“I came back to win as quickly as possible,” Roberto Mancini said on Monday, returning to the post of coach of Italy which is going through an unprecedented crisis after missing the last three World Cups.
“My principle is to have a team that dominates, that plays well, that always gives the maximum. We cannot always win, but we start with this idea, to win,” Mancini said at a press conference at the Nazionale training center in Coverciano (central Italy). “To win, we have to be a team that plays well and has fun, that’s my concept,” he insisted.
“To have a strong team in the future, we need to quickly understand who are the players who can help us, especially the young ones, that’s why we want to see them on the pitch,” explained the former Italy international, about his expanded 34-man roster, including the likes of Issa Doumbia and Mohamed Alì Zoma.
Start rebuilding
Italy will begin its reconstruction against Belgium on Friday in Rome as part of the Nations League. She will then face Turkey on September 28, France on October 2 at the Stade de France and Turkey again on October 5.
Mancini, 61, took back control of the Nazionale at the end of July, which he had already led between 2018 and 2023 and at the head of which he won Euro-2021. Since this European coronation, Italy fell in the round of 16 of Euro-2024 and failed to qualify for the World Cup, 2022 and 2026, each time in the play-offs.
The defeat, on penalties, against Bosnia-Herzegovina at the end of May, cost Gennaro Gattuso his place, who had succeeded Luciano Spalletti in June 2025. This setback plunged the Italian Federation (FIGC) into a serious crisis from which it has not yet emerged. Its president Gabriele Gravina resigned and the former president of the Italian Olympic committee and the organizing committee for the 2026 Winter Olympics, Giovanni Malago, succeeded him. He initially wanted to entrust the Nazionale to the 2006 world champion Andrea Pirlo who had to give up due to an advertising contract with a Russian sports betting company and a coaching CV considered too meager.
