Serse Cosmi

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Serse Cosmi (born on May 5, 1958 in Perugia) is an Italian football coach.

[edit] Career

His career started from amateur leagues, coaching in 1990 the small team of Pontevecchio in Ponte San Giovanni, in the neighbourhood of Perugia. Cosmi brought it on from the Prima Categoria (4th level of amateur leagues in Italy) to Serie D (the top one) in just five years. Successively, he joined Arezzo, which he led from Serie D to Serie C1 in five extremely positive years.

After being noted by Luciano Gaucci, in 2000 Cosmi surprisingly became the head coach of Perugia, in Serie A. He led the team for four years, winning a Intertoto Cup and showing valid coaching abilities. In 2004 Cosmi leaves Perugia, after the team's relegation at the end of the season, and joins Genoa of Serie B, with the clear goal to bring the rossoblu back to Serie A. In the end of the 2004/2005 season, Cosmi was able to win the league and promote his team to Serie A, but he left it because of discords with the team chairman Enrico Preziosi, before the relegation of Genoa itself to Serie C1 because of match frauds. After his short, but successful, experience with Genoa, Cosmi was signed as new coach of Udinese, in order to replace Luciano Spalletti, who gained the qualification to the preliminaries of Champions' League the previous season. But it was Cosmi to lead the team on the European competition, defeating Sporting Clube de Portugal in a two-tier qualifying round.

However, after a disappointing series of results, including a shocking elimination in Champions League and results in Serie A league much below the expected results, Cosmi was finally fired on February 10, 2006.

Serse Cosmi is widely popular in Italy for his excitable behaviour during matches. He is also famous for always wearing a baseball cap (usually that of his team, but often with just his signature printed on it). Together with Carlo Mazzone, he is considered one of the strongest characters in Italian football.