Italy can wait for Ranieri

"Sometimes the Italian football mentality is at fault because it works to destroy fantasy but if you survive working in Serie A you are ready for any experience anywhere in the world.

"Now everything in England is much easier for someone like me because, I think, Gianluca Vialli opened up new horizons.

"He persuaded English clubs and English fans with his work and success. After Vialli, I think the reputation of the Italian manager grew.

"In fact that is one more reason why Sven-Goran Eriksson was chosen as England manager.

"He got success in Serie A and people know a bit more about how stressful it is there. For example, everyone in Italy keeps on moaning that there are too many games but I've just been given Chelsea's programmeof games. We start on 17 August and there will be many weeks when we play on Saturday and Monday.

"There are so many games in England but without any stress compared to Italy. Here in my country 90 minutes is all it takes to transform you from phenomena to dull.

"If you lose a game in Italy everyone is about to tell you to go, but if you win the next one you have the world in your hands again and that is not good at all."

Perhaps it is his experience gained in Italy's school of hard knocks, Serie B and Serie A, rather than what he learned in Spain which is armour plating him against developments in recent weeks at Chelsea.

His spending plans for the summer, buying Geremi to add muscle, power and athleticism and taking Flavio on loan to inject energy into the centre of midfield, lie in tatters.

Money's too tight to mention, Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink may yet be sold without being adequately replaced and Ranieri still frets about the way Chelsea faded to ghostly shadows of themselves in the last several weeks of last season. Including the Cup Final.

Yet, in some ways Ranieri can

afford to be sanguine. His message to Ken Bates, that selling Hasselbaink would cost the team too much in a football sense this season, may fall on deaf ears.

But if there are repercussions then Ranieri will probably not pay with his job, as his predecessors Ruud Gullit and Gianluca Vialli did.

A five-year contract brings with it the inevitability of massive compensation if a manager is dismissed and there are few things Chelsea need less at the moment.

So, perhaps Ranieri can afford to accept the financial climate and invest in the youth of the club plus whichever potentially shrewd Bosman signings, such as Enrique de Lucas, his scouting team can turn up? He also knows that the lower leagues will, now, be forced to sell at lower prices.

"In England, the crisis is all still about the flop of the television system. The TV stations failed to earn what they thought they could so the clubs suddenly discovered that they have less money in their pockets.

"However, in Italy, my feeling is that it is even worse. Some clubs have spent the money they are due to be earning in something like 2010!"

There it is again. The Italian comparison.

"Look, I am still a gypsy of this job and sooner or later I will come back to put my career at risk in only one 90 minute game of football."

If and when he does return to Serie A, as he was offered the chance to do at Lazio last season, he believes it will be remedial work, not cutting-edge development in which he will be engaged.

"In Italy we always used to go around the world telling how we were the best, the smartest, the most prepared and the toughest defensive country in football.

"Then in this World Cup we suddenly discovered that our defence gives away goals, that our rivals work harder than us on the pitch and that somebody else was much smarter than us from a political point of view.

"I get the strong sensation that it is time for Italy to restart everything from scratch."

For now, though, there's plenty of work to be done at Chelsea.