Never go back, an old maxim of football management says.
Yet the returning coach has seldom been so fashionable.
Jose Mourinho may be experiencing some agitation at Chelsea, but his second stint at the club has already yielded a Premier League title.
Rafa Benitez may still have some doubters among the Real Madrid support, but his main recommendation as the summer appointment there was his past as a youth coach and even a first-team caretaker coach on the Bernabeu management staff some years ago.
Roberto Mancini has a greater cachet at Inter Milan.
It may have been a little eroded in the 11 months since he rejoined the club he led to three successive titles between 2006 and 2008, but it will never be truly erased.
And a significant part of his cachet among ‘interisti’ comes from his long history as an antagonist of Juventus, who Inter meet in the first Derby D’Italia of the 2015/16 Serie A season tomorrow.
Mancini and Juve is a complicated relationship.
There seemed a strong chance in the summer of last year that it might become more complicated when Mancini – then in the market for a job – was linked with the vacancy after Antonio Conte’s abrupt resignation as Juventus coach after three successive ‘scudetti’.
An official approach was not made and Max Allegri was given the post instead.
Mancini the player, among the most creative and appealing in a halcyon era of Italian club football during the 1990s, used to be wanted, again and again, by Juventus.
He stayed loyal to Sampdoria, at the cost of a greater haul of personal medals. Mancini’s anti-juventino badge then glistened bright and fierce through his five years as Inter manager.
The 2006 title is still a focus of enmity between Inter and Juve. Juventus were stripped of it because of the ‘Calciopoli’ scandal and Mancini’s Inter were awarded the championship retrospectively.
Mancini went on to win the next two as Juventus, relegated as punishment, rebuilt.
That rebuilding, largely successful in that Conte and Allgeri have between them won the last four Serie A titles, took a significant blow in the 2013/14 Uefa Champions League. Galatasaray eliminated Juventus in the group phase.
The Galatasaray coach on that snowy night in Istanbul was a grinning Mancini.
Thus the potted history of the coach who went into this weekend with his Inter second in the table and, in a scenario neither he or Allegri would have envisaged in mid-August, Juventus in the bottom half of the division after seven matches.
Peer farther into the wrong end of the table, and the interisti could hardly feel more satisfied. AC Milan, the neighbourhood rivals, are 11th – one place higher than Juve.
So why the jitters among home supporters ahead of tomorrow night? Inter have lost momentum in the last three weeks.
Having won each of their first five matches of Mancini’s first full season back in charge, they have taken just a point from the last two outings. The 4-1 loss to Fiorentina last month that allowed Fiorentian to snatch the role of Serie A pacemakers exposed some of last term’s brittleness.
Mancini had warned a strong start does not make a title.
“Roma,” he pointed out, “won their first 10 games of the season two years ago and didn’t win the championship. I’ll judge whether we are candidates once we are 10 matches in.”
Others will judge Mancini’s enduring managerial touch on Inter’s ability to take on the holders. Juve, who have won only two league fixtures so far, are being encouraged by their own coaching staff to think victory over Inter represents a last chance to save the defence of their title.
Mancini may fear the consequences of that aggressive posture.
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