New Inter Milan coach Andrea Stramaccioni spoke of his joy at landing his dream job on Tuesday after being hired to replaced the sacked Claudio Ranieri.
The 36-year-old guided the club's youth team to the under-19s Champions League equivalent title against Ajax in London last week.
But he then became the shock choice of club president Massimo Moratti to replace Ranieri, despite having no first-team coaching experience.
He is even younger than some Inter players, such as 38-year-old captain Javier Zanetti.
"It's a great dream because we've come from the victory in London, which now seems a few months ago, to what happened over the last few hours," said Stramaccioni at his official presentation on Tuesday.
"It was a totally unexpected phone call, a dream that the president Moratti has presented me with and I hope to honour it.
"It's another world. The first team is light years away from the youth team.
"For me it's an honour to coach these great champions. To say I'm afraid would be inaccurate. I'm thinking only of working hard."
Stramaccioni's playing career ended early due to a bad injury he sustained when playing for Bologna in the third division.
He went on to coach various amateur and youth teams, including Roma, before taking over the Italy under-17s.
Seven months ago he moved to Inter to take charge of the youth team there.
Although the step up is unprecedented, Stramaccioni says he is already concentrating on his first match in charge.
"From now until Sunday, against Genoa, we've got to show the desire to get results," he said.
"There's no need to set long-term objectives now, we have to think about the next game. We won't make predictions, we'll prepare for each game as it comes.
"I have faith in the players, in the club and in myself. The players in this team have written important pages in our football history.
"I have to get across the ideas that have brought me to this point. Without putting too fine a point on it, I've got great belief."
He was even boosted by an impromtu visit from Manchester City forward and former Inter player Mario Balotelli, who wished the new coach well and popped in to the press conference room to salute his old team-mates.
Ranieri paid for a run of one win in his last 10 league games -- although he won nine of the previous 10 -- that left the nerazzurri eighth in the table and 10 points off a Champions League finish.
During that sorry run, Inter also crashed out of both the Champions League and the Italian Cup.
They face an uphill battle just to qualify for next season's Europa League.
Moratti had given Ranieri a vote of confidence on Monday afternoon, only for Inter to announce in the evening that he had been sacked.
Source: AFP
