Luciano Spalletti

Luciano Spalletti (born 7 March 1959) is an Italian football manager and former player.

He is currently the head coach of the Italy national team.

He started his managerial career with Empoli in 1993 before going on to coach clubs in Italy including two spells with Roma where he won two consecutive Coppa Italia titles.

After nearly a decade of lower-tier football in Italy, he retired in 1993 and remained at Empoli as a coach.

Spalletti's early career in management led him to struggling Empoli, where he was head coach between July 1993 and June 1998.

He led the Tuscan side to consecutive promotions from Serie C1 to the top-flight Serie A.

Spalletti then coached Sampdoria from July 1998 to June 1999, and Venezia from July to October 1999.

Spalletti had two spells as head coach at Udinese.

The first was between March 2001 and June 2001, the second between July 2002 and June 2005.

There was a period at Ancona in between spells.

At Udinese, he really began to make an impact as a manager.

During the 2004–05 season, Spalletti guided Udinese to a sensational fourth-placed finish in Serie A, exceeding expectations and securing a spot in the UEFA Champions League.

Spalletti became coach of Roma in June 2005.

Such success for a traditionally unexceptional side with limited resources attracted the attention of Roma.

The Giallorossi had come off a disappointing season in which four different coaches had spells in charge of the club.

Spalletti was offered the task of bringing order to this chaotic side.

After an uninspiring first half of the 2005–06 season, he changed the team's tactics to suit a more offensive playing style rather than a defensive-minded system.

Spalletti did manage to help Roma reach the 2006 Coppa Italia Final, but ultimately lost out on the title to Inter Milan.

Nonetheless, as a result of the 2006 Serie A match-fixing scandal, Roma qualified for the 2006–07 UEFA Champions League, as league champions Juventus were relegated, while Fiorentina and Milan both received point deductions for their involvement.

At the end of 2006, Spalletti was elected Serie A Coach of the Year and, in the following months, led Roma until the Champions League quarter-final after a 2–0 victory over Lyon at the Stade Gerland in the first knockout round.

The team, however, succeeded in becoming the first team to defeat Roberto Mancini's Inter Milan in all competitions that year, emerging with a 1–3 result at the San Siro, a match that the Nerazzurri had to win to mathematically claim the 2007 Scudetto against the only credible rival they had in the championship.

Roma would also win the 2007 Coppa Italia Final against Inter, with an aggregate result of 7–4; a resounding 6–2 in the first leg in Rome and followed by a narrow 2–1 defeat in Milan.

It was the first important trophy in Spalletti's career, who only had won a Coppa Italia di Serie C with Empoli.

But he was yet to add another piece of silverware to his cabinet, as Roma would again defeat Inter 0–1 in Milan in the opening fixture of the 2007–08 season to steal their Supercoppa Italiana crown.

In the 2007–08 Champions League first knockout round, Spalletti's Roma team became the first Italian team to defeat Real Madrid over two legs (2–1 in both ties in Rome and Madrid) and consequently also became the first European side to record two victories over Real Madrid at the Santiago Bernabéu.

In a repeat of the previous season's quarter-final, Roma were again eliminated from the Champions League by eventual winners Manchester United.

However, they did succeed in their defence of the Coppa Italia, once again defeating Scudetto winners Inter in the 2008 Coppa Italia Final — a single match which Roma won 2–1.

Spalletti faced a difficult 2008–09 season with Roma, only managing to qualify for the UEFA Europa League with a sixth-place position in the league, after a struggling initial period that left the Giallorossi in the bottom half of the league for the first part of the Serie A season.

The new season saw Spalletti struggling with a limited squad that was weakened further by the sale of Alberto Aquilani to Liverpool and compounded by serious financial problems for the club.

Spalletti managed Zenit St. Petersburg from 2009 to 2014, winning two Russian Premier League titles.

Following two seasons in charge at Inter Milan, he was appointed manager of Napoli in 2021 where he won the Serie A in the 2022–23 season before leaving the club in June 2023.

In August 2023, he was appointed as coach of the Italy national football team.

Born in Certaldo, Metropolitan City of Florence, Spalletti started his career as a semi-professional footballer in his mid-20s.

Despite relatively old age for a professional debut, he played for several Serie C teams such as Entella, Spezia, Viareggio and Empoli.

Roma started the season by taking part in two 2009–10 UEFA Europa League qualifying rounds, both easily won against Gent (10–2 on aggregate) and Košice (10–4 on aggregate).

However, another poor start in the 2009–10 Serie A season, with two consecutive defeats (2–3 to Genoa and 1–3, at home, to Juventus) prompted Spalletti to resign on 1 September 2009.

In December 2009, it was confirmed Spalletti would join Russian Premier League club Zenit Saint Petersburg on a three-year deal, replacing interim coach Anatoli Davydov, with Italian coaches Daniele Baldini, Marco Domenichini and Alberto Bartali also joining the Russian club.

For his first year, Zenit's board of directors expected Spalletti to win back the Premier League title, as well as the Russian Cup, and progress past the group stage of the Champions League.

As a result, Roma climbed from 15th to 5th place in the table.

However, by the end of the season, Roma failed to reach fourth place, therefore failing to qualify for the Champions League.