The Catalan keeps the commitments made to his family and stops. “I’m honored, but I don’t feel like it right now” the message. The FIGC now begins the hunt for the next coach again.
The hope lasted just over a week and crashed into an insurmountable wall: Pep Guardiola declined the FIGC’s offer to become Italy’s technical commissioner to guide it to rebirth after its third consecutive failure to qualify for the World Cup. A painful but definitive no. Dictated by family issues, given that the project that Paolo Maldini and Leonardo had submitted to him was intriguing even for a coach like him, accustomed to the best of European football.
Guardiola said no after long reflection because the desire to keep faith with his promise to take a period of rest after seasons spent at a thousand times prevailed.. He had also explained it in recent days. He thought of himself in the coming months as a man finally close to his family, with projects to develop in that area and with the desire to understand what direction to give to the second phase of his career.
Maldini And Leonardo they made him waver, but in the end the answer was “no, thanks”. “I’m honoured, but at the moment I don’t feel like it” is the message that the Catalan sent to Maldini and Leonardo, who were aware of the depth of his reflections and the difficulty in convincing him to change his and his family’s plans and who had tried to tailor a project for him that would also leave him freedom of maneuver between Italy and the place where he lives and will live.
It wouldn’t have been about money. The request for 20 million euros had been denied by the managers of the Football Federationthe plan to sign him was ambitious and would have been somehow covered up. Guardiola, however, didn’t feel like getting to work without having his head free to dedicate the maximum of his energy to the task. That’s not to say it won’t happen in the next few months, perhaps at the helm of a club, but today the desire to respect the commitments made at home was greater than any temptation.
The truth is that in the heads of the upper levels of the Football Federation, as the days passed, the feeling had emerged that there could be a margin to pull off a coup that would overturn the narrative around a national team in deep crisis. This is also why Maldini and Leonardo flew to Barcelona in mid-July to speak directly with Pep, without even going too far into the economic aspect which would not have been central in the event of the Catalan’s green light.
Guardiola is very attached to Italy, both for his past in Brescia and for a network of friends that periodically brings him back to the Bel Paese. This is also why the offer made him think before “no, thanks” which forces the FIGC to turn to plan B. The identikit bears the name of Andrea Pirlothe profile that can respond to the need expressed by the two managers to have a coach perfectly integrated with the technical re-foundation plan of the national team chain being worked on. The unknown remains of Pirlo’s curriculum as a less than extraordinary coach and of the opposition from part of Serie A, expressed by Torino president Urbano Cairo after the meeting in the League.
