Roberto Mancini walked out on Italy, and Italy asked him back

Roberto Mancini

Photo: Presidenza della Repubblica / Attribution, via Wikimedia Commons

Born	November 27, 1964 Jesi
Occupation	Footballer
Honours	Serie A ×3 · Coppa Italia ×4 · UEFA Cup Winners' Cup ×2 · FA Cup · European Championship 2020 · Super Shield 2026 · Stars League 2026
Individual awards	Knight of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic · Grand Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic

The first thing Roberto Mancini did on his return as Italy’s head coach was apologise. Three years earlier he had resigned from the same job without warning and, a fortnight later, signed with Saudi Arabia. At his first press conference back he said that leaving had been “like losing the woman of your life” and that the breakdown with the federation’s previous president had been “completely my fault.” The team he has taken back has now watched three World Cups from home.

Few coaches get to undo their worst decision in the same chair. The federation turned to him after its first choice, Andrea Pirlo, was rejected over his links to a Russian betting company. His second spell has to show whether the man behind Italy’s longest unbeaten run can rebuild a team in worse shape than the one he inherited the first time, or whether Italian football has simply reached back for the last thing that worked.

His authority on a football pitch arrived early. Mancini was born in Jesi, in the Marche region, on 27 November 1964, and made his Serie A debut for Bologna in 1981, at 16. A year later Sampdoria bought him, and he stayed in Genoa for 15 seasons and more than 550 matches. By 27 he was sitting on the panel that chose Sven-Göran Eriksson as coach and giving the half-time team talks.

On the pitch he was a fantasista, a creative second striker who preferred making goals to scoring them. Under Vujadin Boškov he and Gianluca Vialli became the Goal Twins and carried Sampdoria to the club’s only league title, in 1991, along with four Coppa Italia wins, the 1990 Cup Winners’ Cup and a European Cup final lost to Barcelona. With Italy he never settled: 36 caps and four goals, a home World Cup in 1990 spent entirely on the bench, and an exit after a dispute with Arrigo Sacchi.

Lazio signed him in 1997 and gave him a second scudetto in 2000 and another Cup Winners’ Cup; his six Coppa Italia titles as a player are a record he shares with Gianluigi Buffon. A five-match loan at Leicester City in early 2001 left him attached to English football for good, and he cut it short when Fiorentina offered him their bench.

Fiorentina needed special dispensation to hire him without coaching badges. He won the Coppa Italia there while the debt-ridden club sold its best players around him, and left after ten months with the team in the relegation zone. Back at a cash-strapped Lazio, he won another. Inter then made him the coach of their revival: three straight Serie A titles from 2006 to 2008, the first awarded after the Calciopoli scandal stripped Juventus, the second won with 97 points. Massimo Moratti dismissed him in May 2008 after another Champions League exit and replaced him with José Mourinho.

Manchester City, newly rich under Abu Dhabi ownership, hired him in December 2009. His FA Cup in 2011 was the club’s first major trophy in 35 years. On 13 May 2012, the last day of the next season, City trailed Queens Park Rangers 2-1 going into stoppage time; goals from Edin Džeko and Sergio Agüero won the match 3-2 and, on goal difference, the club’s first league title in 44 years. A year later, two days after losing the FA Cup final to Wigan Athletic, he was dismissed. The club spoke of wanting a more “holistic” approach; his public criticism of players and staff had alienated the dressing room and the boardroom.

That is the pattern his admirers tend to skate past. Mancini wins quickly in places that need rescuing, and the exits are often of his own making. He left Galatasaray after one season and a Turkish Cup in a dispute over the budget, spent a second, trophyless spell at Inter remembered mostly for the middle finger he showed Milan supporters after a derby defeat, and lasted one season at Zenit. As a club coach he never took a team past a Champions League quarter-final. The temper runs through every stage: Juan Sebastián Verón recalls him waiting after a match, stripped to the waist, to fight over a badly taken corner.

Italy took him on in May 2018, after the team had missed its first World Cup in 60 years. He surrounded himself with old Sampdoria teammates, Vialli among them as head of delegation after treatment for pancreatic cancer, and he called up young players before their clubs fully trusted them. The team went 37 matches unbeaten, a world record, and on 11 July 2021 beat England on penalties at Wembley to win Euro 2020. Eight months later Italy lost at home to North Macedonia in a World Cup play-off. Vialli died in January 2023.

In August 2023, weeks after being handed oversight of the under-21 and under-20 sides as well, he resigned. Two weeks later Saudi Arabia appointed him on a contract La Gazzetta dello Sport put at 25 million euros a year. It went badly. At the Asian Cup in early 2024 he walked down the tunnel before the decisive kick of a round-of-16 shootout against South Korea, then apologised. He left in October 2024 after World Cup qualifying draws with Bahrain and Indonesia, and by the end of that year was admitting he regretted leaving Italy.

Qatar gave him the kind of repair job he does best. He took over Al-Sadd in November 2025 with the team sixth in the league, won the UAE-Qatar Super Shield in January and clinched the Qatar Stars League title on the final day in April 2026. After a 4-1 defeat by Al-Gharafa in the Amir Cup final, he left by mutual agreement in June.

By then Italy had fallen again. On 31 March 2026 in Zenica, with Alessandro Bastoni sent off before half-time, they drew 1-1 with Bosnia and Herzegovina after extra time and lost the shootout, missing a third straight World Cup. Gennaro Gattuso and the federation president, Gabriele Gravina, resigned. Gravina’s successor, Giovanni Malagò, announced Mancini on 28 July on a four-year contract, with Claudio Ranieri as technical director.

The start has been uneven. Belgium won 2-0 at the Stadio Olimpico on 25 September. Three days later Italy won 4-1 against Türkiye in Bursa, and on 2 October they drew 1-1 with Zinedine Zidane‘s France at the Stade de France, Bastoni equalising after a Michael Olise free kick and Gianluigi Donnarumma making save after save.

He has three children, Filippo, Andrea and Camilla, from his marriage to Federica Morelli. On the touchline he has long kept the habit of wearing a scarf in his club’s colours.

Italy play Türkiye again in Bologna on 5 October. The contract runs long enough to cover qualifying for Euro 2028 and the 2030 World Cup, and Mancini has said he would like to stay beyond it. The apology bought him a hearing. The next four years will decide whether his return reads as a reconciliation or a repeat.

Tags: sports, athletes, Manchester City, football managers, Inter Milan, Roberto Mancini

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