Italy still producing prize managerial exports from its winning system | Richard Williams

Feb 17, 2017

Coverciano outside Florence has been the nerve centre of the Italian game for almost 60 years and the reverence in which it is held by many seems to have had a positive effect on plenty of its graduates

As long as he doesn’t blow it, and nothing in his record suggests that he will, sometime within the next three months Antonio Conte will become the fourth Italian manager to lead a team to the Premier League title. Remarkably, that quartet – in which he would join Carlo Ancelotti, Roberto Mancini and Claudio Ranieri – will have claimed the English championship in four of the past eight seasons.

No English-born manager, of course, has won the title since Howard Wilkinson in 1991-92, the year before the Premier League was launched. No Frenchman since 2003-04, no German, Spaniard or Dutchman ever. So this is a considerable distinction for Italian football, and for the work done at Coverciano, Italy’s national technical centre. But perhaps the most interesting aspect of the success of these four men is that they give no impression of having been moulded by a single system.

Tags: Antonio Conte Carlo Ancelotti Claudio Ranieri Football Italy Roberto Mancini Serie A Sport