🇮🇹 MALDINI REVEALS ALL. • Guardiola was already writing down Italy XIs • Why Pirlo was his choice • How the project collapsed • Why he disagreed with bringing back Mancini Some of the biggest revelations from his first major interview with Corriere dello Sport: 1️⃣ Guardiola was closer than anyone realized 💬 “We spent an entire day with Pep in Barcelona. He was very close to accepting. He was even writing formations on paper. It’s not true that he asked for €20 million. Money wasn’t even a topic. Pep told us: give me one euro less than the last manager and I’m good. He ultimately rejected because he was tired. He comes from ten exhausting years in the EPL. He just had back surgery. He wanted to rest.” 2️⃣ Why Pirlo was the choice 💬 “Our idea was focused on the technical side, on attacking play, on changing things. We wanted a young coach who had a history with the Nazionale. Along with Pirlo we also thought of De Rossi and Grosso, all world champions. But Malagò told us one of the conditions from Serie A was that we couldn’t touch their coaches. Pirlo not being a winner is a personal opinion. Whenever I speak with Pirlo he always seems very prepared. If he was supported by a technical director, he would be the ideal manager. What résumé did the last two coaches to win a major international trophy have? Scaloni and De La Fuente. If you only look at the coach, you’re only thinking of today, not tomorrow.” 3️⃣ Pirlo’s Russian contract 💬 “Pirlo was open to getting out of his contract with the Russian company, he’s a good person that didn’t deserve all this. If there really was the will to have him as Nazionale manager they would’ve found a way to do it” 4️⃣ On Mancini & Conte 💬 “It’s not like I don’t admire Mancini. Mancini and Conte are two great coaches. It’s not a question of friendship. We simply had a different project.” 5️⃣ The project was bigger than the coach 💬 “Reforming Italian football takes time. Creating talent is a long journey. We wanted to create a new movement that involved all the federal divisions: Serie A, Serie B, Serie C, amateurs, coaches, referees and players. We had to prepare for both today and tomorrow. 8-10 years are a lot? This is the only point that Serie A was doubtful about. But that was our estimate based on other nations, not only big nations like England, France, and Spain, but even smaller nations like Switzerland” 6️⃣ The turning point 💬 “The first thing I asked Malagò was who would choose the national team manager. He told us that we would choose the manager and he would back our choice. Then the events happened that led to this changing.”