A journalist has claimed a top young Serie A coach wants the West Ham job and his agent has approached David Sullivan.
The West Ham managerial hunt seems to be well and truly on.
David Moyes is now expected to leave the Hammers at the end of the season.
Although reports about potential replacements continue to be caveated by the line ‘should they part ways with Moyes’, it is clear the Scot’s time at West Ham is coming to an end.
Since the embarrassing 5-2 defeat at Crystal Palace on Sunday West Ham have been linked with 13 different managers.
Unlucky for some, hopefully not West Ham.
It’s a rather ironic number given it is how many players the club will be required to sign this summer.
13 managers linked with West Ham since Palace
That tells you the scale of the job in prospect for technical director Tim Steidten and whoever he and David Sullivan appoint.
Ruben Amorim, Julen Lopetegui, Thomas Tuchel, Paulo Fonseca, Kieran McKenna, Steve Cooper, Sebastian Hoeness, Hansi Flick, Vincent Kompany, Gary O’Neil, Abel Ferreira, Maurizio Sarri and Marco Silva are the names linked with the Hammers since Sunday.
Cast the new back to January and it would run over 20.
Now another new name is in the frame it seems in the shape of Eusebio Di Francesco.
The Serie A coach wants the West Ham job and his agent has approached Sullivan but he’s surely deluded.
Serie A coach wants West Ham job as agent approaches Sullivan
According to journalist Graeme Bailey, 54-year-old Di Francesco has been put to Sullivan by intermediaries and the majority owner is now doing his homework on the current Frosinone boss.
Di Francesco is surely among the lesser known names to have been linked with West Ham.
And a career win ratio of just 38% will do little to excite Hammers fans. Supporters will also note his team are currently in danger of being relegated from Italy’s top flight.
In fairness, there would be no great shame in that as Frosinone have one of the smallest budgets in the league and were pre-season relegation favourites.
Di Francesco has some pedigree having managed Roma and Sampdoria.
Bailey claims he is highly-regarded in Italy and made his name with Sassuolo, taking them from Serie B to Serie A and also into Europe for the first-time.
Italian is surely deluded
There is absolutely no way Sullivan will take a risk on Di Francesco.
His CV simply does not stand up to any of the other candidates.
If he was a coveted young manager with a unique philosophy and playing style then it would perhaps be different.
Something Di Francesco told The Coaches’ Voice in the past about his style, though, may be of interest to West Ham fans and indeed Sullivan.
“My philosophy is to try and dominate the game,” he said.
“Obviously, that’s not always possible. Before coaching Roma, I was coach of Sassuolo. Even when we went to play teams that were clearly superior to us, though, we always tried to play our game and hurt our opponent.
“I don’t like sterile possession. Possession that is an end in itself. I don’t want to sit back and wait for the opposition. I want to go and get after our opponent. You can’t always do that. But that’s the idea.”
You can hear from the man himself about his tactics in the video below.
