June 12, 2024 – HNK Hajduk confirmed today that the club’s first team will be led by the legendary Gennaro Gattuso in the new season!
Gattuso signed a contract with Hajduk until the summer of 2026 and will arrive in Split next week, at the beginning of the first team’s preparations, when he will be officially presented at Poljud, reports Hajduk.
In his playing career, he won almost everything that could be won — world champion with Italy in 2006, winner of the Champions League with Milan in 2003 and 2007, two-time Serie A winner, and the UEFA Super Cup, Italian Super Cup, and the World Club Championship under his belt.
Due to his style of play, combativeness, and pronounced winning mentality, he became an iconic figure in world football.
Gennaro Ivan Gattuso was born on January 9, 1978, in Corigliano Calabro in Italy. He took his first football steps in Perugia, where he made his senior debut. He then moved to the Scottish club Rangers and returned to Italy to play for Salernitana. In 1999, he moved to Milan.
He gained the status of a legend at San Siro, staying there for 13 years and playing 468 games. He ended his football career in 2013 as a player for the Swiss Sion, and immediately transitioned to coaching and took over the management of the first team.
During his football career, he absorbed knowledge from the greatest Italian coaching geniuses such as Carlo Ancelotti, Marcello Lippi and Massimiliano Allegri.
His last engagement as a coach was leading the French giant Olympique Marseille. In Spain, he previously managed Valencia, and before that Fiorentina, Napoli and Milan, where he managed the current Hajduk sports director Nikola Kalinić. At the beginning of his coaching career, he was the head of the coaching staff of Palermo, then OFI Crete and Pisa.
SuperSport HNL will be the seventh consecutive league in which he will be the head coach, and Hajduk will be his ninth club. The environments and clubs in which he has worked are extremely demanding. In his football and coaching career, he has proven he is extremely resistant to high pressure and expectations. In 2020, he won the Italian Cup with Napoli.