No league experienced more managerial turnover last season than Serie A. In total, there are going to be 13 new coaches next season if you include the permanent appointment of Igor Tudor to Juventus, as he joined towards the end of the campaign as an interim manager to replace Thiago Motta.
In Serie A, the same managers tend to get recycled to new jobs, as there are very little outside hires into Italian football, making it similar to the Bundesliga and dissimilar to most other European leagues.
That means a lot of the new hires are retreads doomed to fail. But lately, Serie A clubs have been more open to taking chances on new coaches, especially former players, and there are some of those coming into Calcio as well.
With the 2025/26 Serie A season just weeks way, let’s rank all the new coaches from worst to first.
13. Eusebio Di Francesco, Lecce
Just about the only thing impressive about Eusebio Di Francesco is the fact that he shares the name “Eusebio”, because everything about his resume is akin to a 25-year-old rich kid’s Goldman Sachs resume that is inflated with accomplishments that aren’t actually accomplishments.
When you look at Di Francesco’s ledger, you’ll see a laundry list of well-known Italian clubs he’s coached over the years, but he’s never been good any of them. In fact, Di Francesco tends to get fired pretty quickly.
Aside from taking credit for Sassuolo reaching the Europa League and Roma’s comeback over Barcelona, everything Di Francesco has done since 2019 is pretty terrible. He doomed Sampdoria, got fired in the middle of his only season at Cagliari, ran Hellas Verona into the ground, and then got Venezia and Frosinone relegated.
So basically, he’s living off the reputation of some great work his players did a few years ago, and, since then, he’s been exposed for being a rubbish coach who dooms his teams to relegation. Looks like Wladimiro Falcone has a lot of work to do between the sticks this season for Lecce.
12. Igor Tudor, Juventus
You can basically count on Juventus to get things horribly wrong with their coaching hires, and they haven’t gotten a single new hire right since the first time they brought in Max Allegri a decade ago.
Juventus pretty much haven’t been relevant at the Champions League level for almost a decade, and Igor Tudor isn’t going to change that. The fact that Juve even hired a journeyman Serie A coach to be the one to bring them back to title contention is in itself laughable.
That’s the thing about coaching. Just because you have been around for a while doesn’t mean you are any good. Tudor was rubbish for Udinese and an utter embarrassment at the biggest two clubs he managed before Juventus, Marseille and Lazio.
Even at Juve, Tudor was a disaster of an assistant coach to Andrea Pirlo, and really the only good thing he did as a manager was clean up Di Francesco’s mess in Verona. Tudor may have been a breath of fresh air tactically to Allegri and Motta, but that doesn’t mean he’s actually good for a club of Juve’s stature.
11. Ivan Juric, Atalanta
The same goes for Ivan Juric. He’s probably a slightly better coach than Tudor because of some good results with Torino and Verona in the mid-table of Serie A, but, well, should a perennial Champions League club really be hiring a decent mid-table coach?
There’s also the matter that Juric’s temper and attitude make him a least favorite among players, and he was so woeful for Southampton that he remains a stain on the club and an absolute meme in Premier League circles.
Juric has all the attitude of Gian Piero Gasperini with half the tactical acumen. He is a poor coach who is going to set Atalanta years back and probably take them out of the European equation entirely.
10. Marco Baroni, Torino
Like Juric at Roma, Marco Baroni went to the Italian capital to manage a club bigger than him, and he ended up costing Lazio any appearance in European football, which, for the Biancocelesti, is a disastrous outcome.
Baroni did get Lecce promoted a few years back, so despite years of failures with other lower-level Serie A sides, he at least has something tangible on his resume compared to the others. Plus, Torino’s standard isn’t as high as Juventus or Atalanta.
9. Max Allegri, AC Milan
It’s amazing how AC Milan saw what Max Allegri was doing for Juventus and decided, “Yeah, we need this guy to turn us around!”.
Like Lazio, Milan didn’t qualify for any European football last season, finishing eighth in Serie A and genuinely looking like the most disappointing side in Calcio. They have been poorly coached ever since dumping Stefano Pioli, who looks awfully nice right about now.
Allegri is the wrong answer for a Milan side struggling for unity, as he rubbed a lot of people the wrong way in his second stint with Juventus. Serie A clubs can’t help but hire the same people over and over again, and while you could do a lot worse than Allegri (like Juric or Tudor), this is still a negative outcome for Rossoneri fans.
8. Cristian Chivu, Inter Milan
An icon in the Inter Milan midfield, Cristian Chivu replaces one of the best coaches in the world in Simone Inzaghi, who brought the Scudetto to the Nerazurri and reached two Champions League Finals (we’ll say less about what happened in the second of them).
Coaching one of the two best teams in Serie A is probably a step too high for a young hire, but Chivu isn’t entirely unproven. He won at the youth level with Inter and got Parma promoted back to Serie A last season, and I’d rather see a positive gamble on someone with a level of experience than rather going for an option we know isn’t going to work like Allegri, just because he’s a big name. Advantage Inter.
7. Carlos Cuesta, Parma
Carlos Cuesta has even less coaching experience than Chivu, as he was just an assistant to Mikel Arteta at Arsenal. But that’s still a good gig, and for a club like Parma, replacing one young coach with another is a good idea.
