Italy's Latest Chapter: The Gattuso Era

After a poor start to the 2026 World Cup qualification process with a 3-0 loss to Norway, discussions quickly began within the Italian FA over who would fill the shoes of the National Team manager.

With Claudio Ranieri wanting to stay within his advisory role at Roma, the next option was 2006 World Cup winner Gennaro Gattuso. The Italian quickly became the front runner and officially became manager last week.

Can Gattuso provide the passionate spark that Italy needs to return to the World Cup stage after 12 years, or will his lack of managerial success provide the Azzurri with yet another hurdle to climb?

Gattuso's Background So Far

Gennaro Gattuso's playing career can be seen as a glamorous one, having become an AC Milan legend, where he won the Serie A and the Champions League twice over a 13 year spell. He also represented Perugia, Rangers, Salernitana and FC Sion before hanging up his boots.

He also played for Italy numerous times, appearing 73 times and being part of the 2006 World Cup-winning squad. During his playing career, he was also known for his fierce and fiery reputation, which sometimes put him in the spotlight for the wrong reasons.

Since retiring from playing in 2013, Gattuso moved directly into management, and Italy has become his 10th team in 12 years.

Gattuso has since held several managerial positions, including Palermo, OFI Crete, Pisa, AC Milan, Napoli, Valencia, Marseille and Hadjuk Split.

The longest period he has spent with any club as manager was with Pisa, over two seasons, and it is where he has had the most success, leading them to promotion to Serie B on his first attempt. However, the following season, the team struggled, and after finishing bottom of the second tier, Gattuso resigned.

This was the second time he had resigned from a club, doing the same with Greek side OFI Crete. In 2021, he was offered the opportunity to return to Italy to manage Fiorentina; however, two weeks before his contract was set to begin, Gattuso and Fiorentina mutually rescinded the agreement.

A Point To Prove- Making Italy a Family Again

Whilst Gattuso doesn't have the best managerial record to date, there are always two sides to a story. As he pointed out, during his stints with Milan and Napoli, both teams missed out on the top 4 by a point. The positive aspect of his spell with Hajduk Split is that it was the first title fight in 19 years that went right down to the final weekend.

However, when it comes to the Italian National team, there is no grey area; it's simply success or failure. The idea of Italy missing a third consecutive World Cup should be unthinkable, but the nature of their defeat by Norway, who have played more games than Italy and won both, lands Italy back into the playoffs having failed to progress against Sweden and then North Macedonia in the past two cycles.

Suppose the goal is to unite Italy as one family. In that case, Gattuso will have every chance of success with his presence alongside Gianluigi Buffon, who feels like a homecoming, given the opportunity for two of the heroes of 2006 to lead Italy back to glory.

Is Gattuso the right man to revive Italy?

Whilst Gattuso is synonymous with a golden era that saw Italian glory, he is one of the key players and an icon of what it means to wear the national team colours and represent the country with pride and passion.

Whilst as a player he was a legend, however with his managerial experience so far there are a lot of questions around what he can bring to the national team which has caused a lot of debate since his appointment.

Despite this FIGC president Gabriele Gravina is a big admirer of Gattuso describing him as

"A symbol of Italian football"

whilst this might be true, but not in the way he intended it to come across as many see the appointment of Gattuso as a reflection of a football powerhouse that is in all sorts of trouble as Italy has fallen well below the levels expected from a country that has won four World Cups and two European championships.

Gattuso inherits one of if not the weakest Italian side in a generation, pointing to a lack of elite level of talent throughout the squad having previously had squads of multiple superstars most notably the 2006 World Cup winning team that was full of Italian Icons.

Whilst they have the likes of Gianluigi Donnaruma, Nicolo Barella and Alessandro Bastoni, apart from those three, the recent squad selections have been subpar and it has slowly and gradually been an occurrence since 2014.

Italy's best and only hope of securing qualification they will need to find an approach and system that gets the best out of players, similar to that of Mancini at Euro 2020, setting up the Azzurri to play in quick transition to win the tournament against all odds.

Gattuso takes over with Italy having their backs against the wall and are already under pressure of not qualifying with results having not gone their way and whilst his combative character could energise Italy, time is ultimately against him so he is going to have a perfect run in qualification to prevent Italy from missing out on a potential third consecutive World Cup.