The last time anything took as long as the appointment, confirmed today, of Antonio Conte as Chelsea's new manager was, possibly, the tectonic movement that formed the continents.
For almost as long as there has been the vacancy at Stamford Bridge, following José Mourinho's sacking in December, the 46-year-old with frankly scarily ice-blue eyes has been in the frame to become Roman Abramovich's next club manager, although unrealistically Pep Guardiola and Diego Simeone were higher up the short-list.
Of course, Conte still has the trifling job of managing Italy's progress through the European Championships this summer before he takes over at Chelsea, but when he does he will have his work cut out and then some. Even with his pedigree - 400 midfield appearances for Juventus, winning five Serie A titles and the Champions League with them, and then winning the domestic title for Juve in his first season as manager of the Bianconeri (and two more Scudetti in each season thereafter) - the task of rewiring Chelsea to be both a Premier League and a European contender once more will be huge.
I say "rewire" as the job in hand isn't necessarily about reconstruction. Many, if not most, Chelsea fans will say that now is the chance to rebuild the club around the exciting youth prospects that exist, including those in the trophy-gathering Under-18 and Under-21 teams, as well as those expensively cast out on loan in Europe, their futures uncertain. As Tottenham's Mauricio Pochettino and even - gasp! - Louis van Gaal have shown, young prospects can convert hunger and prospect into excitement and results.
Quite why Chelsea have acquired so many young players and, under successive managers including Mourinho and even 'Uncle' Guus Hiddink, not played them at all or very little, has been baffling. Unless the club academy responsible for their development, or the executives responsible for signing them, simply haven't delivered the goods, in which case they should be sacked at the earliest opportunity.
The second scenario is that Conte may just want to hang on to the players that have been part of this, Chelsea's worst season, relatively speaking, in many years. Athletico Madrid want Diego Costa to return, and the Brazillian-turned-Spaniard's easily combustible nature has suggested that he hasn't settled in London. Conte, though, apparently sees him as the ideal spearhead, and there's no doubt that when Costa is focused on simply being the best goal hanger on the pitch, he can still do a fearful job for Chelsea.
And then Eden Hazard. Player of the season one minute, embarassing refusenik the next. Conte is said to have told people that he will wait until he's fully on board at Chelsea before speaking to the mercurial Belgian, but if body language counts as 90% of all communication, Hazard is already on his way to Paris or Real Madrid, his dream destination. It would be a supreme loss of talent - Chelsea were right to sign him up to an extremely lucrative deal - but when the head's gone, the body follows soon after, and that seems to have been the case this season, from the moment he scuffed a keeper-to-beat opportunity against Petr Čech in the Community Shield at Wembley, and when he went down injured the following week at Stamford Bridge, sparking the whole Mourinho-Carneiro hoo-ha. His season has been unbelievably poor ever since.
The other player Conte should give significant thought to ejecting is Thibault Courtois. He was the much-exalted successor to Čech, who kept him out on loan at Athletico because the Czech stopper was - and still is - that good. Like his fellow Belgian, though, Courtois' head seems to have been turned by interest from elsewhere. But the truth is that he hasn't consistently demonstrated that he is as good as Čech was, if ever, if I was to be brutal. Indeed Asmir Begovic, who covered for Courtois in the early weeks of this season, showed that he was equally up to the task. Having two top-quality No.1s is never ideal, from a player management point of view, but Begovic has maintained his dignity and fan respect since Courtois returned from injury before Christmas. Perhaps Chelsea could cash in...and pick up a bargain like Southampton's Fraser Forster as a result?
Conte will have other issues to consider: one of the most pressing is in central defence. John Terry is unlikely to receive a new playing-only contract, but could he be persuaded to stay on in a player-coach capacity? Some believe that Chelsea should cut their losses altogether with Terry, and adopt a new-coach, new-era approach, and there is some credence to this. Traditionalists, though, will see that keeping Terry and his natural leadership around could be valuable for a young squad looking for icons - of which he is about the only one left - at the club. One thing is certain, Conte keeping Terry would certainly not be a simple issue of age. "There is no young and old, only victory or failure," he told Tuttosport last year, sounding an awful lot like Robert Duvall's Colonel Kilgore in Apocalypse Now.
But what, too, of Gary Cahill - who plays worse the less Terry appears - and the criminally inconsistent Oscar. And Matic - who has stubbornly failed to regain his 2014-15 form - and Loic Remy, who has been pushed so far out to the fringes that it would be best for all concerned for him to move on.
