I've Arrived I landed in Rome about 18 hours after I had gotten the call to join San Marino. I was met up with the guy who would be my interpeter to the media, a gentleman by the name of Aldo. He looked in his mid-40's, and welcomed me to Europe. We then took the trip to the nation of San Marino. A small nation, but a beautiful one nonetheless. The beauty was not to be admired for long though, I had work to do.
I looked over the roster and wondered to myself, what the hell have I gotten myself into? After I glanced at the roster, I had a meeting with chairman Werther Cornieti. He welcomed me to the club, and insisted that I had the full support of the board, and told me what the goals for this season were.
Goals Do NOT get relegated
Simple, huh? He was nice enough to tell me what budget I had to work with, in US dollars. I had been given a bigger than expected budget. I was given $275,000 to work with, and a wage budget of $2,200,000. Very reasonable. I thanked him for the opportunity, and went to my office to begin to piece together what I hoped would be a successful Serie C1/B season.
I then met with my staff. We have 3 goalkeeping coaches, and 5 physios, but only 1 coach. That has to change. I made it clear that I'm bringing in other coaches, and that some of these people would have to go. I agreed to mutual termination with two of the goalkeeping coaches, and 3 of the physios. Basically, they all have nothing to offer for me, so they must go. In the coming days, I will be hiring my own staff. I decided to retain the services of Antonio Gespi, if nothing else, for his knowledge of other countries. Plus, he seemed to be a good foil for my joke attempts.
So now I'm looking over the fixture list for this season. We have 6 friendlies as of this moment, including a match against Serie B side Cesena, which happens to be our feeder club at the moment. Thankfully, they might not field a full strength side, so we might actually have a chance to win one.
For our friendlies, I'm going to let Antonio coach the side. I want to take the extra time to get acclimated to life as a manager, and start trying to bring in players that will help us get to the Serie B, and then the Serie A.
Next post: Results of Friendlies.
