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.

On 20 April 2007 Gradi announced that with effect from 1 July he would relinquish first team responsibilities, becoming Technical Director while gradually handing over to new first-team coach Steve Holland, with Neil Baker remaining as assistant manager. Gradi was then the longest serving manager of an English football league club. Gradi told the club website:  "I didn't want to be a 75-year-old manager working seven days a week, 52 weeks a year. That is not healthy for the future of the club. I will probably drop dead doing the job at some point but I wanted to put that day off a bit. This is a better way to do things, to introduce this gradual transition because it will take some of the workload off me."  On 18 November 2008, Gradi resumed control of Crewe's first team on a caretaker basis after a poor start to the 2008/09 season under Steve Holland had left the club bottom of League One. He was in charge for just over a month before Gudjon Thordarson was announced as his successor on Christmas Eve 2008. Gradi remained in charge of the team for two games during the Christmas period, with Thordarson taking over on 29 December. Following the sacking of Thordarson on 2 October 2009, Gradi was again reinstated as caretaker manager which the board of directors then stated would be until further notice.  After returning as manager in 2009, on 10 November 2011 it was announced that Gradi had chosen to step down as manager, returning to his position as Director of Football. Gradi's then assistant manager Steve Davis, who had played for Crewe under Gradi from 1983 to 1987, was appointed as manager with immediate effect. Answer this question using a quote from the following article:

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On 18 November 2008, Gradi resumed control of Crewe's first team