Mancini returns to manage Italy... "For the win"
Coverciano – AFP – Three years after his departure following a tenure marked by winning the European Championship, but also missing the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, Roberto Mancini is returning to manage the Italian national team “to win as quickly as possible,” starting with the UEFA Nations League, he said.
Mancini was appointed in late July last month to take on the rescue mission after the team failed to qualify for the 2026 World Cup in North America, marking their third consecutive absence from the global tournament.
Mancini managed the Italian national team between 2018 and 2023, leading them to victory in the European Championship in the summer of 2021. However, under his leadership, the team also failed to qualify for the 2022 World Cup after losing to North Macedonia in the European playoff, a result that originally sparked the 2018 crisis following a loss to Sweden. They then failed again this year after losing to Bosnia and Herzegovina, leaving the four-time world champions out of the finals for the third consecutive time.
Following the defeat in the 2026 finals playoff, Gennaro Gattuso resigned as head coach, followed by the team’s general manager Gianluigi Buffon and Gabriele Gravina, who had served as president of the Italian Football Federation since 2018. Gravina was succeeded by Giovanni Malagò, former president of the Italian Olympic Committee and head of the organizing committee for the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics.
Speaking at a press conference at the Italian national team’s training center in Coverciano (central Italy), Mancini said: “My principle is to have a team that dominates, plays good football, and always gives its best. We cannot always win, but we start with that mindset: winning.”
He added, “To win, we must be a team that plays well and enjoys what it does. That is my concept.”
The former Italian international, who unexpectedly left the “Azzurri” in 2023 to manage the Saudi Arabian national team in a role that lasted only about a year, explained regarding his expanded 34-man squad, which includes Eisa Dumbia and Mohamed Ali Zouma, that “if we want to build a strong team for the future, we must quickly identify the players who can help us, especially the young ones. Therefore, we want to see them on the pitch.”
Italy will begin its rebuilding process with a match against Belgium on Friday in Rome in the first round of Group 1 of the UEFA Nations League, before traveling to Turkey on September 28, then facing France on October 2. Italy will meet Turkey again on October 5 in Bologna.
