Italy’s master coach Luciano Spalletti will train the national team of the European soccer champions in the future. The Italian football association FIGC announced on Friday that it had reached an agreement with the former Napoli coach. Spalletti start on September 1st. The 64-year-old succeeds Roberto Mancini, who surprisingly resigned a few days ago.
A successor was needed quickly: the Azzurri have important European Championship qualifiers in September. Spalletti led SSC Napoli to their third championship title in club history last season. It was the first success in Serie A since 1990, when world star Diego Maradona played at the club. After that, Spalletti announced that he would be taking a one-year hiatus. There is also said to have been a crisis between the coach and Napoli President Aurelio De Laurentiis.
According to Italian media reports, Spalletti was the favorite to succeed Mancini early on. However, there are said to have been intensive negotiations between Spalletti’s ex-club and the football association. Napoli apparently demanded a transfer fee of 2.65 million euros for the master coach. This was contractually stipulated if Spalletti should take up a new coaching position in the 2023/2024 season.
Mancini submitted his resignation last Saturday after a good five years. The 58-year-old described the step as a “personal decision”. However, Italian media reported a lucrative offer from Saudi Arabia.
Mancini led Italy to the European Championship title in 2021 and thus celebrated the greatest success with the national team since winning the world championship in 2006. Under him, Italy also missed out on participating in the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, but most recently reached the final tournament of the Nations League, where the Squadra Azzurra finished third in June after a semi-final defeat by Spain.