Alessandro Spugna (born 22 November 1973) is an Italian

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

coach. He briefly enjoyed a playing career where he graduated from

Torino Turin ( , Piedmontese: ; it, Torino ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in Northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital from 1861 to 1865. T ...

's youth academy, before deciding to become a coach with the same academy when Spugna was 28 years old.

Coaching career

After spending 12 years as a youth coach with Torino, Spugna accepted an offer to coach within the youth ranks of cross-town rivals

Juventus Juventus Football Club (from la, iuventūs, 'youth'; ), colloquially known as Juve (), is a professional Association football, football club based in Turin, Piedmont, Italy, that competes in the Serie A, the top tier of the Italian football leagu ...

in 2014. Spugna told the press he "needed a change of environment" when explaining his decision to join Juventus, and confirmed he turned down moves to other clubs within Italy and abroad to do so. In 2018, Juventus were searching for a successor to the departing Juventus Women's Primavera coach Daniele Diana and chose Spugna after he had spent 4 years as a youth coach within the men's side of the club. During his two seasons with the Juventus U-19 women's team, Spugna guided his side to two successive Viareggio Women's Cup trophies. Though Spugna never managed to win a Primavera league title with Juventus, he was credited with launching many young talents into women's senior football and accepted an offer to become the head coach of Serie A club Empoli Ladies in the summer of 2020, in time for their 2020-21 league campaign. Spugna guided Empoli to Serie A salvation and surprisingly good results in league and cup competition, notably managing Empoli's on-loan Juventus forward

Benedetta Glionna Benedetta Glionna (born 26 July 1999) is an Italian professional footballer who plays as a forward for Serie A club AS Roma and the Italy women's national team. She moved to Roma on 5 July 2021 and signed a contract until the summer of 2024. ...

to the most prolific goalscoring season of her Serie A career. Despite Empoli's success on the pitch, Spugna was suddenly fired by Empoli on 28 April 2021 before the team had finished their league season. It was widely speculated that Empoli's decision was due to Spugna reaching a pre-contract agreement to become

Roma Roma or ROMA may refer to: Places Australia * Roma, Queensland, a town ** Roma Airport ** Roma Courthouse ** Electoral district of Roma, defunct ** Town of Roma, defunct town, now part of the Maranoa Regional Council *Roma Street, Brisbane, a ...

's head coach for the following season. On 2 June 2021, Roma announced they had promoted head coach Betty Bavagnoli to a new role as their Head of Women's Sport while Alessandro Spugna was appointed the new head coach of the Roma women's team On 5 July 2021, Roma announced the permanent signing of Spugna's long-term protegee Benedetta Glionna which re-united the Italian forward to train under coach Spugna at the duo's third different club together. On 16 July 2021, Roma announced the signing of Italian defender Lucia Di Guglielmo from Empoli which re-united the player with Spugna.

Coaching style

Spugna has defined his preferred style of play as one made of aggressive, attacking and bold football. Spugna consides himself a ''gestitore'' (talent manager) and not an ''integralista'' (system-based manager). He has claimed he has no preferred formation or system, and looks to adapt the formation to the playing talent at his disposal within any given match.

Honours

Serie A The Serie A (), also called Serie A TIM for national sponsorship with TIM, is a professional league competition for football clubs located at the top of the Italian football league system and the winner is awarded the Scudetto and the Coppa ...

**Winners (1):

2022–23 The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen b ...

Supercoppa Italiana The Supercoppa Italiana ( en, Italian Super Cup) is an annual football match contested by the winners of the Serie A and the Coppa Italia in the previous season. If the same team wins both the Serie A and Coppa Italia titles in the previous seaso ...

**Winners (1):

2022 File:2022 collage V1.png, Clockwise, from top left: Road junction at Yamato-Saidaiji Station several hours after the assassination of Shinzo Abe; 2022 Sri Lankan protests, Anti-government protest in Sri Lanka in front of the Presidential Secretari ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Spugna, Alessandro 1973 births Living people Sportspeople from Turin Italian football managers Serie A (women's football) managers Association football coaches