Roberto Mancini adds a trophy to his trophy case and doesn’t forget the national team

Roberto Mancini added another trophy, the 15th, to his coaching palmarès. On Monday night, while his Al Sadd was engaged in the Asian Champions League against Simone Inzaghi’s Al Hilal, Shamal’s simultaneous 2-0 defeat against Qatar SC mathematically handed him the Qatar national title with one round to spare. It is the 19th championship in the club’s history, the third consecutive and the sixth in the last eight seasons.

A success, that of the former number 10 of Sampdoria and Lazio, which inevitably takes on a different weight because while Mancini himself is preparing to celebrate on his return to Doha, in Italy the future of the Azzurri bench is being discussed after the farewell of Gennaro Gattuso and what will be Silvio Baldini’s brief interim reign: the name of the last technical commissioner capable of lifting a trophy with Italy, the 2020 European Championship played in 2021 because of Covid, is in fact back in circulation with insistence.

Following the stormy farewell in the summer of 2023, Mancini has repeatedly extended his hand to the Azzurri and his name continues to be perceived as a prestigious solution, especially in a context in which the Federation, which will change its leadership at the end of June after the elections that will determine the successor to the resigning Gabriele Gravina, is seeking stability after a long turbulent period.

That of Roberto Mancini is one of the hottest names for the Azzurri bench, along with those of Antonio Conte and Massimiliano Allegri. At the moment, also complicit in the roles to be redefined at the top of the Federation, there is no real favorite: Mancini and Conte have talked about the possibility of returning to the role of coach in recent days without excluding any possibility, while the Livorno coach said he is focused at the moment on AC Milan, although the crisis of recent weeks has brought out frictions with the Rossoneri club.