Nice hire Francesco Farioli as head coach

Francesco Farioli, a 34-year-old Italian, has signed a two-year contract with Nice, the club announced on Friday.

Farioli has been without a club since leaving Turkish side Alanyaspor in February.

He replaces Didier Digard who took over from Lucien Favre in January. Digard remains at Nice where, the club said, he would be its newly formed “elite academy group”.

Farioli started as a goalkeeping coach with various youth teams in Italy before moving to the Aspire Academy in Qatar.

He then joined Roberto De Zerbi, currently coach of Brighton in England, whose work he had analysed. The two worked together between 2017 and 2020 at Benevento, then at Sassuolo.

Farioli then moved to Turkey, where he became a head coach at the age of 31, first with Fatih Karagumruk in Istanbul, from March 2021 to December 2021 and then at Alanyaspor, between January 2022 and February 2023.

“He has a modern style and a working method that we can identify with,” said Nice sporting director Florent Ghisolfi.

“Possession, aggression, with and without the ball… He moulds teams wit

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