Parma have nothing to lose. Nobody really expects them to stay up in Serie A every season, and Cuesta could bring some new ideas that help a young, intriguing squad push for more if it works out.
6. Alberto Gilardino, Pisa
The iconic Alberto Gilardino was one of the greatest Serie A strikers of the 2000s, and he’s actually not a bad coach. Gilardino brought Genoa back up to Serie A, and although he was canned after he nearly got them relegated last season, he’s still done more good than bad at the lower levels in Serie A. It’s unclear if he can keep a team in the top flight, though.
5. Fabio Pisacane, Cagliari
After a lengthy career bouncing around the lower divisions, Fabio Pisacane finally debuted in Serie A with Cagliari in 2016 after helping them achieve promotion, moved to tears as he tasted top flight action.
Pisacane is now back in Cagliari as a manager after shining with the youth team, winning the youth Coppa Italia over AC Milan. He doesn’t have any experience at the top level, but Pisacane has a special connection with the club and has already proven himself as a youth coach. This is a great, high-upside hire for Cagliari.
4. Stefano Pioli, Fiorentina
Honestly, there’s a gap in the quality of hires between the top four and the rest, because all of the coaches in the top four have actually achieved something meaningful in Serie A.
When it comes to Stefano Pioli, he may have the greatest achievement of them all, as he won the Scudetto with AC Milan in the 2021/22 season, making it the first time the Rossoneri had won the title since 2010/2011.
For more than a decade, Milan were an example of futility and a relic of the pass, sinking into an abyss. Pioli helped bring them back, and he was instead scapegoated just a year after taking them to the Champions League semifinals, blamed for the ills and greed of the masters of incompetence themselves, RedBird Capital.
Without him, things only got worse. Now, he’s at Fiorentina, a club that finished higher in the table than Milan and is now on three top Serie A coaches strong in a row. Fiorentina were great under Vincenzo Italiano, better under Raffaele Palladino, and could be better still under Pioli in 2025/26.
3. Gian Piero Gasperini, Roma
Although Gian Piero Gasperini hasn’t actually won the Scudetto yet, he’s had Atalanta in contention for the title a couple times, including last season, and he won a very prestigious honor just the year before by dominating a previously unbeatable Bayer Leverkusen (literally) 3-0 to capture a Europa League title.
Year after year on a tight budget, Gasperini has Atalanta in Champions League contention. Before him, they were unknown. After him, they are one of Italy’s best sides.
Now, Gasperini heads to a new challenge at Roma, which won the Conference League and were agonizingly close to a Europa League under Jose Mourinho, but they fired him instead of investing in the squad and then ran through club legend Daniele De Rossi.
Claudio Ranieri came in and save the day for a fifth-placed finish last season, but Gasperini still has work to do. He is a tactical genius with a flare for playing aggressive, pressing, and attacking football with all positions interchanging for each other – including defenders moving up to striker – but the bar is higher with more pressure in Rome. The question is, will Gasperini’s antics drive people insane or be a welcome change to the order in the capital?
2. Davide Nicola, Cremonese
Davide Nicola provided fans with endless entertainment at Salernitana, completing not one but two great escapes back-to-back to keep Salerntinana in Serie A far longer than anyone expected them to.
With Nicola at the helm, Salernitana were the definition of an Italian cult classic team in the modern era, even starring former heroes on the world stage like French attacker Franck Ribery and Mexican goalkeeper Guillermo Ochoa.
Ultimately, like so many other coaches, Nicola was undone by the incompetence above him. Salernitana were never willing to bank on the positive momentum of their survivals, and they actually scapegoated Nicola, too, at one point by firing him in January 2023 after an 8-2 loss to Atalanta…only to rehire him two days later.
Salternitana got relegated that season anyway, and Nicola was fired long before that in February. However, Nicola completed two more “great escapes” with two different clubs in the past two seasons, keeping Empoli and then Cagliari afloat.
Now, he’s with Cremonese despite guiding Cagliari to safety last season, and if he can pull off this feat with Cremonese, who were in Serie A in the 2022/23 season, then his reputation will be at crazy heights.
1. Maurizio Sarri, Lazio
Only Maurizio Sarri can knock off him off for the top spot, and, in all honesty, Nicola didn’t stand a chance. Sarri left Lazio in the first place just because he wanted to take a break from football, and after his sabbatical, he’s ready to rescue the Biancocelesti after Marco Baroni turned them into a soulless borefest that didn’t even get to qualify for Europe.
#SarriBall is one of the eternally great things about Serie A, and seeing him back on the sidelines will be a welcome sight. His unique brand of possession-based football has served him well, as the former Serie A and Premier League champion has written a new legacy for himself in the capital, building off his excellent work years ago in Naples.
Lazio are just craving for more balance and a better midfield and defensive structure, with Sarri can reinstill. He had some great pieces remaining in midfielder Nicolo Rovella and the attacking trident of Pedro, Taty Castellanos, and, of course, Italian international Mattia Zaccagni. Having him back was the biggest no-brainer of them all for Lazio.
Joe Soriano is the editor of The Trivela Effect and a FanSided Hall of Famer who has covered world football since 2010. He’s led top digital communities like The Real Champs (Real Madrid) and has run sites covering Tottenham, Liverpool, Juventus, and Schalke. He also helped manage NFL Spin Zone and Daily DDT, covering the NFL and pro wrestling.