The national rugby team will change coach after the World Cup. Why?

Yesterday afternoon the Italian Rugby Federation has announced that it will not renew the contract of the coach of the senior national team, Kieran Crowley and that consequently the New Zealander he will leave the blue bench after the World Cup which will be played in September and October in France. Today he made it official that his successor, from 1 January 2024, he will be Gonzalo Quesada until this season coach of the Stade Français.

Crowley’s farewell has caused discontent in Italian rugby fans, who don’t understand why to send away a coach who has brought about an evident improvement from every point of view and who didn’t want to leave. In fact, in the official press release on his situation, Crowley says: “I would have liked to be involved with the Italian national team also for the next cycle […] and I am sorry for Fir’s choice not to extend my contract”. Words that do not suggest that there was an agreed farewell.

Italy leaves behind a capable and prepared manager, who was responsible for the first victory in the Six Nations in seven years and a historic triumph over Australia, which brought a clear improvement in the game and who launched an infinite number of players, above all that Ange Capuozzo who today is seen as the man of providence.

In coach Crowley’s last call-ups, those for the World Cup, two great naturalized talents have also joined the group: Dino Lamb and Paolo Odogwu can be players with a leap in quality. However, in a Tafazzian succession of schemes already seen, once again Italy will go to the World Cup with a coach with a suitcase packed: it happened in 2007 with Pierre Berbizier, in 2011 with Nick Mallett, in 2019 with Conor O’ Shea and now it happens again. As in a real Jumanji, when Italy takes a good path, something happens that makes it start over.

In March, in an interview with Il Foglio, Paolo Garbisi said of Crowley: “I’d like to continue with him, also because I had him in Treviso. Of course, I’m sure the Federation will make the right choice, but by choosing another coach there is the risk of having to start over and I don’t know how much good it can do for us”.

I sum: the players get on well, he wants to stay, the fans appreciate him, the results, albeit slowly, arrive, the game has definitely improved. Why stop everything?

Of course, Quesada is a great coach, one of those who grew up on bread, garra and the avant-garde and this year he came close to the semi-final of the French championship, if Marcos Kremer hadn’t been expelled, but everyone expected a different choice. Even who would have bet on Marco Bortolami, the eternal blue captain who is doing very well in Treviso. If federal president Marzio Innocenti had opted for him, perhaps with the aim of being able to say he was the president who had put an Italian back on the national team bench since Massimo Mascioletti (1999-2000), perhaps it would have been easier to find a sense.

Going to get, to put it in the words of one of his compatriots, “on the other side of the world” a well-prepared coach, but in any case forced, due to ambition, age and personality, to impose his style, at a time when everything seems to be fine, it seems at least dysfunctional. Then maybe things will go well, surely they will. But here, it takes time and effort to grow fruit. You don’t need to change gardeners every week.