That would leave Conte with the likes of Willian - the only real candidate for player of the season this term and also a player who would definitely fit the Conte mould - plus Branislav Ivanovic (himself no spring chicken), the promising Betrand Traore, Kenedy, Kurt Zuma when fit, the dependable Cesar Azpilicueta, young American Matt Miazga, Cesc Fabregas as a new permanent captain, and the still-to-be-polished diamond that is Ruben Loftus-Cheek. With the wealth of talent out on loan, such as Nathan Ake, Marco van Ginkel, Nathan Chalobah, Dominic Solanke and Isiah Brown, plus a few marquee signings (forget Pogba, but why not Cavani?), and Conte has the potential for a young, lively and - most important of all - unpredictable team.
One of Mourinho's failings was his lack of variety. Once opposing teams figured out how to shut down Hazard or crowd out Costa they exploited Chelsea's predictability, who failed to have a plan B ready. Thus there was little squad rotation, little change from 4-3-3 and little chance of fringe and youth players getting a chance, all of which surely added to the team's mental and physical collapse and their season's success being measured only by how they avoided relegation.
Not that Chelsea's still-bruised and battered stars can expect any respite from Conte: by reputation he is an unrelenting taskmaster who built his own playing career on hard graft and has come to expect the same of anyone playing for him. Perhaps that might prove too much for some at the Bridge, though Chelsea won't want to see a repetition of this season's abject collapse until Hiddink's brand of Dutch lassez-faire restored confidence. And the results have clearly followed.
Regardless of how the azzuri do in France this summer, it's clear that Antonio Conte will join Chelsea with a history of success for a manager who is still only in his mid-40s. Even with some residual reputational baggage hanging over him from the ten-month ban he received during his time as coach of Siena (he was charged with failing to report a match-fixing attempt - which he strenously denied), the Premier League is a vastly different place to Serie A. That may not be a concern to Conte from a physical point of view, but it will inevitably inform his tactical outlook, and obviously the choice of players he might ask Marina Granovskaia and Michael Emenalo to deliver (though he shouldn't hold his breath if the experience - and latterly barely concealed frustration - of Mourinho last summer is anything to go by).
Ultimately it will be Roman Abramovich himself who will have to accept that no matter Conte's history, the 2016-17 season will be a relatively fallow one, especially without any European involvement (unless a Europa League comes unexpectedly good in the next month). Abramovich might, to some degree, shoulder some blame for Chelsea's state this season (though given his remarkable benevolence and genuine enthusiasm - take note, R. Lerner... - it would be hard to go further than that), as he appointed Granovskaia and Emenalo to their posts as, respectively, executive in charge of player acquisitions and technical director. These appointments have led to the ridiculous state of affairs of more than 30 players out on loan and the abysmal transfer deadline day grab of soon-to-be-forgotten players last September.
Conte will have to deal with that haphazard mechanism above and aside him. He might ask for Pogba, just as Mourinho did, but it will be a wonder if such a player can be lured to a club which is hardly one of Europe's giants (even if it thinks it is) and most probably will only be focused next season on domestic honours.
Italy and everything Italian suddenly became cool again in London (as it had been in the Mod era of the 60s). Not that long after Italia 90, the arrivals of these Italians, and those who'd played in Italy like Ruud Gullitt, may have come towards the end of their playing carreers, but to this Chelsea fan and committed Italianophile, they marked the end of a period of moribundity at the Bridge. All of a sudden, a club that had history but little to show for it, had panache and style, on the pitch and off. Even Roberto di Matteo's restaurant, La Perla, was an exquisite dining experience.
Conte will become the fifth Italian to manage Chelsea, and the sixth to have managed in Italy, if you include Mourinho's spell at Inter. The expectation for success will come from Abramovich alone: his acquisition of Chelsea in 2003 was, it is believed, in order to create an English version of AC Milan, complete with Andrei Schevchenko and a rumoured attempt then to lure Carlo Ancelotti away from the San Siro. That he eventually did, with the arch-eyebrowed one winning the Premier League title, the FA Cup and the Community Shield in his first season in charge, 2009-2010. Vialli became player-manager, winning the FA Cup, League Cup, UEFA Cup Winners Cup and UEFA Super Cup, while di Matteo 'just' won the Champions League. And Claudio Ranieri? I believe he is now at a club called Leicester City.
Benvenuti, Antonio, e buona fortuna.
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