Roberto Di Matteo looks to graduate as West Brom boss

Jul 5 2009 by Robert Tanner, Sunday Mercury

“I have always been good with numbers, ever since I was at school. I just find it easy and simple. It all makes sense to me. It is interesting to see how they work.

“The young players coming through here at West Bromwich Albion must not neglect their education because not everyone is going to make it. You need a second path in your life that you can step into if things don’t go your way in football.”

Di Matteo knows all about when things can go wrong in football.

After starting his playing career in Switzerland with his home town club of FC Schaffhausen, he turned out for FC Zürich and FC Aarau, before being snapped up by Lazio in Serie A, and he was capped by Italy, his parents’ native country.

After three years in Rome, he moved to Chelsea for a then club record fee of £4.9 million and during his eight years at Stamford Bridge he won the FA Cup twice, the League Cup, the FA Community Shield, the UEFA Cup Winner’s Cup and the UEFA Super Cup, but his career was cut tragically short.

Early in the 2000-01 season, Di Matteo sustained a triple leg fracture in a UEFA Cup tie against Swiss side FC St. Gallen and spent the next 18 months on the sidelines. At one point he was even warned he could lose his foot after ten operations failed to correct the problem.

He eventually gave up on his comeback and retired in February 2002 at the age of 31.

He had already laid the foundations for a career in management by beginning his coaching qualifications and over the next six years he prepared himself thoroughly for his first job in management, which came at MK Dons.

Eyebrows were raised when Dons chairman Peter Winkelman plumped for a rookie manager to replace Paul Ince, but he was vindicated as Di Matteo shaped a side renowned for playing attractive, attacking football.

Di Matteo is determined to prove his doubters wrong again by leading Albion back to the Premier League.

“I am relishing the challenge,” he said.

“You need to have a fire within you. This is a great job but also a high pressure job so you need to have the passion for football to be in this industry.

“The rush I get before and during the game is such a strong sensation. You can’t describe it and you can’t experience it anywhere else. If you have experienced it at all in your life it becomes difficult to live without it.

“It is different as a coach but it still gives you strong emotions and sensations during a game. It is fantastic.”

Di Matteo may feel those emotions on matchdays but just like his predecessor, Mowbray, he keeps them in check for most of the time, although he admits he has been known to let his fiery Italian side loose on occasions.

“I have thrown a few bottles around at times, especially when the referee gave ten minutes of added time against Leicester last season,” he said. “They equalised in the 97th minute and I did throw a bottle. My blood can boil.

“I try to stay calm in my mind to be able to make the right decisions, and you can’t do that if you are all over the place.”

Di Matteo does draw on his love of numbers and stats to help him, but believes football is a simple game that can be unnecessarily over complicated.

“I do look at the football stats,” he said.

“There are a lot of tools coming into football now and you do tend to look at them and analyse them. Not all of them are useful but the ones that are you try to use and make the best of them.

“People do over complicate football though. It is a simple game really. People forget the basics.

“You have to start with the basics and build on that. It has happened in my career where certain managers have started to try and build the house with the roof and not the foundations.

“That is what we will try to do here. Get the basics right and build on that, that is the aim.

“We will try anything and everything to make us win games.”