Search icon

Football

20th Oct 2018

What we know about Marco Ianni, the Chelsea coach who provoked Jose Mourinho

Wayne Farry

Marco Ianni

The man, the myth, the legend

It takes a brave man to confront Jose Mourinho, stand in front of him like you’re the King of Spain. Most people would think it, never mind actually trying it, and fewer still would do it in front of millions of viewers on television.

But then again, Marco Ianni is not most people. That much we know about him, and that is pretty much all we know in truth.

We know that he was born in 1982, though we do not know his exact date of birth, which is odd. Perhaps a bit too odd.

Judging by the blurb on the Chelsea website, the club doesn’t know much about him either. It reads:

“Born in 1982, Marco Ianni spent two years as a technical assistant to Maurizio Sarri at Napoli before joining Chelsea, where he is second assistant coach.”

So we know he joined Maurizio Sarri at Chelsea in the summer from Napoli. From his name we can also deduce that he is an Italian man, and from his image we can deduce that he has very few hairs on his head.

What we know without doubt is that he appears to have been the man responsible for the brawl/scrap/fracas which broke out when Ross Barkley equalised to make the score 2-2 at the end of Chelsea’s home match against Manchester United.

What drove him to do what he did? We may never know. Will he face punishment for his crimes? Only time will tell.

One thing we know for certain is that he is obviously hard as nails, as evidenced by the fact that he ran back to his own dugout as soon as Jose Mourinho walked in his direction.