Roberto Mancini Returns as Italy Head Coach with Claudio Ranieri
Roberto Mancini is back in charge of Italy. Again.
FIGC president Giovanni Malagò confirmed on Tuesday that Mancini has agreed to a second spell as head coach of the Azzurri, with Claudio Ranieri appointed as technical director in a sweeping reset at the top of Italian football.
Mancini replaces Gennaro Gattuso, who left in April after Italy failed to qualify for a third consecutive World Cup – an unthinkable statistic for a four-time world champion and a scar that still shapes every decision in Rome.
This is no fresh face, no bold experiment. Mancini returns to a job he knows intimately, a role he previously held from 2018 to 2023, a period that delivered one of Italy’s greatest modern nights and one of its darkest modern failures.
At Wembley in 2021, he stood on the touchline in that immaculate blue suit and guided Italy to European Championship glory, edging England on penalties in a final that felt like a revival of the old, ruthless Azzurri. That triumph looked like the start of a new era.
Then came the crash.
Italy missed out on the 2022 World Cup, a second straight absence from the tournament that once defined them, and stumbled into Euro 2024 qualifying with a sluggish start that cost Mancini his job the first time around. His record from that spell – 58 matches in charge – now forms both his calling card and his warning label.
Malagò, though, has no doubts about the choice.
“Mancini is the coach,” he said on Tuesday. “I believed that the best person to become head coach was Roberto Mancini.”
The decision restores a familiar figure to the dugout, but the structure around him has changed. Ranieri, one of Italian football’s most respected and widely travelled managers, steps in as technical director, tasked with shaping the broader sporting project while Mancini handles the touchline and the dressing room.
Mancini arrives with heavyweight club credentials already etched into his CV. He has managed Inter, Fiorentina and Manchester City, and it was in Manchester where he delivered a seismic moment: three years in charge, capped by the 2011–12 season and City’s first Premier League title, a turning point in the club’s modern history.
If his club career has been about building projects and breaking droughts, his second Italy spell will be judged on one thing: restoring the Azzurri to the World Cup stage and stabilising a national team that has veered wildly between ecstasy and embarrassment.
The return of Mancini and the arrival of Ranieri come at the end of a turbulent few days behind the scenes. Former FIGC technical director Paolo Maldini and his adviser, Leonardo, resigned on Monday after Andrea Pirlo’s proposed appointment as head coach was blocked due to the former midfielder’s ties to a Russian betting firm. That row exposed fault lines inside the federation and left a vacuum that demanded decisive action.
Pep Guardiola had been the association’s first choice for the role but turned it down last month, closing the door on a fantasy appointment and pushing FIGC back toward a proven, domestic solution.
So Italy circles back to a man it knows, a coach who has already taken the country to the summit of Europe and into the depths of qualifying failure. The question now is stark and simple: can Roberto Mancini write a different ending this time?
