Italy have done something both completely predictable and genuinely strange at the same time — they've brought Roberto Mancini back.
The Italian Football Federation (FIGC) president has confirmed it: Mancini is closing in on a return as Italy head coach, with Claudio Ranieri stepping into a newly created technical director role alongside him. A familiar double act, a familiar federation, and a familiar sense that Italian football can't quite bring itself to look forward when there's a comfortable name from the recent past available.
The Appointment Itself
Let's be clear about what this is. Mancini won Italy the Euros in 2021. That's not nothing — it was a brilliant tournament, a real high point, and he deserves credit for it. But he also walked out on the job in 2023, mid-cycle, to take the Saudi Arabia role. Italy were left exposed, stumbled through a dismal qualifying campaign, and missed out on the World Cup again. The federation is now effectively rewarding him for the good times and drawing a line under the bad exit.
There's a version of this that makes sense. Mancini knows the squad, knows the culture, and the 2021 success showed he can get the best out of Italian players when the system clicks. If you need someone to stabilise a dressing room that's been through the wringer, you could do worse than someone who's already lifted a major trophy with the same nation.
But there's another version where this is just Italy doing what Italy does — reaching for safety, for reputation, for a name that makes a press conference feel important. We wrote about the cost of this return [when the Maldini fallout first broke](/getohedz/football/mancini-returns-to-italy-but-the-cost-is-maldini), and that context doesn't disappear just because the appointment is now official. The FIGC has already lost serious credibility over how this was handled behind the scenes.
What Ranieri's Role Actually Means
The Ranieri angle is the one that gets overlooked in the headlines. At 73, he's not being handed a dugout — he's being brought in as technical director, a kind of senior oversight role above the coaching setup. For the neutral, it's a smart bit of federation politics: Ranieri is universally respected, broadly liked, and gives the whole thing a veneer of wisdom and stability.
Whether it works structurally is a different question. Technical directors at national level often end up being either genuinely influential or ceremonial. Given Ranieri's standing and Mancini's well-documented preference for running things his own way, you wonder how that dynamic plays out the first time they disagree on something meaningful.
It's worth noting Italy aren't the only nation navigating a messy managerial situation right now. [Scotland's own search has been handled poorly enough](getohedz/football/scotlands-next-manager-search-is-already-going-wrong) that it's become a story in itself — picking a national coach badly is apparently a European hobby at the moment.
Our Take
Mancini back at Italy is a gamble dressed up as a solution. The 2021 Euros gives him goodwill, but he spent some of it when he left. If Italy qualify comfortably and go deep at the next major tournament, everyone will say it was inspired. If they stumble, the questions about why they went back rather than forward will be loud and completely fair.
We're not convinced this is the right call. But we'll watch how it plays out.