After months of turmoil, boardroom upheaval and a very public search for direction, Italy are ready to let football do the talking again
It will be Italy’s first competitive fixture since a play-off defeat to Bosnia and Herzegovina in March confirmed a humbling third consecutive failure to qualify for the World Cup, extending a barren run that has now left an entire generation of supporters without a tournament to watch their country compete in.
What has followed has amounted to something close to a full institutional reset for the four-time world champions.
Gennaro Gattuso departed as head coach in the aftermath of the defeat in Zenica, alongside delegation head Gianluigi Buffon and federation president Gabriele Gravina. Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics organiser Giovanni Malago was elected as the new Italian Football Federation (FIGC) president in June, and his first major act was to appoint AC Milan legend Paolo Maldini as technical director to lead the search for a new head coach.
That search proved anything but straightforward. Maldini’s first target, Brazil boss Carlo Ancelotti, turned the role down. His second, Pep Guardiola, came agonisingly close to accepting after the pair spent a full day together in Barcelona. “He was very tempted,” Maldini said.
“He came very close to accepting. He even started writing line-ups down on sheets of paper.” According to Maldini, money was never the sticking point. Guardiola’s decision to step away ultimately came down to fatigue after a decade in charge of Manchester City, whom he left this past summer.
Maldini then turned to his former Italy team-mate Andrea Pirlo, only for the approach to collapse after controversy erupted over Pirlo’s role as a global ambassador for a Russian betting company, which he insisted was “exclusively commercial and sporting in nature.”
The fallout proved terminal for Maldini’s own position, he and advisor Leonardo resigned after just 16 days in the role, with Maldini later explaining that “the conditions of trust no longer existed” between himself and Malago.
Mancini speaks about his return 🎙️🇮🇹#Azzurri #VivoAzzurro pic.twitter.com/Xe586CBFmH
— Italy ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (@Azzurri_En) July 29, 2026
Mancini, the architect of Italy’s Euro 2020 triumph, was eventually appointed in July, though his return proved divisive. His decision to step down as Italy coach in August 2023 to take a lucrative job coaching Saudi Arabia had angered many back home, and his reappointment prompted a Corriere dello Sport open letter accusing him of “betrayal,” while Sky Sport pundit Paolo Condo argued his exit for a “lavish payday” should have been a “road of no return.”
Mancini addressed the criticism head-on at his unveiling. “I’m very sorry. The Italy shirt was always very important to me. It was like losing the love of my life,” he said, before laying out his ambitions for the rebuild ahead. “We have to take the national team back to where it deserves to be. I’m here to win and I’m sure we’ll enjoy some great moments.”
His first squad selection underlined the scale of the reset already under way, with nine new faces named among a 34-man group that blends fresh, largely untested talent with more familiar names.
Roberto Mancini names his squad for the upcoming #NationsLeague matches 📋#Azzurri #VivoAzzurro pic.twitter.com/pFrnbBdSv4
— Italy ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (@Azzurri_En) September 18, 2026
Young prospects Alessandro Romano and Eddy Kouadio earned call-ups, alongside players based outside Italy such as Sporting Lisbon midfielder Issa Doumbia, Brentford’s Michael Kayode and Nurnberg striker Mohamed Ali Zoma.
An Italian Bee 🐝#Azzurri #VivoAzzurro @BrentfordFC pic.twitter.com/Oci3XTu6cL
— Italy ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (@Azzurri_En) September 21, 2026
“I think it’s right to have young players so we can get to know them directly, because that’s the most important thing to have a very strong squad in the future,” Mancini explained. “We have to be quick to understand who could be the players that could be with us for the next four years.”
After hosting Belgium in Rome on Friday, Italy will play Turkey twice either side of a trip to face Zinedine Zidane’s France, giving Mancini an early, revealing window into where his rebuilding project truly stands.
