Swansea City chairman Huw Jenkins has been panicked into the appointment of experienced Italian coach Francesco Guidolin, with Alan Curtis having failed to impress since the dismissal of Garry Monk. Though the club's website has described Guidolin as being brought in to "work alongside" Curtis, it's obvious that this is but a vain attempt to spare their blushes after retreating from the decision made not three weeks ago to keep the Welshman in an interim post until the end of the season. As the declaration that Guidolin "will have the final say on team selection" suggests, Swansea won't be led by a two-headed managerial beast: Guidolin is the boss.
What Swansea City can expect from Francesco Guidolin
Swansea City have taken another managerial gamble in hiring experienced Italian Francesco Guidolin.
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In one sense, Guidolin's hiring is in keeping with Swansea's managerial traditions. Jenkins hasn't been afraid of making bold appointments since taking charge of the club. Indeed, at the start of the season the Premier League's three youngest managers had all been given their big breaks at the Liberty Stadium, namely Brendan Rodgers, Roberto Martínez and Monk. Sitting alongside them in the list of Swansea's last few managers are Paulo Sousa and Michael Laudrup, who were also relatively inexperienced rank outsiders. There's no doubt Guidolin, who has enjoyed a journeyman career at clubs across the Italian peninsula, and who nominally retired from coaching in the summer of 2014, also has the surprise element.
But while giving us a further insight into the adventurous mind of Jenkins, it doesn't give us much of a clue as to whether it's the right appointment. For every success story listed above, there's a name destined to fade from memory; for every Rodgers, a Sousa. Even the tenure of Monk, a man touted mere months ago as a future England manager, oversaw a period of mediocrity at the Liberty. Not hiring someone like Alan Pardew (an international mover-and-shaker in his own head, no doubt) or Tony Pulis (a man who, in fairness, doesn't even seem to have delusions of grandeur) would, one imagines, be a point of principle for Swansea. But if it wasn't already obvious, it's clear that their glamour appointments don't necessarily equate with success.
That said, there are obvious things in favour of hiring Guidolin. The first is that he's enormously experienced, and has a track record of keeping mid-table teams in Serie A. Never in a long and illustrious coaching career has Guidolin been relegated -- a welcome relief from the uncertain hand of Curtis. Not only that, but he's also shown a dexterity that has enabled him to achieve more than mid-table solidity: He most notably achieved consecutive Champions League qualifications at Udinese. Granted, anything less would've retrospectively been a disappointment in a team containing a young Alexis Sánchez, a timeless Antonio Di Natale, a towering Medhi Benatia and an unassailable Samir Handanović, but he was the organiser of a historic period of success at the Stadio Friuli.
What’s more, he managed to invariably cope with an incredible amount of player turnover that was an inevitable result of the extraordinary success of the Pozzo family’s extensive scouting network. At Swansea that’s less of an issue, but Guidolin’s ability to quickly establish a tactical unity on an unfamiliar set of players is potentially vital. It’s perhaps no coincidence that Udinese have been in the doldrums since Guidolin’s departure: They’re currently sat 13th place in the league, three places higher than they achieved last season, their lowest finish since they were promoted to the top flight back in 1995. As we wrote shortly before Guidolin’s retirement:
Udinese are a constant work in progress: new players scouted, coached, signed and sold, with Guidolin tasked to bring the remaining squad together cohesively in his classic counter-attacking style. It’s a much harder task than at a club where turnover of the playing personnel is low, and players have time to become accustomed to the tactics of the coach and, more importantly, the pace of the league.
However, ahead of his first match in charge of Swansea, the crucial question is not whether Guidolin will be able to adapt his squad to the rigours of the Premier League, but whether he’ll be able to adapt his tactical blueprint. At Udinese he specialised in playing a defensive three-at-the-back system that will be unfamiliar to most players at the top level in England. Managers that have tried to implement such a style recently, from Martínez to Louis van Gaal, haven’t always had the greatest of success in a league in which it’s all too easy to be stretched out on the flanks.
If football everywhere looked the same, Guidolin would doubtless be an outstanding, if nevertheless obscure appointment for Swansea. But the big and unavoidable fact is that it doesn’t, and he has never before managed in England where the pace of the game and the intensity of the opposition is so much greater than in Italy. Questions over his tactical suitability and the language barrier remain impossible to answer. But for Jenkins, this is clearly no issue; instead, it’s the precise logic of his approach to managerial appointments. The risk, however small, is that the club and coach will be incompatible; but it’s one run in the knowledge that the potential reward could be much greater than the Tony Pulis Money-Back Guarantee of 13th place.
Will Francesco Guidolin be a Mauricio Pochettino, or will he be a Pepe Mel? The short answer is that only time will tell.
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