About 100 kilometres east of Milan, villages dot the mountains surrounding the town of Brescia. Keen to celebrate local customs and preserve their character, these villages often hold fairs. If in the 1990s you wanted yours to be a success, you might have called on the organisational skills of Gianluca Nani.

Local celebrities would be invited along and, naturally, Gino Corioni, the president of Brescia’s football club, was a popular choice as a VIP guest. The story goes that Nani met Corioni’s daughter, Silvia, charmed her, married her and was soon working for his father-in-law, first as Brescia’s spokesman, then as sporting director. In March this year he was appointed West Ham United’s first technical director and now, after the departure of Alan Curbishley on Wednesday, Nani is tasked with drawing up a shortlist of potential successors.

Given his background, West Ham fans may be wondering whether Nani would be better off running the half-time raffle at Upton Park than the club’s search for a new manager. But that tale shows how far the 45-year-old has come in a short time. In truth, he was not a football novice. He had a business in Spain that helped clubs seeking warm-weather training camps. This enabled him to make contacts, as did a stint as an independent scout.

Aside from Corioni, he does not benefit from the favour of a powerful patron. Those who know Nani say that he tries to maintain fair and equal relations with his contacts, a detached stance that has not allowed him to cultivate deep friendships with many influential figures in the game. But because he never played professionally, plenty would view him as an outsider, regardless of his personality or methods, which makes his rise more impressive.

Now there are TWO ways to feed your fantasy

We have built on last year's success of PlayTheGame by offering fantasy football managers double the fun this coming season

Multimedia

• Chelsea: On-the-job training

• Man United: You've been merked, Capello

• Reading: Is Lita's yesterday's man?

Related Links

• Curbishley shows fine sense of timing

• Bilic ready to reject West Ham riches

• Pearce would turn down West Ham job

The Italian press dubbed him “Count Nani”, apparently because he has a distant connection to nobility. In fact, he was a law student who grew up in a working-class district of Rome and is humble and deferential in company, being smart enough to know his limits and willing to learn from others. While Curbishley cited clashes over transfers as a key reason for his resignation, he is thought to have got on well enough with Nani, although they did not always agree about which players to target.

If the story that he discovered Kaká in Brazil, only for Brescia to be unable to afford him, does not convince, the club did make astute signings under Nani’s stewardship. Marek Hamsik, a Slovakia midfield player, was signed as a teenager for €500,000 and sold to Napoli for €6 million three years later. In 2000 Roberto Baggio, who was 33 at the time and was presumed to be washed up, joined and was a huge hit. Josep Guardiola, the former Spain and Barcelona midfield player who is now the Barcelona coach, also arrived and Andrea Pirlo and Luca Toni blossomed. “He did a lot of the groundwork bringing people on board,” a source who has worked with Nani said.

Even the man himself admitted last month that his arrival in East London is a “gamble”. But West Ham’s Icelandic owners are believed to be impressed with his negotiating skills — £8 million for Anton Ferdinand from Sunderland is thought to be twice as much as was expected — and have detailed him to instil a more professional and modern approach behind the scenes while identifying and bringing in future stars from the world’s leagues.

Nani started by overhauling the club’s medical department after last season’s spate of injuries, but his most important role is to help to identify a manager who can shape a club in cost-cutting mode into a serious force, not the sideshow they threaten to become.