The new adventure of Fabio Cannavaro

10/10/2025 17:03:00 PANDATV

Twenty years after leading Italy to World Cup glory as captain, Fabio Cannavaro is once again taking a team to the World Cup, this time as a coach. He has just signed on to lead Uzbekistan to their first-ever World Cup.

Channel RAI Sport has described this as a special moment for Italian football: "While waiting for Gennaro Gattuso to bring the Azzurri to North America in summer 2026, we already have two Italian coaches at the World Cup: Carlo Ancelotti with Brazil and Cannavaro with Uzbekistan."

From Evergrande Guangzhou to Tashkent

A close, unnamed friend of Cannavaro recently revealed to a southern Italian newspaper about this decision: "Fabio has always loved Asia. It’s a place he has always wanted to go to not only to coach but also to live." Years ago, during a trip to Vietnam for a business event, he sincerely told me he liked Asia for its vibrancy and passionate desire to conquer. That was in 2012, just after retiring and questioning what he wanted next in life after an almost flawless career. Soon after, he enrolled in the Italian Football Federation coaching course and began his dream journey in Asia, starting as assistant coach at Al-Ahli in Saudi Arabia in 2013, then twice becoming head coach of Evergrande Guangzhou in China at the invitation of Marcello Lippi, the mentor he admired most.

Fabio Cannavaro will coach Uzbekistan at the 2026 World Cup

After continuing in China with Tianjin Quanjian, he replaced Lippi as head coach of China’s national team, managing only two matches (both losses) before returning to Italy, feeling the role wasn’t suitable for him. Then, he vanished from football for several years. Some say the 2006 World Cup-winning generation struggled as coaches because their mentor, Lippi, took all the intelligence from his pupils. Since then, he has occasionally appeared in brief, unsuccessful spells with Benevento in Serie B, Udinese in Serie A, and Dinamo Zagreb in Croatia. He made headlines by helping Zagreb defeat Milan 2-1 in the final Champions League qualifying round last season, pushing Milan into playoffs where they were bitterly eliminated, but it was too little to prevent his dismissal.

A new journey named World Cup

Yet the question remains: why Uzbekistan, aside from Cannavaro’s fondness for Asia? Why did Uzbekistan, runner-up in Group A of the third round of Asian qualifying for the 2026 World Cup under coach Timur Kapadze, who secured this historic ticket, invite Cannavaro? They spent months persuading him despite his limited experience, frequent firings, and only one title—a Chinese championship with Guangzhou in a league not highly regarded.

Uzbekistan needed a big name to lead a team with only a few notable players such as Eldor Shomurodov (playing in Turkey for Basaksehir), Abdukhodir Khusanov (Man City), and Igor Sergeev (Pakhtakor, the largest club in Uzbekistan). The president of the country’s football association, Bakhodir Kurbanov, believes that with Uzbekistan football on the rise, they require a world champion coach. Cannavaro meets that criterion. He came here after declining several offers, including one from the Chinese national team. Italians were surprised when he appeared at the signing ceremony alongside a man in a general’s military uniform. It turns out that UFA president Kurbanov is a lieutenant general, former Minister of Defense of Uzbekistan, and since 2024, Chairman of the National Security Council of this Central Asian country which declared independence in 1991 during the Soviet Union’s collapse.

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