Gennaro Gattuso leaves Italian national team: toto-c.t. starts with some surprise names

After Gabriele Gravina’s resignation as president of the Italian Football Federation (Federcalcio) and Gianluigi Buffon’s resignation as head of the national team’s delegation, there are also those of Gennaro Gattuso, who has chosen not to continue his adventure in the Azzurri that began last year after the stormy break in the relationship between the Federation and Luciano Spalletti and ended sadly with the penalty shootout lost in Bosnia and qualification for the 2026 World Cup faded on the final straight.

The Calabrian coach, born in 1978 and a player of the national team between 2000 and 2010 (for him also the satisfaction of winning the World Cup in Germany in 2006), had a record of six victories, one draw (the one against Bosnia, considering the result at 120′) and one defeat, a heavy one, against Norway at San Siro last November 16 (4-1 the score for Haaland and his teammates). Without taking into account the two matches under Gigi Di Biagio, interim guide in 2018, Gattuso’s “reign” was the shortest, in terms of matches played, in the last fifty years.

Now the toto-c.t. is predictably triggered, with several names on the list but no certainties. Among the favorites are Antonio Conte and Massimiliano Allegri, but their respective clubs, Napoli and Milan, are unlikely to give up coaches to whom they are bound by onerous multi-year contracts. The name of Roberto Mancini, who had left the national team in 2023 due to disagreements with the now former FIGC president Gravina, has also been mentioned, but the option still remains rather weak.

An interesting suggestion, but one that is all to be verified especially at the level of personal availability and contracting arrangements, is that of a foreign coach, with the names of Pep Guardiola and Jürgen Klopp circulating in recent hours. That of the foreign coach is a real taboo for Italian soccer: some non-Italians have been part of the old “technical commissions” from the dawn of the national team to the 1950s, while the Argentine Helenio Herrera sat on the Azzurri bench along with Ferruccio Valcareggi for four competitions between 1966 and 1967. No non-Italian coach, however, has ever coached the Azzurri team alone.