Paolo Maldini Resigns as Italy’s Technical Director After Clash
Paolo Maldini walked into the job as Italy’s technical director with a clear idea of what the Azzurri should look like. Two weeks later, he walked away from it for exactly the same reason.
The former Milan and Italy captain resigned on Monday, alongside his advisor Leonardo, after a dramatic clash with Italian Olympic Committee president Giovanni Malagò and the FIGC over the identity of the next national team coach.
This was not a polite difference of opinion. It was a fundamental power struggle.
Maldini’s shortlist rejected
Maldini and Leonardo had built their project around a specific profile. They did not want Roberto Mancini back. They did not want Antonio Conte. Their preferred choices were Andrea Pirlo and, failing that, Thiago Motta.
The FIGC said no.
Pirlo was the breaking point. Malagò refused to approve his appointment, wary of the political backlash surrounding Pirlo’s role as a brand ambassador for a Russian betting company. For Maldini and Leonardo, that veto cut deeper than a simple disagreement over a name. They saw it as an attack on their autonomy.
They pushed back. They tried to move the conversation towards Thiago Motta, fresh from his rise with Bologna and previously at Juventus. According to several reports, Malagò shut that door as well.
By then, the fracture was obvious.
Conte and Mancini on the table
On Monday, the three men met again. One last attempt to salvage the relationship. One last attempt to find a compromise.
Malagò urged Maldini and Leonardo to abandon the Pirlo idea and embrace a different solution, with Mancini and Conte at the front of his list. Proven winners. Big names. Familiar faces.
Maldini and Leonardo were unconvinced.
With Mancini, their objection was rooted in recent history. The coach had walked away from the national team in 2023 in the middle of the Euro 2024 qualifying campaign, resigning to take over Saudi Arabia just weeks later. For Maldini, that episode left the same kind of doubts that critics had raised about Pirlo: reliability, timing, and the message it would send.
Conte posed a different risk. His track record of intense, short-cycle spells — rarely staying more than two years at a club — clashed with the long-term horizon Maldini and Leonardo had in mind. With the 2030 World Cup still four years away, they feared another abrupt exit just when continuity would matter most.
The pressure to accept one of those two names only strengthened their resolve. If they could not choose the coach, what exactly were they there to do?
Autonomy vs politics
At the heart of this collapse lies a familiar Italian fault line: the tension between sporting vision and political calculation.
Malagò’s stance on Pirlo was driven by the potential political storm around his commercial ties. Maldini and Leonardo read that as a signal that external pressures would always intrude on footballing decisions. Once their preferred alternatives, like Thiago Motta, were also dismissed, the message felt unmistakable.
Their authority was conditional. Their project, compromised before it had even begun.
So they walked.
Maldini’s tenure as Italy’s technical director officially lasted just two weeks. Barely enough time for a photo, let alone a revolution. Yet in that short span, he and Leonardo managed to trigger a full-scale debate about who really runs the national team: the technicians tasked with rebuilding it, or the political structures around them.
The FIGC Council meets at 12:00 CET (11:00 GMT), and Malagò could confirm the new Italy coach as early as today. Conte and Mancini remain at the centre of the discussion, the very names Maldini and Leonardo refused to endorse.
Italy will soon have a new man on the bench. The more pressing question is whether anyone will truly be allowed to build a long-term project from it.
