Maldini leaves the FIGC: rift with Malagò over the choice of national team coach

Paolo Maldini has resigned from his position at the Italian Football Federation, giving up a four-year contract that was due to start on August 1st. The rupture, announced at a press conference, concerns the method by which the next national team coach is chosen and marks a break with Coni president Giovanni Malagò.

At the root of the crisis is the failure of talks with Pep Guardiola. According to reports, the agreement with the Catalan coach stalled not for financial reasons but because of his fatigue after a decade at the helm of Manchester City. With the Guardiola option ruled out, the Federation found itself considering internal alternatives: Daniele De Rossi and Fabio Grosso were dismissed because they were already tied to clubs, while Andrea Pirlo’s name was reportedly burned by media and political pressure before it even became a formal candidacy.

It is in this context that the decisive clash is said to have taken place. Maldini explained his departure by saying that previous agreements were being changed and that, faced with that change, he had no choice but to leave the post. The account describes a shift in internal balances of power rather than a single technical disagreement: the choice of the national coach, which under the previous arrangement involved an active role for the sporting management, would return to the hands of Coni’s institutional leadership.

The affair opens a void at the most delicate moment for the national team, which is required to identify a technical guide in short order after having burned through the three most credited options. It remains to be seen who will manage the search for the new coach without the figure who, in recent years, had represented the point of contact between the technical area and the federal leadership.

Regarding this account, one limitation should be noted: the news currently comes from a single source, the press conference relayed by news agency; there are at present no independent confirmations from other journalistic sources or official statements from the FIGC confirming in detail the sequence of events reported by Maldini. The motives attributed to Malagò regarding the change in decision-making rules remain, for now, the version of only one of the parties involved.