Mancini coached the national side in 2018-2023 and returns to the job with Italy having failed to qualify for a FIFA World Cup since 2014.<\/p>\n
Published On 28 Jul 202628 Jul 2026<\/p>\n
Former Italy manager Roberto Mancini will return for a second spell as national team coach, \u2060Italian Football Federation (FIGC) President Giovanni Malago said on Tuesday, while Claudio Ranieri will take over as technical director.<\/p>\n
Mancini will replace Gennaro Gattuso, who left the post in \u2060April following a World Cup qualifying defeat by Bosnia and Herzegovina, the third time in a row the four-times world champions had failed to reach the global showpiece event.<\/p>\n
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Malago announced the appointment during a Federal Council meeting.<\/p>\n
\u201cMancini is the coach,\u201d he said before \u200cconfirming the decision at a press conference.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believed that the best person to become head coach was Roberto Mancini,\u201d Malago told reporters.<\/p>\n
The 61-year-old Mancini guided Italy to the European Championship title in 2021.<\/p>\n
He led Italy in 58 matches during his first spell and at club level has managed Inter Milan, Fiorentina and Manchester City, where he spent three years and guided them to their first Premier \u2060League title in 2011-12.<\/p>\n
Former FIGC technical director Paolo Maldini and \u2060adviser Leonardo resigned from their roles on Monday after their primary candidate for the Italy coach\u2019s position, Andrea Pirlo, had his appointment blocked due to his ties to a Russian betting firm.<\/p>\n
Former Manchester City \u2060manager Pep Guardiola, who was the FIGC\u2019s first choice to take charge of the national team, turned down the job \u2060this month.<\/p>\n
Ranieri will take up the role of FIGC \u2060technical director, replacing Maldini.<\/p>\n
The 74-year-old coach, who famously led Leicester City to a shock English Premier League title in 2016, will oversee technical operations and elite football development across Italy\u2019s national team structures.<\/p>\n
\u201cI needed someone \u200cwith whom I could share the decision on the coach, because without that shared view my reasoning would have carried little weight,\u201d Malago said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo consequently, today we \u200chave \u200ca new coach and a new technical director for Italy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mancini coached the national side in 2018-2023 and returns to the job with Italy having failed to qualify…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":563816,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[63,4118,85,46,2971,43,2224,105],"class_list":["post-563815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-europe","tag-football","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-italy","tag-news","tag-sport","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=563815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563815\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/563816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}