With the announcement today that they have sacked Gian Piero Ventura following their playoff defeat to Sweden, Italy will be beginning the search for a new manager who can pick up the pieces. Italy have a good crop of young players coming through, and with some of the current crop bowing out following their failure to qualify, it'll be a time of transition for the Italians. Here are some of the top candidates for the job:
Carlo Ancelotti
Ancelotti is well known to most football fans from his stints as manager of AC Milan, Chelsea, and PSG. He has two Champions League winners medals as a manager but has been criticised, most recently during his spell at Read Madrid, as being tactically weak and failing to realise the potential of his squads.
Luciano Spalleti
Spalletti is best known for his two spells as manager of AS Roma, where he helped to establish the club in the Champions League and won Serie A Coach of the Year. He signed a number of Brazilian players and had Roma playing a stylish brand of football. He's spent some time in Russia coaching Zenit, and is currently back in Italy with Inter, who sit 3rd in the table with 9 wins from 12. Inter are having a mini revival under Spalletti, and few fans would be pleased to see him go, even for the Italy job. Spalletti was known to be a target for the Azzurri following Antonio Conte's departure and before Ventura was appointed, but was not interested in taking the job at the time. It seems unlikely he'd want to leave Inter so soon, and with his work going so well, so it may not be the right time for him.
Maurizio Sarri
Sarri has some famous admirers- Pep Guardiola has named him as one of the coaches he most admires at the moment in the game, and was extremely complentary before and after Manchester City's matches against Sarri's Napoli in the Champions League recently. Sarri has had a long, meandering career through teams of very different abilities, but his Napoli side have been pushing for contention near the top of Serie A with the likes of Marek Hamsik and Dries Mertens performing well. He's similar in some senses to Ventura, a journeyman manager whose reputation was at a high point when appointed.