VIAREGGIO. Italian general manager Oreste Cinquini is the new director of football of Russia national football team. The official announcement should be made over the next few hours. Another Italian will be part of the new era of Russian football, marked by the signing of former England manager Fabio Capello as the new coach of the national team.
An ex-director of football at Parma, Fiorentina, Lazio and Udinese, Viareggio-born Cinquini has left his position at Venezia, in the Lega Pro Seconda Divisione, the fourth tier of Italian football. Curiously, the local football club is chaired by Jurij Korablin, a Russian businessman. In addition, Cinquini has been replaced by another Viareggio-originated director of football, Andrea Gazzoli, who is back from a positive experience at Grosseto in the Italian second division.
Capello and Cinquini are not the first Italians to step in Russia. Tuscanian manager Luciano Spalletti is one of the most successful, for he has won two national championships, one Russian Super Cup and one national cup as Zenit St Petersburg coach. Indeed, Spalletti signed for Viareggio as a footballer at the turn of the 1990s, when Cinquini was the director of football of the local team.
Giorgio Eritreo, another former player of the Bianconeri from that decade, is now working closely with Spalletti.
It is true that many Russians, essentially tycoons, have invaded Versilia, and particularly luxurious Forte dei Marmi, in recent years. But it might be true that there are Versilia-born people who are ready to conquer the homeland of tsars.
