Roberto Di Matteo has taken Chelsea from strength to strength ever since he was unveiled as caretaker manager in early March.
He led the Blues to the FA Cup final last weekend and tonight Chelsea will play host to European champions Barcelona in a repeat of the 2008/09 Champions League semi-final where the Catalans only managed to outsmart the Lon-doners on the away goals rule.
That year, Chelsea were coached by Dutch wizard Guus Hiddink who then led the side to their fifth FA Cup at the expense of Everton.
Since billionaire Roman Abra-movich purchased Ken Bates’s majority stake in the club in June 2003, Chelsea shot to stardom and won everything at stake but not the European Cup.
After firing Claudio Ranieri in 2004, Abramovich hired other coaches of international repute.
However, Jose Mourinho, Luis Felipe Scolari, Hiddink, Carlo Ancelotti and Andre Villas-Boas all failed to satisfy the Russian owner’s lust for the coveted European crown.
Mourinho, Hiddink and Ancelotti had already won the Champions League before and Scolari led Brazil to World Cup success in 2002.
Ironically, the one who went closest was another interim coach, Avram Grant, in 2008.
In an all-English final against Manchester United, Chelsea were only one penalty kick away from glory but eventually finished on the losing side.
Abramovich is notorious for having a short fuse when it comes to coaches.
Last summer, he paid Villas-Boas’s hefty €15 million buy-out clause to lure him from Porto only to sack him eight months into his new job. Reports say Villas-Boas got a golden handshake of €11 million to rescind his contract!
With Villas-Boas in charge, four-times English champions Chelsea had drifted to a mid-table spot and facing a premature exit from the Champions League. Then, on March 4, Di Matteo, a former Italy midfielder, took over and the Blues never looked back again.
Perhaps Chelsea owe their revival to Di Matteo’s decision to show faith in the old guard, particularly Frank Lampard, Florent Malouda and Didier Drogba, who had all fallen out with Villas-Boas.
Di Matteo, who made 175 appearances for Chelsea between 1996 and 2002, won six trophies with the club including two FA Cup medals, the League Cup and Cup Winners’ Cup.
In the 1997 FA Cup final (vs Middlesbrough 2-0), Di Matteo, 42, set a record for scoring the fastest goal ever in a cup final at Wembley.
Chelsea play Liverpool in the FA Cup final next month but victory at the mythical north London stadium might still not be enough to save their season as the Blues are struggling to make a top-four finish in the Premier League.
In between the two-legged semi-final with Barca, Chelsea play Arsenal before taking on QPR.
On May 2, Chelsea host Newcastle and then clash against Liverpool twice in three days – in the FA Cup (May 5) and league (away, May 8).
Chelsea’s final fixture is at home to troubled Blackburn.