The Serie A Coaching Carousel
- David Amoyal
While there has been a lot of speculation on how much Milan will actually be able to spend, the closing of the deal to sell the club has brought job certainty to Vincenzo Montella. Former owner Silvio Berlusconi was reportedly considering firing him last December, and had the sale not been completed it would have felt almost inevitable that the former Fiorentina manager would have been this year’s sacrificial lamb.
Montella has been meeting with new directors Fassone and Mirabelli to start planning next season’s team, and that in it of itself is an advantage over the previous three summers when Milan had to accomodate a new manager who didn’t have luxury of being involved with this early planning.
Another manager who is certain of staying at his current club is Marco Giampaolo, who last summer was the runner up to Montella in the race to become Milan’s manager. Giampaolo has had an excellent season at Sampdoria where he helped get Luis Muriel’s career back on track while launching three excellent prospects in Lucas Torreira, Patrick Schick and Milan Skriniar. It will be interesting to see how many of their top players Sampdoria holds on to and if Giampaolo can continue to work his magic.
In addition to Giampaolo, there’s another manager who is being rewarded for a great season with an extension. It appears to be just a matter of time until Atalanta announces a new contract for Giampiero Gasperini who is currently leading the club to the Europa League while developing Conti, Kessie, Spinazzola and Petagna. Atalanta is expected to lose a few more players after selling Gagliardini last January, so Gasperini will have the job security of a long term contract as he works to replace the club’s existing jewels.
About a month ago there seemed to be a lot of momentum for Max Allegri to leave Juventus. He was coming off some run ins with Paulo Dybala and Leonardo Bonucci, and on paper he was a great candidate for the Arsenal, Barcelona and Paris St Germain jobs. There also were numerous reports that Juventus was reaching out to Luciano Spalletti as his replacement, and the delays with the extension of the former Zenit coach with Roma seemed to fit into the narrative that Allegri was leaving Turin.
But in recent weeks both Allegri and Marotta have publicly stated that they’ll continue their journeys together, and it appears to be more than just the usual song and dance with the media. Allegri is expected to sign an extension on his current contract which expires in 2018- Allegri will likely finish this cycle with Juventus’ current core players before having an experience abroad, likely in the Premier League where he’s always stated he wants to manage someday.
While Spalletti will almost certainly not be managing Juventus next season, it’s not a given that he’ll stay at Roma. New sporting director Monchi may want to bring in his own coach, and Roma’s inability to win a trophy under Spalletti may push them to make a change. Roma could go with a foreign manager like Emery or go with someone already familiar with Serie A like Sassuolo’s Di Francesco who has strong ties to the team.
Spalletti could be end up at Inter now that Stefano Pioli’s run at the club appears to be over. After an excellent start at the club, a period in which Pioli relaunched players who had previously struggled at the club, the former Lazio manager has gone through a brutal stretch of results. Pioli could find himself replacing Paulo Sousa at Fiorentina next season or managing Suning’s club in China.
But before Inter commits to Spalletti or anyone else, they’ll make one more attempt for their top choices Diego Simeone and Antonio Conte. However it’s still very unlikely they would leave their current clubs despite having some intriguing reasons to find the nerazzurri’s job attractive aside from fact they’re the club in Italy that has proven they can spend the most. On top of Spalletti there could be another very intriguing option for Inter in Maurizio Sarri.
Ever since the elimination in the Champions League, Napoli’s manager has dropped many hints that he could leave at the end of the season. He first stated that a manager is like a fish that starts stinking after being in a place for too long, he then disagreed with president Aurelio De Laurentiis’ claim that Napoli needs to challenge for the scudetto by bringing up a lack of revenues and mentioned that he’s basically on an expiring contract because Napoli has a club option to bring him back next season.
It’s not out of the question that Sarri decides to leave because he feels this is as far as he can take Napoli unless the club is serious about keeping its best players long term. Sarri could decide to join a team that can spend bigly like Inter or go for a less stressful job and return to Tuscany to manage Fiorentina, where his esthetically appealing football would be very appreciated.
As I often like to say, sometimes the best deals are those you never complete- and that has been certainly true for Lazio with Simone Inzaghi who was supposed to leave Lazio last summer when Marcelo Bielsa had agreed to manage Lotito’s club. Inzaghi was supposed to manage Salernitana in Serie B until the Argentine coach backed out, and now Inzaghi is in conversation for Serie A manager of the year. Lazio will almost certainly try to lock him up long term since he’s been so instrumental in developing players like Milinkovic Saviic and helping Ciro Immobile with his renaissance season.
Overall the biggest wild card in coaching carousel is without a doubt Maurizio Sarri- should he decide to leave Napoli, that would open up a top job in Italy on a team with numerous intriguing young players and Inter or potentially Roma could go all out to sign him. What is for certain is that Italy will continue to produce great managers- the question is for how long will Serie A be able to retain them…
@DavidAmoyal