{"id":35066,"date":"2026-07-24T15:48:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T15:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/35066\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T15:48:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T15:48:10","slug":"ex-manchester-city-coach-pep-guardiola-declines-offer-to-lead-italy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/35066\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-Manchester City coach Pep Guardiola declines offer to lead Italy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Italy recently held talks with former Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola to gauge his interest in the coaching vacancy for the men’s national team. Photo by Lindsey Parnaby\/EPA-EFE<\/p>\n

July 24 (UPI) — Former Manchester City coach Pep Guardiola turned down the opportunity to coach Italy and plans to continue a planned year-long hiatus.<\/p>\n

Sources told Sky Sports<\/a>, ESPN<\/a> and the BBC about the decision<\/a> Friday. Guardiola, 55, coached Manchester City for the last 10 seasons. He resigned from that role after the Sky Blues’ 2025-26 campaign.\n<\/p>\n

Guardiola won 20 trophies with the Sky Blues, including six Premier League crowns, five League Cups, three FA Cups, three FA Community Shields, a Champions League title, a UEFA Super Cup and FIFA Club World Cup. He also found success as coach at Bayern Munich and Barcelona.<\/p>\n

Several other national teams have been linked to the former Sky Blues coach. Italian Football Federation (FIGC) technical director Paolo Maldini confirmed Thursday during a news conference that Italy held talks with Guardiola and Brazil national team coach Carlo Ancelotti.<\/p>\n

Ancelotti remains under contract with Brazil through the 2030 World Cup.<\/p>\n

“Honestly, [on Thursday] we can’t give news about what’s happening,” Maldini told reporters. “You’ve identified one of our targets. We can’t hide that we also talked with Carlo Ancelotti before talking with Pep.<\/p>\n

“Honestly, it seemed right to start with those we considered the best in the world. We needed to check their general availability.”\n<\/p>\n

Former Italy manager Gennaro Gattuso stepped down in April. Silvio Baldini has served as caretaker amid the Italians’ search for a new manager. The Italians failed to qualify for the last three World Cups.<\/p>\n

The Italians sit at No. 15 in the FIFA world rankings. They will host No. 8 Belgium in Nations League play Sept. 25 in Rome.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t Spain’s captain Rodri raises the trophy as he and his teammates celebrate after defeating Argentina 1-0 in extra time to win the 2026 FIFA World Cup in East Rutherford, N.J.,, on June 19, 2026. Photo by John Angelillo\/UPI | License Photo<\/a>\t\t \t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Italy recently held talks with former Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola to gauge his interest in the coaching…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35067,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[14931,14930,14928,23688,1561,5,14927,14929,3869,14926,14932],"class_list":["post-35066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-italy","tag-american","tag-baseball-news","tag-basketball-news","tag-ex-manchester-city-coach-pep-guardiola-declines-offer-lead-italy","tag-football-news","tag-italy","tag-latest-sports-results","tag-sporting-events","tag-sports-news","tag-united-press-international","tag-upi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}