Italy Football Crisis Deepens as Maldini Resigns, Mancini Steps Back In

A Federation in Chaos, Again

Italy’s national football team is once again engulfed in institutional turmoil. Paolo Maldini has resigned as technical director of the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) after just 16 days in the role, and his adviser, Leonardo, walked away alongside him. The fallout has already reshaped the leadership of the Azzurri: Roberto Mancini is stepping back in as head coach, brought in to steady a federation that appointed him almost as an afterthought after its first choice fell apart.

The upheaval traces back to a single collapsed appointment. Maldini and Leonardo had settled on Andrea Pirlo as Italy’s next head coach, only for the plan to unravel amid controversy over Pirlo’s commercial ties to a Russian betting company. What followed was a chain reaction that cost the federation both its new technical leadership and, briefly, its credibility with the man it now needs most.

Why Maldini and Leonardo Walked Away

Maldini and Leonardo had been brought in to lead a broader rebuild of Italian football following the national team’s failure to qualify for a third consecutive World Cup, a run of misses that has left the federation, by some accounts, at its lowest point in nearly 40 years. Their mandate was straightforward on paper: find a head coach capable of restoring Italy’s fortunes after the exit of Gennaro Gattuso. In practice, it took barely two weeks to go badly wrong.

According to Sky Sport Italia, the pair resigned on July 27, 2026, once it became clear that installing Pirlo as head coach was no longer viable. Their departure was not a slow-building resignation but a direct and immediate response to that single failed appointment, and it leaves the federation needing to fill both the head coach and technical director positions at once, barely a month after Maldini and Leonardo had been installed to fix exactly that kind of instability.

The Pirlo Controversy: Russian Sponsorship at the Center

At the heart of the crisis is Pirlo’s role as global ambassador for Fonbet, a Russian betting company. With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine still shaping political and diplomatic sentiment across Italy, the association proved far more explosive than a straightforward coaching appointment might otherwise have been. Doubts among FIGC components over the appointment surfaced almost as soon as it became public, and mounting political pressure ultimately made the position impossible to sustain.

Pirlo pushed back publicly, insisting his collaboration with the company was “exclusively of a commercial and sporting nature” and that he had never expressed any political convictions through it. In his own words:

“Throughout my career, first as a player and then as a coach, I have always performed my duties within full respect of the laws of the countries I worked in. To attribute a political meaning to such a collaboration means to attribute convictions that I have never expressed.”

His defense did little to slow the backlash. Within days, the appointment had become untenable, and his candidacy was withdrawn — taking Maldini and Leonardo’s positions down with it.

Mancini’s Frustration — and His Return

The saga has also exposed real tension between the FIGC’s outgoing leadership and its new president. Giovanni Malagò, elected FIGC president on June 22, 2026, had reportedly favored Mancini as his preferred candidate for the head coach role from the very start. Under the federation’s structure, though, final authority over the appointment sat with Maldini and Leonardo, and they pursued Pirlo instead — bypassing Malagò’s preference entirely.

That decision reportedly left Mancini frustrated. Having resigned from his post at Al-Sadd in June specifically to be available, Mancini was said to feel “abandoned” by the federation and upset with how the process had unfolded, believing he was the obvious and natural choice for a second stint in charge of the Azzurri rather than a fallback option.

Once Pirlo’s candidacy collapsed and Maldini and Leonardo departed, the federation turned back to Mancini anyway, confirming his return as head coach on July 28, 2026. It marks his second spell in charge of Italy, following a first tenure from 2018 to 2023 in which he led the Azzurri to victory at Euro 2020 — a high point that was followed by Italy’s failure to qualify for the 2022 World Cup, the controversy that had originally ended his first stint.

Other Candidates Who Turned the Job Down

Pirlo was not Maldini and Leonardo’s only option, simply the one they pursued furthest. Before turning to him, the pair had approached Pep Guardiola, who turned down the position, reportedly preferring to focus on his personal life following his departure from Manchester City. The FIGC’s pitch to him had been ambitious: an expansive “Azzurro project” spanning all of Italy’s national teams, not just the senior side, rather than a conventional head coach role. Carlo Ancelotti was also contacted, but he remains under contract with Brazil’s national team and was never seriously in play.

With both of the federation’s higher-profile targets unavailable, and Pirlo’s appointment then collapsing under political pressure, Mancini emerged less as a first choice than as the option left standing once everything else had failed.

What Comes Next for the FIGC

With Mancini now confirmed as head coach, attention turns to who will replace Maldini as technical director. Claudio Ranieri is reportedly expected to step into that role, giving the federation a more experienced hand to help stabilize operations after weeks of upheaval at the top.

For Malagò, the priority now is establishing some continuity after a chaotic opening chapter of his presidency, one that saw his own technical leadership team dissolve within just over two weeks of taking charge, and a coaching search that managed to alienate the very candidate the federation ultimately turned back to. Italian football, still reeling from missing three straight World Cups, will be hoping that Mancini’s second stint — and a steadier leadership structure around him this time — can finally deliver the turnaround that has eluded the federation since his controversial exit in 2023.