Italy are bringing Roberto Mancini back as national team coach, and the circumstances that made it necessary are every bit as chaotic as the appointment itself is predictable.
FIGC President Giovanni Malago confirmed the decision to the federation's council on Tuesday. Mancini, currently without a club after leaving Qatar's Al-Sadd, returns to a job he last held in 2023 — when he walked out to take charge of Saudi Arabia, less than a year after guiding Italy to the UEFA Euro 2020 title.
How Pirlo's Appointment Fell Apart
This was never the plan. Andrea Pirlo had been lined up as the leading candidate after Pep Guardiola — the first choice — declined the role. Then it unravelled fast. Pirlo's appointment reportedly hit a wall over his sponsorship deal with Fonbet, a Russian betting company, and that was enough to blow the whole thing up.
The fallout didn't stop there. FIGC Technical Director Paolo Maldini and adviser Leonardo — neither of whom had been in post for three weeks — both resigned over the decision. That's a full-scale internal crisis, not a routine coaching change. The federation needed someone they could appoint without a second headline waiting to happen.
Enter Mancini. Safe, known, available.
What This Means for the Azzurri
His record with Italy is genuinely mixed. The Euro 2020 win was a coaching masterclass — an unfancied squad turned into European champions through tactical discipline and squad unity. But he also presided over the failure to qualify for the 2022 World Cup, one of the lowest points in Italian football history, before quietly departing for the Gulf. That's the version of Mancini the FIGC is gambling on not repeating.
Italy's World Cup qualifying odds will be worth watching as this settles in. A second stint driven by federation desperation rather than genuine sporting vision tends to carry less momentum than the first.
Meanwhile, Claudio Ranieri is expected to step in as the new technical director — which at least adds some credibility to the backroom setup after Maldini and Leonardo's rapid exits.
The federation wanted stability. Whether Mancini can actually deliver it, given how his first spell ended, is a genuinely open question.
