After much hysteria former Chelsea manager, Roberto Di Matteo has been appointed as manager of Aston Villa replacing Remi Garde who was sacked at the end of March.
As reported by the BBC, the Italian has taken over the Midlands side who will be plying their trade in the second division of England for the first time since they helped form the Premier League in 1992.
Di Matteo was thought to be a leading candidate for the job for some time alongside Nigel Pearson and David Moyes. Just only last week Di Matteo looked set to be taking over at Serie A side, Lazio.
His Career
Roberto Di Matteo comes with a reputation of relative success having guided his first club MK Dons to the play-off finals in League One. In the summer of 2009 West Bromwich Albion were relegated to the Championship and Di Matteo was lured away from the Stadium:MK for the Hawthorns.
The Italian brought immediate success to the Baggies as they secured an immediate return to the Premier League finishing second behind Newcastle United. After a positive start in his second season, he was sacked in February 2011 after a poor run of form.
They say every cloud has a silver lining and in the summer of 2011 Di Matteo was appointed the assistant manager of Chelsea with Andre Villas-Boas appointed as manager after a successful spell at Porto.
Villa-Boas struggled to get going in both the league and Champions League, though, and he was sacked in March 2012 with Di Matteo taking over as interim boss. He did the unthinkable during the rest of the 2011/12 campaign though as he turned around a deficit a 3-1 deficit in the Champions League against Napoli before going on to win in sensational fashion at the Nou Camp against Barcelona and beat Bayern Munich on their home turf in the final.
After such success in May 2012, Di Matteo was appointed on a permanent basis in June only for Roman Abramovich to sack him in November 2012.
Di Matteo took a break from management after leaving Chelsea before taking over at Bundesliga side, Schalke in October 2014 where he lasted a season, resigning in May 2015 after leading Die Knappen to a place in the Europa League.
