flobaba wrote:
I'm wondering though. Why are Italian coaches dominating nowadays? And why don't English coaches ever get opportunities at the top level anymore?
Short answer: Coverciano.
The Italian FA have an entire university devoted to management courses there. The first thing Ancelotti did after finishing his career as a player was to sign up for Coverciano and spend three years there. Same with Conte, Allegri, Lippi, Mancini, Capello and every other Italian football manager you can think of who was ever successful. I remember reading a long reportage about this years back, it was quite fascinating. Ancelotti and Sacchi in particular spoke at length about their experiences at Coverciano and how they helped to shape them as managers. Apart from gaining a deeper understanding of tactical shapes and formations they're also studying things like psychology, nutrition, physiology... They get this complete picture of how both football and the players themselves work.
The Italians have been doing this at Coverciano for 50 years. Any given Italian manager will need years of education in order to even get a job in Serie B. In England, by contrast, there's still no central system for educating football managers. And as a consequence, 3 out of the 7 managers who have won Premier League have been Italian. A 4th one looks odds on to win it this year. No English manager except for Keegan has ever come close, and they're unlikely to win it in the foreseeable future too.
