Underrated Roberto Mancini an intriguing choice for Italy job

Roberto Mancini will be the manager charged with rebuilding Italy’s national team. Here’s what he brings to the position.

After last November’s debacle of failing to qualify for the World Cup for the first time in 60 years, Italy will hit the reset button starting with Roberto Mancini.

With Mancini’s appointment made official on Monday, the four-time World Cup champions get a coach who had an extensive playing and managing career. None of his past successes have come at the national team level. Rather, his successes as a player came at unheralded sides such as Sampdoria and Lazio. As a manager, he’s most-remembered for his time at Inter Milan and Manchester City.

The 53-year-old is also not afraid to be flexible tactically (not always a bad thing for national team managers, who have to rely on different players at a given time) and that has sometimes gotten him in trouble with fans.

“I prefer boos in the end and to go home with one point rather than with three goals in our net,” Mancini famously said in January 2011 after his Manchester City side played Arsenal to a scoreless draw. “The home crowd call us boring? It’s not important for me. When you play here against Arsenal, it could be that Arsenal play better than you and you might defend. This is football.”

It’s true that Mancini doesn’t mince words and often speaks his mind. That should make for a very interesting clash in a country where an aggressive sports media isn’t afraid to call coaches and players out following bad performances and fans think they know better than the manager. Here’s are three things Mancini brings to the position now that he’s taken charge of the Azzurri. 

Rebirth his specialty

Mancini isn’t afraid to take over teams that badly need restructuring. At the moment, there’s no national team in greater disarray (other than possibly the Netherlands) in post-2018 World Cup qualification than Italy. This job will certainly test Mancini’s abilities.

He brought Inter Milan to new heights — which was noticed soon after he was out of the job — during his two stints (2004-08 and a second time from 2014-16) at the San Siro. He once again made the Nerazzurri a dominant club in Italy and Europe during his time there. Inter, for example, achieved a record-breaking run of 17 straight Serie A victories starting on Sept. 25, 2006 (with a 4–1 home win over Livorno) and ending on Feb. 28, 2007 after a 1-1 draw at home to Udinese. Inter won a second straight title, losing one league game that season.

A similar thing played out at City, where Mancini was hired midway through the season after Mark Hughes was sacked. Manchester City, after seeing an infusion of cash from new owners, won the 2011-12 Premier League title. His side clinched the league in a dramatic 3–2 win over Queens Park Rangers on a Sergio Aguero goal after being down 2–1 heading into stoppage time. That team featured Mario Balotelli, which means the striker could make a return to the national team after he’s been left off by previous manager Giampiero Ventura.

Tactical flexibility

Look back at Mancini’s career, especially his time at City from 2009-13, and it shows his evolution as a manager. As the team changed and the players got better, Mancini moved from a moredefensive approach when he got there in December 2009 to an attacking one. He went from using Gareth Barry, Nigel De Jong and Patrick Vieira as a trio of defensive midfielders against Arsenal (in that famous 0-0 game mentioned earlier) in a 4-3-3 formation to a 4-2-3-1 and eventually a 4-4-2. Mancini even rolled out a new 3-5-2 at one point, but scrapped it after it failed to yield results.  

In other words, Mancini is flexible and willing to experiment. While he can sometimes be slapped with the tinkerman label (something that infuriates fans and players on the club level), it is a quality that tends to work on the national team level.

Whether players are injured or suspended, national teams play games across longer stretches of time. That flexibility often goes a long way until a winning formula can be achieved ahead of a big tournament.

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He’s looking for revenge

Mancini is an underrated manager. He always has been. Therefore, there is no greater way than to exact revenge than by succeeding at the highest level possible. For Mancini, that means qualifying Italy for Euro 2020 (and then going on to win it) as well as reaching the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

By the way, Mancini is also fashionable (everyone remembers his knotted scarves during his club coaching days) and attends church services every Sunday. Isn’t this guy the perfect manager for an Italy side in need of a renaissance? The Italian FA certainly thinks so. His track record is a good one. Now he needs to prove it to the fans.