Italy Hold Talks With Guardiola and Ancelotti After World Cup Failure

What happened:

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Paolo Maldini has confirmed that the Italian football federation, FIGC, has held talks with Pep Guardiola and Carlo Ancelotti about taking over the Italy national team. The Guardian reports that the federation hopes to announce a new coach within the week, with the Azzurri still dealing with the fallout from failing to qualify for a third straight World Cup.

The names matter because they are not routine candidates. Guardiola is currently out of work after leaving Manchester City, while Ancelotti is still Brazil manager. That makes the situation less a simple shortlist and more a test of what Italy can realistically offer: control of a national rebuild, prestige, and a chance to repair one of international football’s strangest modern collapses.

Why it matters:

Italy’s problem is no longer a one-cycle stumble. Missing one World Cup can be treated as a shock; missing three in a row changes the scale of the crisis. The federation is not only choosing a coach for the next qualification path. It is choosing the public face of a reset, and the size of the names being discussed suggests FIGC knows a low-key appointment would be judged against the weight of repeated failure.

Guardiola would represent a full tactical and cultural swing: a coach associated with positional control, club-level detail, and long training-ground systems being asked to work inside the shorter windows of international football. Ancelotti would be a different kind of signal: Italian authority, elite man-management, and a record built around adapting to star players rather than imposing one rigid structure.

Tournament impact:

The immediate consequence is qualification pressure. Italy cannot treat the next campaign as a gradual rebuild if the federation is already speaking to coaches of this profile. Whoever takes the job inherits a team whose tournament absence has become the story. The first task will be restoring reliability in qualifying before Italy can think about being a contender again.

There is also a competitive ripple across international football. If Ancelotti were to leave Brazil, that would create another major vacancy. If Guardiola chose Italy, it would reshape expectations around how a national team can be coached and how quickly a club-style identity can be installed.

What to watch:

The key detail is whether talks become an agreement, and with whom. Guardiola’s availability does not automatically mean willingness. Ancelotti’s current Brazil role makes any move more complicated. FIGC’s hoped-for timeline points to urgency, but urgency does not remove contractual and strategic obstacles.

Confidence:

Confirmed by the source: FIGC has spoken with Guardiola and Ancelotti, Italy have failed to qualify for the last three World Cups, Guardiola is out of work, Ancelotti is still with Brazil, and Italy hope to name a coach within the week. Still unresolved: whether either coach is prepared to accept the role, what terms would be involved, and who else is under consideration.