AC Milan have confirmed the appointment of Stefan Pioli as the club's new manager on a two-year deal.
Pioli takes the reins at San Siro after Marco Giampaolo was sacked on Tuesday following a poor start to the season for the San Siro outfit.
Milan currently sit 13th in the Serie A table, with Giampaolo having won just three of his first seven matches in charge of the Rossoneri having been hired over the summer from Sampdoria.
Victory over Genoa on Saturday was not enough to save him from the sack, and Pioli now faces the task of turning the club's form around and returning them to European football.
Milan mark the 13th club of Pioli's coaching career since he began his managerial reign at Salernitana in 2003.
He has taken in spells at Parma, Bologna and Lazio, as well as Milan's city rivals Inter, where he lasted just six months before being sacked by the Nerazzurri in the summer of 2017.
From there he spent two seasons with Fiorentina before resigning from La Viola in April 2019.
Pioli becomes the seventh permanent manager at Milan since Massimiliano Allegri was sacked in January 2014 as the seve-time European champions have struggled for consistency over the past decade.
The likes of Clarence Seedorf, Filippo Inzaghi, Sinisa Mihajlovic and Vincenzo Montella have all been and gone over the past five years, with Gennaro Gattuso the longest-serving head coach since Allegri's departure.
The former Milan and Italy midfielder led to the club to a fifth-placed finish last season, missing out on fourth and a place in the Champions League by one point to Inter.
That was not enough to keep Gattuso in the job, and following his departure it was confirmed that the club had accepted a ban from UEFA from all European competition for the 2019-20 campaign, meaning they could not participate in the Europa League.
The lack of a distraction from continental competition and the summer signings of Rafael Leao, Ante Rebic, Theo Hernandez and Ismael Bennacer, among others, were seen as signs that Milan could concentrate on domestic matters and challenge for a top-four finish this time around.
They already find themselves four points behind fourth-placed Napoli, however.
Piolis' first match in charge will see his new side host struggling Lecce on October 20 before a run of five games which includes meetings with Roma, Lazio, Juventus and Napoli before the end of November.
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