Roberto Mancini is recognised in the Premier League for turning Manchester City into major trophy winners yet he was making his mark on English football more than a decade earlier.
The Italy coach is the main obstacle standing between England and their greatest moment since 1966 after rebuilding the national side from the ruins of November 2017, when they failed to qualify for the World Cup for the first time since 1958.
If Italy do lift the trophy on Sunday, though, City are not the only club who will be pleased for Mancini. The master creator ended his playing career with a five-game loan spell at Leicester, which finished abruptly in February 2001 when he accepted an offer to join Fiorentina as manager.
Roberto Mancini is remembered in England for his time at Manchester City (left) but he had a brief loan spell with Leicester (right) in 2001
At 36, Mancini could have simply turned up and taken the money. Instead, he immersed himself in life at Leicester’s Belvoir Drive training ground, watching reserve and youth matches and passing on his experience — 13 trophies with Sampdoria and Lazio and 36 international caps — to younger players.
One of these was 19-year-old Matt Piper. A local boy, Piper would go on to score the final goal at Leicester’s old Filbert Street stadium in May 2002 before joining Sunderland for £3.5million, but he remains grateful for the impact Mancini made.
‘He was one of the first people to believe in me,’ recalls Piper, who now watches every Foxes game for BBC Radio Leicester. ‘I remember playing in a behind-closed-doors game at the training ground against Blackburn, and he and Stan Collymore were watching.
Mancini is the man standing in the way of England winning the Euro 2020 final on Sunday
‘Mancini came up to me afterwards in the canteen with a tactics board. I used to watch Channel 4 when they showed Italian football every Sunday and he was one of my favourite players, so I was star struck, but he started moving the pieces around the board to make his point.
‘I was a winger and I’d always go on the outside of the full back. Mancini told me I should start coming inside more because he thought I had the attributes to do it. He told me I was a top
