Pep Guardiola sat in Barcelona in July with Paolo Maldini and Leonardo, worked through Italy’s player pool from the under-17s up, and started scribbling potential formations onto pieces of paper. The public story is that he then turned the Azzurri down. The private story, Maldini says, is that he came very close to accepting.
The former Italy captain, who quit as FIGC technical director on 28 July after just 16 days in the job, gave his fullest account of the talks in a Corriere della Sera interview published on 9 August.
“We went to visit him in Barcelona, we had lunch together, we talked for a whole day,” Maldini told the paper.
“It was a very serious discussion, we studied the squads from the U17s upwards.”
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“He was very tempted. He came very close to accepting. He even started writing formations down on pieces of paper.”
Not the €20m story
Reports around the collapse pointed at a €20m salary demand from the Spaniard. Maldini rejected that framing outright.
“Money was never an issue. Pep told us clearly: Give me one euro less than what the previous coach took and I’m fine.”
Gattuso had been Italy’s head coach until the March playoff defeat to Bosnia and Herzegovina cost the Azzurri a place at the 2026 World Cup. Guardiola’s offer, on Maldini’s telling, was to work for less than that.
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Exhaustion and back surgery
The real reason for the no, Maldini said, was physical and personal.
“Because of exhaustion. Guardiola is coming off the back of 10 gruelling years in the Premier League. He’s had back surgery, he wants to rest.”
That squares with what Guardiola himself signed up for after leaving Manchester City in May. Rather than take another head-coach role, he agreed to stay inside the City Football Group as a global ambassador, offering technical guidance across CFG’s clubs and specific projects.
From Pirlo to Mancini
Once Guardiola was out, Maldini and Leonardo turned to Andrea Pirlo. That plan died within days. FIGC president Giovanni Malagò blocked the appointment over Pirlo’s ambassadorial contract with a betting company.
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“I did share the vision of choosing Pirlo, and I have no doubt he would’ve terminated his contract with the betting company that he was a testimonial for, but for a series of reasons, I didn’t feel it was right,” Malagò said.
Maldini and Leonardo walked out on 28 July, 16 days after taking their posts. The same day, Malagò named Roberto Mancini as Italy’s new head coach for a second spell, with Claudio Ranieri stepping in as technical director and president of Club Italia.
“I believed it was right that the person to become Head Coach of the national team should be Roberto Mancini, for a variety of reasons,” Malagò said.
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