‘I’m a curious person’: Udinese’s Gabriele Cioffi on his journey from coaching Crawley to battling Milan

How does a person go from managing Crawley Town in League Two to Udinese in Serie A without any other clubs in-between? Gabriele Cioffi has a ready answer: “By luck!” he exclaims, grin exploding across his lips. “This is my answer,” he insists, imposing his sincerity in response to instinctive laughter. “But I’m convinced that luck is essentially the result of a piece of addition: opportunity plus preparation.”

Cioffi has been on an improbable journey ever since he retired from playing football in 2012, after a two-decade career that wound mostly through Italy’s lower leagues but included one top-flight season at Torino. His first coaching job was as assistant manager at Carpi, but after moving from there to manage Gavorrano in the fourth tier, his next steps took him to Australia, Italy, the United Arab Emirates and then England.

“I feel myself chosen,” he says. “When I stopped playing football, I was chosen by Cristiano Giuntoli [then the sporting director at Carpi, now at Napoli], who gave me the chance to pick up a whistle after hanging up my boots, starting a new career. Then [after Gavorrano] a friend of mine, Diego Pellegrini, who played with me at Mantova, chose me. He called and said: ‘I think you’re the right person to help improve my academy in Australia.”

On it went. On the far side of the planet, Cioffi met another Italian, Gianluca Nani – “the one who brought Roberto Baggio and Pep Guardiola to Brescia” – who persuaded him to come and work as assistant to Henrik ten Cate in Abu Dhabi. Nani later introduced him to Gianfranco Zola, who had Cioffi come and work with him for half a season at Birmingham City. At a certain point, did he just resolve to say yes to every opportunity put in front of him? “Exactly!”