On June 4th Andrea Stramaccioni was appointed as the new coach of Udinese, replacing Guidolin, who will take a managerial position within the club and was the one to suggest Stramaccioni to the Pozzo family.

Stramaccioni, Strama for friends and fans, came to prominence when he won the NextGen series with Inter Primavera, on March 25th, 2012. Fascinated by that win and fed up with the poor performances of the first team, Moratti fired Claudio Ranieri the following day and put Stramaccioni in charge. The good results obtained in the remainder of the season enabled him to be confirmed for the following year.

After an excellent start, however, the team's performances dropped dramatically, and Inter finished in 9th place, failing to secure even a Europa League spot. Moratti displayed no patience with his once-pupil, and sacked him to hire Mazzarri.

After a season out of the game, Udinese is giving Stramaccioni a second chance. While there might be some doubts around his reputation, we believe that he is the right man in the right place. Here are four reasons:

1. Experience with youth teams and young players. Stramaccioni became famous thanks to his outstanding results with youth teams, first with Roma and then with Inter. He thus looks like the perfect coach for Udinese, a team that puts a lot of emphasis on developing unknown young players into interesting prospects and, in many cases (Sanchez, Bierhoff) into stars. Strama can help the development of promising players such as Badu, Nico Lopez, Scuffet and Allan, and also Pereyra and Muriel if they decide to stay.

2. Experience with Inter. If Stramaccioni was unexperienced when he first joined Inter, now he has a solid year and a half of Serie A challenges behind his back, plus important experience in the Europa League. At Inter he went through a lot of pressure and criticism, and this should have improved not only his coaching and tactical skills – which were already very good – but most importantly his ability to handle the psychological demands of coaching a Serie A team.

3. Reconsideration of Strama’s performance at Inter. While many heavily criticised Stramaccioni after he was sacked and welcomed Mazzarri as the saviour, some people, this writer included, believed that he was not the one to blame. The club didn’t support him adequately, selling good players like Sneijder and Coutinho and not acquiring a decent striker, which forced Strama to end the season with Rocchi and the still green Ricky Alvarez as his offensive line. A long series of injuries deprived the team of its best players for the second half of the season, negatively impacting team performance. When he had all his starters in full health, Stramaccioni achieved very good results, including an outstanding 1-3 win against Juventus in Turin, handing Juve their first ever loss in their new stadium. Finally, let’s talk numbers: Stramaccioni’s Inter had only 6 points less than Mazzarri’s. However, as opposed to the coach from Livorno, Stramaccioni had to play a European cup, and he did not purchase any players to satisfy his tactical beliefs. This suggests that Stramaccioni’s performance was underestimated, especially considering the way Kovačić played under his guidance and under Mazzarri’s, who put him behind mediocre players like Kuzmanović.

4. Enthusiasm. After a year of inactivity, Stramaccioni is likely to bring a lot of enthusiasm and will to do well to Udinese. Guidolin’s last year showed a clear lack of motivation and stimuli, something that Strama should be able to bring back both to veterans and younger players.

All things considered, Stramaccioni looks like a very good choice for Udinese, a coach suited to the club’s objective of achieving good results in Serie A while launching and developing young players with good potential. Good luck, Strama: we are sure that this time you really will do bene bene.