Roberto Mancini’s 60th birthday: from fabulous young man to contested coach

Roberto Mancini turns 60 and age – in his case – holds many lives. Mancio, this is his nickname, born in Jesi on 27 November 1964, has been a traveling companion of anyone who has followed football in the last half century. With his class, immense indeed, and the awareness that sometimes on the pitch turned into arrogance, his bearing as a leader and his elegance, his silences, his never comfortable words, his sharp edges of character, his contradictions: Mancini has Italians have always been divided.

He has never been friends with many, only with a select few, first and foremost Gianluca Vialliappears in disheveled raids – on and off the pitch – in the 90s, when they played together for Sampdoria, won the last scudetto of a so-called provincial team and were the best football youth in our country.

He was a child prodigy – at sixteen and a half he made his debut in Serie A with the Bologna shirt – and a mature coach, capable of navigating many seas – Fiorentina, Lazio, Inter, City, Galatasary, Zenit St. Petersburg, the Italian national team, the Arab one – with the pose of a leader, certainly more envied than admired. He was highly paid, like all those who are good at convincing others that they are the best.

She won a lot, championships and cups, in Italy and England, but she will always remain fixed in the collective memory his joy in the summer of Wembley, with Italy champions of Europe. Snake charmer with the ball at his feet – as a natural class after him perhaps the only Francesco Totti – winning and pragmatic coachdedicated to building teams of champions who have seized the noticeboards without however making their way into the hearts of the fans.

Married for over twenty years, three children together with his first wife Federica Morelli, separated with a series of poisons, remarried in 2018 to a Roman lawyer, Silvia Fortini; Mancini has always been a man attentive to the reflection of mirrors. On the pitch and in daily life. He deserves recognition for a rare talent these days: we have never seen him cultivate flattery, never the practices of a pimp.

He was many things, he belonged only to himself. The last episode in that mix of life and career that marks his seasons saw him a couple of weeks ago with his suitcase in hand and his bank account to update, exempted from the role of CT of Saudi Arabia. Once the failure was complete, as in a whirlpool that knows no other development, having learned the news of the severance pay obtained – in the summer of last year he had signed a contract that would have guaranteed him 100 million euros until 2027 – the whole of Italy recorded the whole range of contrary feelings. As if the exemption had come to act as a counterpoint to the resignation – unexpected, misunderstood – as coach of Italy, when on August 15th 2023 he abandoned the Italian bench to attempt the new adventure, entrusting his justifications to a certified e-mail.