Henrikh Mkhitaryan is convinced Inter Milan coach Cristian Chivu has a big future ahead of him.
The veteran midfielder says he's been quickly won over by Chivu, who had only six months of senior management as coach of Parma before landing the Nerazzurri post.
Mkhitaryan said at the Trento Sports Festival: "I can't forget that I'm 36 and will soon be 37. I want to help the team, but I also have to understand the coach's decisions.
"I'm ready to help the team, perhaps by playing one game a week, not all of them. If I were 23 or 24, maybe I would have approached it differently. I see a coach who wants to grow and learn every day, and who, in my opinion, has a great future."
On Chivu's predecessor, Simone Inzaghi, Mkhitaryan also said: "He was there and he is there, you never forget these relationships. I spent three wonderful years with Simone Inzaghi, he gave me a second youth.
"I felt important playing every game from the age of 33 to 36. In Udine, however, when he took me off after 32 minutes, I thought: 'Maybe I've found someone else who will misbehave with me.'
"I didn't know this whole thing about the yellow cards, that he changes them after every yellow. No one had explained it to me. For me, he was a coach, a father, a friend, someone you could talk to about anything."