"Dreaming costs nothing right now." That was Leonardo Bonucci at the Laureus World Sports Awards in Madrid, floating Pep Guardiola as Italy's next national team coach with the energy of a man who knows it's a long shot but says it anyway.
It would be easy to dismiss this as nostalgic rambling from a retired defender. But Bonucci isn't some random voice — he won Euro 2020 with the Azzurri, their last major trophy, and most recently worked as a coaching assistant under Rino Gattuso. When he says "if there is a real desire to start from scratch, I would begin with the possibility of having Guardiola," that carries at least some weight.
Italy has just missed out on a second consecutive World Cup. A new FIGC president is set to be elected on June 22, and whoever gets that seat will have significant say in who coaches the national team next. The shortlist already includes Conte, Allegri, and Mancini — familiar faces for a federation that keeps reaching for the same drawer.
Guardiola's Italian connection is real
Here's the part the cynics are missing. Guardiola's relationship with Italy isn't a rumour — it's biographical. He joined Brescia in 2001 and later moved to Roma, where he developed a bond with coach Carlo Mazzone that he's described as one of the most formative of his life. He still goes back. As recently as February, he was spotted watching a Lega Pro match in Brescia with the kind of focus most managers reserve for knockout football.
That emotional thread is real. Whether it's enough to pull him away from Manchester City is a very different question.
Guardiola has one year left on his current City contract and a salary estimated at around €25 million per year. The financial gap between what City pay him and what any international federation could realistically offer is not a gap — it's a canyon. And he's still in contention for two trophies this season. He's not going anywhere in June.
What this actually means for Italy's coaching market
The realistic candidates — Conte, Allegri, Mancini — are now competing in a conversation where Guardiola's name has been injected, even as a fantasy. That shifts the framing of the entire appointment. Any of those three now gets judged against a benchmark that was never actually available.
If Italy's new federation president wants to signal ambition, they'll make a bold move. If they want stability, they'll call Conte. Either way, the betting market on Italy's next coach just got a little more interesting — Guardiola's name being in the air, however loosely, tends to distort the odds around it.
"It is very difficult," Bonucci admitted. That's underselling it. But in a country that's missed back-to-back World Cups and is staring down a generational rebuild, apparently no name is too big to say out loud.
