals. The guy who knew exactly what the club wanted. Oh, not to mention, he was a midfielder too (*wink*).

Cool,calm and composed that's how he did things.

He identified the areas where the club faced problems. There have been endless articles on what RDM has done, so I won't repeat them. You already know that.So, he identified the problems and solved them. Her didn't do anything extra-ordinary. He kept it simple.Here's one proof. This one's from King Drogba yesterday only :


" When we were about to play against Barcelona, we watched a lot of video. We knew we were playing the best team in the world.So for us playing this game, especially when we came from Napoli and we should have been out a long time ago, we were lucky to be there but we played hard as well.  So when we watched the video, the manager wasn't showing Messi. At the end, you could see the important players. The ones who scored and created assists, the most consistent guys. With Messi, he just said that he had 61 goals. We all started laughing. We knew we were in for a difficult night but we did our best."

See ? RDM understands the basics of football. He knows how to strike a chord with the players. He won't take drastic measures. He'll just keep it simple. And that's why the players love him.

One more plus point about RDM is that he's highly intelligent. He and Hiddink have been the only two managers post-Roman era who have been sane enough not to challenge Roman's authority.
A GOOD manager is the one who cries for the resources he REQUIRES annd gets the job done, like he should.


A GREAT manager is the one who UTILIZES the resources AVALILABLE with him, however insufficient they may be and still gets the job done.RDM falls in the second bracket manager. So does Pep.If you look at Pep's signings, they have been terrible. Ibramovich, Hleb, Afellay and many others have been duds. But then how has he been successful ?He's used the talent the club already possessed and brought out the best in them.And that's exactly what RDM is doing. I am sure everyone is understanding what I am trying to point out.

Let's hope Robbie takes Chelsea to a whole new level and stays with us for years to come....

RDM has got a contract for 2 years now. So lets see what all can he do in the next 2 years.
One thing is for certain, the old players like Terry, Cech and Lampard will continue to give 200% for RDM and Chelsea. RDM himself is a legend and he knows how to treat legends.So when he has the senior player's support, he'll have control over the dressing room.Players already respect him. The new players will respect him too not only because that he's a UCL winning manager but because also as a manager he's extremely humble and as we all know he's a master of man management.

Everything is in place for RDM to do at Chelsea what Pep did at Barca. We have financial resources. He's inherited a great team and more players are enroute.We got awesome youth. We got a great owner. We got great fans. We all love RDM. The players love RDM.All in all, without repeating what has alreadly been said in many articles, I think RDM could be our Pep Gaurdiola. I hope he is.

#KTBFFH

-RR2 (Chelsea360)

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