After Maldini leaves in chaos, can Mancini bring calm?

They wanted Pep Guardiola. He turned them down.

They asked Carlo Ancelotti. He wasn’t interested.

They turned to Andrea Pirlo. He was ruled out by their superiors.

Now, the men making the approaches have walked out on their own jobs.

Italy‘s search for a manager has ended with the hiring of Roberto Mancini, but only after descending into complete chaos and leading technical director to the Italian FA (FIGC) Paolo Maldini and special advisor Leonardo to quit after only 16 days.

Italian football may no longer be in a leadership a vacuum, but the future remains deeply uncertain.

So what exactly has been going on and where does it all seem to be leading?

This summer was supposed to be a hard reset for Italy.

Their defeat by Bosnia in the final qualifying play-off in March meant they failed to qualify for a third World Cup in a row, and was followed by the swift resignation of manager Gennaro Gattuso.

Legends of Italian football lined up to call for widespread reforms.

“Italy cannot keep arriving at the last stage just to play for qualification,” said former defender Franco Baresi.

“The whole of Italian football must do a mea culpa, because the results of the last 20 years are there for everyone to see, with the isolated exception of the Euro 2020 triumph.”

They seemed to get what they asked for.

Gabriele Gravina, president of the FIGC since 2018, resigned alongside Gianluigi Buffon, the former Juventus goalkeeper who was Italy’s head of delegation.

Giovanni Malago, a former businessman and futsal player with a strong track record in Italian sport as ex-Italian National Olympic Committee president, was elected president.

“Our roots shouldn’t be something we look back on with nostalgia or see as a burden,” he said at the time.

“Instead, they should inspire us to embrace a new era that is brave and successful, humble yet ambitious.”

But Malago turned to nostalgia in order to manage the promised new era, hiring former national captain Maldini on 12 July to run Italian football from the youth system to the senior team.

Maldini’s first responsibility was to find a new manager.

Giovanni Malago took over as FIGC president in June [Getty Images]

“This is a four-year commitment that must take us from here to the next World Cup in 2030, with a European Championship along the way,” Malago said when he announced Maldini and Leonardo’s appointments.

But that commitment lasted little more than a fortnight as the relationship turned fraught over a series of failed appointments.

First Maldini and Leonardo approached former Manchester City manager Guardiola, promising him a big salary and freedom to mould the role and the workings of Italian football to his liking. After mulling the offer over, Guardiola declined, opting to continue with planned time away from football instead.

Four-time Champions League winner Ancelotti oversaw Brazil‘s disappointing last-16 exit at the World Cup but has been kept in his role by the Brazilian FA. Reports in Italy claim he quickly batted away Maldini and Leonardo’s interest.

The pair then aimed to make Pirlo manager, but he was ruled out by the FIGC hierarchy amid outcry from the Italian public and politicians over his role promoting a Russian betting company, including making sponsored visits to Moscow following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The refusal to hire Pirlo, who expressed “great bitterness” over the scandal, appears to have been the final straw for Maldini and Leonardo.

Whether Pirlo – a former team-mate of Maldini and Leonardo at AC Milan – would even have been a good choice is debatable.

Though his style and facial hair may be notoriously suave, his managerial record is distinctly mediocre – he was sacked after a season in charge of Juventus, left mid-table Turkish side Fatih Karagumruk after 12 months, was sacked again following a year in charge of Serie B side Sampdoria, and spent last season in the dugout of UAE club Dubai United.

But with Pirlo off the table, and Maldini and Leonardo’s entire approach undermined, it became the responsibility of Malago to fill the vacancy.

The FIGC’s immediate favourite for the role was Mancini, who won Euro 2020 in his previous spell as manager, but was also in charge when Italy were eliminated from qualifying for the 2022 World Cup by North Macedonia. He then abruptly walked out on the job in order to take a handsomely paid role managing Saudi Arabia instead.

Mancini is now back, and the search is finally over, but it will be very difficult indeed for Malago to sell this appointment as the true rebirth he promised.

Mancini led to Italy to their biggest triumph in years, but also oversaw part of their ongoing decline [Getty Images]

Italy don’t just need to rediscover some form they have temporarily lost – they are in the midst of a two-decade long era of disappointment, bar the European triumph many like Baresi believe was the exception to the rule.

Since winning the World Cup for the third time in 2006, Italy have been knocked out in the group stages twice – in 2010 and 2014 – and failed to qualify in 2018, 2022 and 2026.

The most-recent failure was particularly painful given the expansion to 48 teams.

Since then, greater scrutiny has been on systemic issues which some feel have blighted Italy’s ability to bring through young talent.

Earlier this year, the FIGC released a report on the state of the game in Italy, and identified a series of key issues – including that Serie A’s average age is higher than all other major European leagues, that only 32.1% of Serie A players are eligible to play for Italy, and that Italy ranks very poorly for investment in youth development at both club and national level.

The report found that Serie A ranked 49th out of 50 leagues globally for minutes played by under-21 players, and pointed out that the division ranks low for technical skills like dribbling, passing speed, sprints, and pressing.

In its conclusions, the FIGC suggested that politicians should amend Italian law to allow for a levy on gambling, meaning a percentage of turnover on bets placed on football in Italy would be given to a fund for youth football.

Perhaps those issues will continue to make pushing forward with Malago’s promised new era difficult, regardless of who is in the dugout.