Mancini is back in charge of Italy

The Italian federation has turned back to the man who won Euro 2020, handing Roberto Mancini a 34-player squad list as he starts his second spell in charge, per the squad reported by Foot Mercato. That number alone tells you something: this is not a tight, settled group being fine-tuned. It's a wide net, cast by a coach who needs to work out fast who's actually good enough.

Mancini left Italy in 2023 after that European title turned sour, and what followed was three straight campaigns where the Azzurri couldn't get a World Cup qualification job done. For a country with four World Cups in the cabinet, that run is the kind of stat nobody in Rome wanted to keep saying out loud. The federation's answer, in the end, was to go back to the coach who last got it right.

Why Mancini, why now

There's a logic to the recall that doesn't need much explaining: Mancini took a fractured, underachieving Italy side to a European Championship in 2021, built around a fearless front line and a squad that played with more courage than its individual quality suggested. That version of Mancini's Italy beat England on penalties at Wembley. The federation is betting that coach still exists, even after a Manchester City spell and years away from the national set-up since.

What he's inheriting now is a different problem. Euro 2020 winners don't automatically become good at qualifying for World Cups, and Italy's recent record proves it. Three failed campaigns in a row isn't one bad night or one refereeing decision. It's a pattern, and patterns are what get federations to make big, symbolic hires.

The 34-man pool

A 34-player squad for an international window is a lot of names, and it says plenty about where Mancini's head is at. This isn't a coach walking into a settled group and picking his best XI. It's a coach doing an audit: who's fit, who's in form, who deserves another look after a barren spell for the national team.

Expect that number to shrink fast once the calendar tightens and Mancini starts building an actual first-choice spine. For now, the size of the list is the story as much as any individual name on it: a federation that wants answers, and a coach who's decided the only way to get them is to look at almost everyone.

What the mandate actually is

Mancini doesn't need reminding what happens to Italy managers who don't deliver, he watched the fallout of his own exit closely enough. The brief here is straightforward even if it's not being said in those exact words: get Italy back into the tournaments they're supposed to be at, and do it with the kind of squad depth that stops one bad window turning into three.

The pressure is real, but so is the goodwill. A Euro 2020 winner doesn't get a short leash on his first window back. He gets time, a big squad, and a federation hoping the second spell rhymes with the first one.