Greece Appoint Ranieri

Greece have appointed former Chelsea and Monaco manager Claudio Ranieri as the new manager following the departure of Fernando Santos. The 62-year-old has managed to some of the top clubs in the world like Chelsea, Roma, Inter Milan, and Monaco in the last decade. He will bring a lot of experience to the Greek team that only narrowly failed to reach the quarter-finals of the World Cup. They were knocked out at the last 16 stage in a match that also saw the departure of Santos. The Portuguese was appointed in 2010 and he had been in charge for the last four years. During this period, he had a 53.1% win percentage, which is amongst the best in recent times.

Romanian Anghel Iordănescu who was in charge of the team for a short period of seven matches had a slightly better win percentage, but one has to go slightly ahead of him to the Kostas Polychroniou to find a win percentage closer to that of Santos’ reign. As a result, Ranieri will be under huge pressure to follow a man who has achieved a lot with the Greek national team. He will be starting his first match against Romania in Euro 2016 qualifying match. Other opponents in the group are Northern Ireland, Finland, Hungary, and Faroe Islands.

“Claudio Ranieri signed a two-year contract with the Greek football federation and is the new coach of the national team. The Italian coach, with service at many major European clubs, is expected to lead our group to new successes with Euro 2016 on the horizon,” said the Greek football Association in a statement. Last season, Ranieri guided Monaco to second place finish in the French league despite having achieved promotion only in the summer. This was not enough, as the big spending French team sacked him almost immediately.