Roberto Mancini - next Italy manager

Blue Mist said:
Petrusha, Mancini keeps getting linked with various jobs in England, any hints over there he could move ? I love the bloke but it would be strange if he was then managing Leicester or West Ham.
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I don't tend to read the Russian sports prfess much and I haven't looked on any fan forums, but I do follow various Russian sports feeds on Twitter. None of them have mentioned anything about him possibly leaving.

Zenit is the wealthiest and best supported club in Europe's sixth or seventh best league (according to UEFA's coefficients). They're favourites for the domestic title and also think they can have a real go at the Europa League this season. They're in a cracking new stadium and are getting up to 50K gates when they play at home. He'll be very well paid - and income tax in Russia is paid at a flat rate of 13%, so anyone in England making him an offer of the same net salary will pay him a substantially increased gross salary. And he gets to live in a very beautiful city that has plenty of fantastic leisure and cultural options, especially for people with his degree of wealth.

Disclosure - I speak with the bias of someone who's put down fairly permanent roots in this city. The weather's fucking terrible, mind. :)

Now, the Russian league is well below the standard of the PL and, apart from a handful of teams, the rest of them make for pretty uninspiring opponents. The PL is certainly a more exciting league, and maybe Mancini would prefer that to playing in front of less than 10K at some godforsaken place like Ufa. But he has a fairly decent gig at the moment, so I don't think he'd simply pack it in without thinking fairly carefully.
 
petrusha said:
I don't tend to read the Russian sports prfess much and I haven't looked on any fan forums, but I do follow various Russian sports feeds on Twitter. None of them have mentioned anything about him possibly leaving.

Zenit is the wealthiest and best supported club in Europe's sixth or seventh best league (according to UEFA's coefficients). They're favourites for the domestic title and also think they can have a real go at the Europa League this season. They're in a cracking new stadium and are getting up to 50K gates when they play at home. He'll be very well paid - and income tax in Russia is paid at a flat rate of 13%, so anyone in England making him an offer of the same net salary will pay him a substantially increased gross salary. And he gets to live in a very beautiful city that has plenty of fantastic leisure and cultural options, especially for people with his degree of wealth.

Disclosure - I speak with the bias of someone who's put down fairly permanent roots in this city. The weather's fucking terrible, mind. :)

Now, the Russian league is well below the standard of the PL and, apart from a handful of teams, the rest of them make for pretty uninspiring opponents. The PL is certainly a more exciting league, and maybe Mancini would prefer that to playing in front of less than 10K at some godforsaken place like Ufa. But he has a fairly decent gig at the moment, so I don't think he'd simply pack it in without thinking fairly carefully.
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Cheers for the reply, I wish him well and hope he stays, oh an I love your updates, please keep them coming.
 
Blue Mist said:
Cheers for the reply, I wish him well and hope he stays, oh an I love your updates, please keep them coming.
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Thanks. I'm enjoying following his progress and intend to carry on. No problem then to make a quick post on here once or twice a week, given that I know a few people are also interested in how he's doing. :)
 
petrusha said:
Thanks. I'm enjoying following his progress and intend to carry on. No problem then to make a quick post on here once or twice a week, given that I know a few people are also interested in how he's doing. :)
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More than a few I imagine. Always liked Mancini when he was here and good to hear how he is getting on. Good to see him getting stuck in on the touchline as well, the crazy bastard ...... what do the fans think of him there?
 
Mancini is - IMO - a decent manager - and still loyal to City.

He was undercut by management in the transfer window following our first title - and more so in the Tevas debacle.

Still - many of his substitutions were baffling and he had a unfortunate tendency to absolutely piss people off - both higher ups and players.

Mancini - a talented manager - but not the best tactician, and handicapped by terrible interpersonal skills. That said - one of my favorite managers at City.
 
halfcenturyup said:
More than a few I imagine. Always liked Mancini when he was here and good to hear how he is getting on. Good to see him getting stuck in on the touchline as well, the crazy bastard ...... what do the fans think of him there?
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So far, he's very popular. Last season, they were coached by Mircea Lucescu, who'd been very successful at Shakhtar Donetsk. But he finished third to miss out on a CL spot, played rather dreary football under which they had a lot of possession but often weren't incisive, and he was a dour older guy who didn't really connect with the fanbase. It reminded me a little of Pellers when we went through iffy spells in his second and third seasons, actually.

With Mancini, they like his passion and, though all his interviews and press conferences are through an interpreter, he's good at knowing the right things to say to get the fans on his side. He's careful to say what an 'important' club they are and what a great city St Petersburg is (which is true, but the people are very proud of it and they quite like you to tell them how much you admire it when you're a foreigner). And his team plays with more pace and purpose than last year's and has scored a lot of goals so far.

Obviously, winning games is the main thing and he'll stay popular as long as he keeps doing that. The results in the league have tailed off a bit, and teams have noticeably started to sit back and defend against them. They've taken only ten points from the last seven games and have failed to score in several of those. That's a concern, but hopefully he'll overcome it. They've had 3 very good wins in the Europa League in the same period, so it's not exactly a crisis.

They've also had a pretty punishing schedule with games on Thursday and Sunday. Hopefully they'll qualify from their Europa League group in the next round of fixtures and then they can prioritise the domestic games up until the winter break.
 
Blue Mist said:
Petrusha, Mancini keeps getting linked with various jobs in England, any hints over there he could move ? I love the bloke but it would be strange if he was then managing Leicester or West Ham.
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I think he and Pellegrini will both garner some interest because Leicester and Everton are already vacant and West Ham and Stoke should be soon but not sure if any of those would appeal to Roberto. Unlike Pellegrini, who I really think would like to show that he can still manage in the PL, I think Mancini knows he was the manager that took City forward first and wouldn't really want to coach at one of the clubs who isn't competing for silverware or European qualification.
 
Well, Lokomotiv beat Krasnodar 2-0 last night and are now level on points with Zenit, but according to the Russian Premier League website Loko are top. This can't be on a head-to-head basis, as they and Zenit haven't played one another yet. It's not goal difference as Zenit have scored more and conceded fewer. So it must be because Lokomotiv have won nine games to Zenit's eight.

They used to have a play-off for the title (called the 'golden match') whenever two teams finished level on points. I think they've scrapped it now, but I'm not 100% on that.
 
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