Dario Gradi MBE (born 8 July 1941) is an Italian-English former amateur football player, coach and manager. He has been associated for more than 30 years with Crewe Alexandra, with whom he is currently the director of football and also director of the Academy. Gradi played as an amateur for clubs in the London area (and won an England amateur cap); he then took on various coaching roles in the region. His first major managerial success was achieved with Wimbledon after which he briefly managed Crystal Palace in 1981.

After a spell coaching at Leyton Orient, Gradi returned to management on 9 June 1983, when he accepted an offer to manage Crewe Alexandra, a team who regularly finished near the bottom of the Fourth Division and had been forced to apply for re-election on several occasions in order to avoid slipping into the Northern Premier League and, since its creation in 1979, the Football Conference. His first season signings included Mark Leonard from Tranmere, John Crabbe from Hereford and David Pullar from Exeter as Gradi looked to build an academy structure to develop players that could be sold to help fund the player development programme. Among his first transfer successes were Dave Waller (sold to Shrewsbury), Gary Blissett (sold to Brentford) and Geoff Thomas (sold to Crystal Palace); gradually the club moved forward.  In 1988/89, after six seasons of steady progress, they won promotion to end 25 years in the league's basement division. Gradi signed a then unheard of ten-year contract with Crewe. They went back down again two years later, but in 1994 won promotion to Division Two and three years after that they reached Division One for the first time in their history.  Shortly after the 1994 promotion, Gradi became the League's longest-serving manager. By 2002, he was one of just two managers, the other being Alex Ferguson, to have held their position since before 1990. He later joined the club's Board of Directors.  Gradi's contract with Crewe was one of the most controversial in the football league, he receives a percentage of profit on any player sold to another club.

Ask a question about this article.
How did Crewe do after promotion?