Italy: Roberto Mancini Snatches the Striker from Germany

The Nations League is coming up, and Italian national team head coach Roberto Mancini might surprise everyone with his upcoming roster selections for the matches against Belgium and Turkey. According to reports in *La Gazzetta dello Sport*, the Jesi-born coach has already contacted Bruges forward Nicolò Tresoldi and received a positive response from him.

The Italian-born, naturalized German player, born in 2004, has played for Germany’s youth national teams in recent years and has become a key player for the Under-21 squad that finished as European runner-up in 2025. Born in Cagliari and having moved to Germany in 2017 at the age of 13, Tresoldi developed as a soccer player at Hannover.

Last season, he transferred to Club Brugge, where he truly broke out, scoring 23 goals in 58 games, and he’s started this year on a strong note, scoring 4 goals in the first 4 games of the season. A fast and technically gifted center forward who is also skilled at building plays, he is the type of player the national team lacks, and Mancini is pushing to have him join the Azzurri as soon as possible to prevent Germany’s head coach, Jürgen Klopp, from calling him up—which would effectively end any chance of seeing him in the Italian national team jersey.

The player has reportedly already agreed, and the process for switching national teams has already begun: the hope is to receive FIFA’s approval within the next few days so he can be called up for the Nations League. The situation is similar for Alessandro Romano, a 20-year-old Swiss midfielder who plays for Cagliari: in this case as well, Mancini hopes to have him available for the first matches of his second stint with the Azzurri.

For Mancini, this is therefore an intense rebuilding phase, in which work on the field goes hand in hand with scouting and player recruitment. Supporting him in this venture is a top-tier staff, officially announced by the FIGC: Alberto Bollini as assistant coach, Leonardo Bonucci, Antonio Gagliardi, and Massimo Maccarone as technical staff members, with Lele Oriali in the key role of team manager. Rounding out the structure of the new Club Italia are Claudio Ranieri as technical director and head of delegation, and Gianfranco Zola as coordinator of the youth national teams, with the stated goal of building a solid technical pipeline that can ensure a steady stream of talent for Italy in the coming years.