Parma Part Ways with Carlos Cuesta After One Win in Five
Parma have relieved head coach Carlos Cuesta of his duties after winning only one of their opening five Serie A matches, with the club citing the breakdown of the conditions needed to continue the sporting project.
Published 28 Sept 2026Updated 28 Sept 20262 min read
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Parma have parted ways with head coach Carlos Cuesta after winning only one of their opening five Serie A matches, the club announced on Sunday.
In a statement, Parma said Cuesta “has been relieved of his duty” and that “following an internal discussion between the club and coach, it was agreed that the conditions in order to continue this working relationship and the advancement of the sporting project were no longer present” — wording that presents the separation as a mutual decision. Gazzetta dello Sport reported that the parting of ways was agreed after a meeting between the coach and the club hierarchy on Sunday.
A bold project that stalled
Cuesta’s appointment in June 2025 was one of the boldest calls in recent Serie A history: aged 29, he became the youngest manager in Europe’s top five leagues and the youngest Serie A coach in almost a century, arriving with no senior head-coach experience after four years on Mikel Arteta’s staff at Arsenal. That gamble had paid off with survival, but the new season has brought a single win from five rounds, leaving Parma 13th, and reports point to a breakdown in relations over the club’s transfer strategy and the direction of the project.
Carlos Cuesta on the Parma touchline at the Ennio Tardini (Photo via Getty Images embed)Who comes next?
The timing at least works in Parma’s favour: the international break gives the club a two-week window to make the appointment and hand the new man a full pre-season-style block of training before Serie A resumes. Cuesta leaves after roughly fifteen months at the Tardini, a spell that began as a statement of the club’s ambition for a young, modern coaching profile and ends with that same project at a crossroads.
Italian media immediately lined up the candidates, with Gazzetta dello Sport naming Alberto Gilardino, Marco D'Aversa and Cristiano Zanetti as the early favourites, and further reporting suggesting Parma are already in direct contact with former Genoa boss Gilardino. Whoever arrives inherits a squad built under Cuesta's regime and a fixture list that resumes after the international break with a run of matches that will quickly define whether this season is a rebuild or a relegation fight.
Cover photo: Stadio Ennio Tardini, Parma (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0).