Venezia Turn to Escape Specialist Davide Nicola on a Two-Year Deal

Venezia have turned to serial survival expert Davide Nicola in a bid to rescue their season, handing the 53-year-old a two-year contract that starts Thursday and runs to the end of the 2027-28 campaign. The appointment comes days after the club sacked Giovanni Stroppa with Venezia bottom of Serie A on zero points from six matches.

The size of the task

Six defeats from six represents the club's worst start to a league season since 1949, and the fixture list offers little respite. Napoli, Inter Milan and Como sit among three of Venezia's next four matches, meaning Nicola's honeymoon period will be brutally short. The new coach must quickly decide how much of the squad's structure he keeps and how much he rebuilds, with points already haemorrhaging at a rate that historically guarantees relegation.

Why Nicola

Nicola has built his coaching reputation almost entirely on late-season rescues. He kept Cagliari up against the odds, repeated the trick with Torino and Udinese, and has repeatedly inherited sides written off in midwinter and dragged them to safety. That track record is precisely why Venezia have moved for him now: the club does not need a long-term rebuild philosophy in October, it needs a proven hand at steering a sinking side to shore. The length of the deal signals that the project is about more than this season's firefight, but the immediate priority is unmistakable.

What comes next

Nicola's first task is restoring belief to a dressing room that has lost every match it has played, then finding a way to make the Penzo a fortress again. Serie A's bottom three drop to Serie B at the end of the season, and with 32 games still to play the arithmetic remains recoverable. Venezia's supporters have seen this script before — and in Nicola they have hired the man who has written more great escapes than almost any coach in the league.