Mauro Zironelli (born 21 January 1970) is an Italian professional football coach and a former player who played as a

midfielder A midfielder is an outfield position in association football. Midfielders may play an exclusively defensive role, breaking up attacks, and are in that case known as defensive midfielders. As central midfielders often go across boundarie ...

. He is the current head coach of

Serie D The Serie D () is the top level of semi-professional football in the country. The fourth tier of the Italian league system, the competition sits beneath the third professional league, Serie C. It is administered by the Lega Nazionale Dilettant ...

club Luparense.

Playing career

Zironelli started playing professionally with

Vicenza Vicenza ( , ; ) is a city in northeastern Italy. It is in the Veneto region at the northern base of the '' Monte Berico'', where it straddles the Bacchiglione River. Vicenza is approximately west of Venice and east of Milan. Vicenza is a t ...

Serie C1 Lega Pro Prima Divisione was the third highest football league in Italy. It consisted of 33 teams, divided geographically into two divisions of 16 and 17 teams for group A and B respectively. Until 2008 it was known as Serie C1. Before the 1978 ...

. He then joined Fiorentina in 1989, with whom he also played in the 1990 UEFA Cup Final. This was followed by a number of seasons at

Serie B The Serie B (), currently named Serie BKT for sponsorship reasons, is the second-highest division in the Italian football league system after the Serie A. It has been operating for over ninety years since the 1929–30 season. It had been ...

and

level with many other teams, including a comeback at Fiorentina in 1993. He also won a promotion to

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 Copp ...

in 1998 with Venezia.

Coaching career

He started his coaching career in 2006 as part of the youth system of

, then joining Bassano in the same role in 2009. In November 2012 he replaced

Filippo Maniero Filippo "Pippo" Maniero (born 11 September 1972, in Padua) is an Italian retired association footballer who played as a striker. Club career Maniero played for several teams throughout his career, most notably A.C. Milan, Parma, Palermo and Tor ...

in charge of

Eccellenza The Eccellenza (, "excellence") is the fifth level (since 2014–15) of Italian football. It is a regional league, composed of 28 divisions divided geographically. All 20 regions are represented by at least one division except for Piedmont and ...

amateurs Abano. In 2013 he left to become new head coach of

club Sacilese, serving until February 2015. In June 2015, he took over from

Diego Zanin Diego is a Spanish masculine given name. The Portuguese equivalent is Diogo. The name also has several patronymic derivations, listed below. The etymology of Diego is disputed, with two major origin hypotheses: ''Tiago'' and ''Didacus''. Et ...

at another Serie D club, Altovicentino, guiding them to second place at the end of the season. He successively accepted an offer from

Mestre Mestre () is a borough of the ''comune'' (municipality) of Venice, on the mainland opposite the historical island city in the region of Veneto, Italy. Administratively, Mestre forms (together with the nearby Carpenedo) the ''Municipalità d ...

for the 2016–17 season, managing to win promotion to

Lega Pro The Serie C () is the third-highest division in the Italian football league system after the Serie B and Serie A. The Lega Italiana Calcio Professionistico (Lega Pro) is the governing body that runs the Serie C. The unification of the Lega Pro ...

with the club. After a good Serie C season, he was subsequently hired by Bari in what turned out to be a short-lived experience with the Apulians; after going to the pre-season camp with the squad, he was released together with all the players following the club's exclusion from professional football due to financial debts. Later in August 2018, he was unveiled as the inaugural head coach of

Juventus U23 Juventus Next Gen (), also known as Juve Next Gen or Juve NG (), is a professional football club based in Turin, Piedmont, Italy, which acts as the reserve team of club Juventus. They compete in , and play their home games at the Stadio Giusepp ...

after it was admitted in the

Serie C The Serie C () is the third-highest division in the Italian football league system after the Serie B and Serie A. The Lega Italiana Calcio Professionistico (Lega Pro) is the governing body that runs the Serie C. The unification of the Lega ...

as the very first reserve team to ever take part to the professional leagues of Italy. He left the club on 24 May 2019 after completing the Serie C season with the club. On 18 June 2019 he was unveiled as the new head coach of

Modena Modena (, , ; egl, label=Emilian language#Dialects, Modenese, Mòdna ; ett, Mutna; la, Mutina) is a city and ''comune'' (municipality) on the south side of the Po Valley, in the Province of Modena in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern I ...

. He was dismissed by Modena on 25 November 2019 following 3 losses in last 5 league games. On 28 October 2020 he was hired by

club Sambenedettese. He resigned on 8 February 2021. On 21 June 2021, he joined

Lecco Lecco (, , ; lmo, label= Lecchese, Lècch ) is a city of 48,131 inhabitants in Lombardy, northern Italy, north of Milan. It lies at the end of the south-eastern branch of Lake Como (the branch is named ''Branch of Lecco'' / ''Ramo di Lecco'') ...

. On 25 November 2021, he left Lecco by mutual consent. On 30 May 2022, Zironelli was unveiled as the new head coach of

club Luparense for the 2022–23 season. He was however sacked on 19 December 2022, leaving Luparense in eighth place in the league table, and replaced by his assistant Nicolò Cherubin, only to be called back just eight days later.

References

1970 births People from Thiene Living people Italian men's footballers Men's association football midfielders Italy men's under-21 international footballers Serie A players Serie B players Serie C players Italian football managers Juventus Next Gen managers LR Vicenza players ACF Fiorentina players Delfino Pescara 1936 players AC ChievoVerona players Venezia FC players Modena FC 2018 players Bassano Virtus 55 ST managers AS Sambenedettese managers Calcio Lecco 1912 managers Serie C managers Footballers from the Province of Vicenza {{Italy-footy-midfielder-1970s-stub