July 11 (Reuters) – Former international \u2060defender Paolo Maldini was named technical director of the \u2060Italian Football Federation (FIGC) on Saturday as Italy seek to \u200cget the national side back on track after failing to qualify for the World Cup for the third successive time.<\/p>\n
Maldini, who won 126 caps for Italy, \u200bserved in the same role for four \u2060years at AC Milan, \u2060where he had spent his entire playing career and helped the \u2060side \u200cto win seven Serie A titles.<\/p>\n
His new appointment comes after Giovanni Malago was elected FIGC president last month \u2060after heading the organising committee for February’s Milano \u200bCortina Winter Olympics.<\/p>\n
“President \u200cGiovanni Malago is pleased to announce that Paolo Maldini \u2060has accepted the \u200bposition of Technical Director of the Federation,” the FIGC said in a statement on Saturday.<\/p>\n
The FIGC added that Brazilian Leonardo would serve \u2060as an adviser to his former Milan \u200bteammate Maldini. Local media reported that Maldini, 58, had signed a contract until 2028.<\/p>\n
Malago, the former head of the Italian National Olympic \u2060Committee, succeeded Gabriele Gravina, who resigned after a shock World Cup qualifying exit in April sparked widespread outrage among fans and politicians.<\/p>\n
Maldini will begin his tenure by searching for a new \u200bItaly coach after the federation parted ways \u2060with Gennaro Gattuso following a defeat by Bosnia & Herzegovina on penalties \u200bin a World Cup playoff in March, \u200cwhich left the four-time champions out \u200bof soccer’s showpiece event for a third consecutive edition.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Mohamed Yossry in Cairo, editing by Clare Fallon)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"July 11 (Reuters) – Former international \u2060defender Paolo Maldini was named technical director of the \u2060Italian Football Federation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":794382,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,13201,596,85,21418],"class_list":["post-794381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fifa","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=794381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/794382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=794381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=794381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=794381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}