# France, Italy turn to native soccer coaches — retained record

> Retained news record from news:semafor.

Canonical: https://highsignal.app/data/records/beff45b5f2207ec6

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source: [news](https://highsignal.app/data/news) (news:semafor)  published 2026-07-29 23:12 ingested 2026-07-30 08:16

[original source ↗](https://www.semafor.com/article/07/29/2026/france-italy-turn-to-native-soccer-coaches)

## retained text



```
France and Italy named their new men’s national soccer team managers — a Frenchman and an Italian, leaving them among the few countries that have very rarely employed foreign coaches.
Zinedine Zidane and Roberto Mancini have different briefs: France are recent winners, while Italy last reached a World Cup in 2014. But they are both natives, a rare thing. In the 2022 World Cup, just nine countries had foreign coaches; this year, 27.
Big nations usually reach for foreigners after prolonged failure — England’s repeated 1990s tournament flops led to the appointment of Sven-Göran Eriksson in 2001, Brazil’s 24 years without a win to Carlo Ancelotti last year. Italy tried to follow suit by approaching Spanish superstar Pep Guardiola, but was rebuffed.
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document fetched 2026-07-30 08:16 · canonical https://semafor.com/article/07/29/2026/france-italy-turn-to-native-soccer-coaches