Cristiano Giuntoli (born 12 February 1972) is an Italian football executive and former football player. Born in Florence, he grew up in his grandfather's bar and was planning to become an architect before he switched to a football playing career. Giuntoli played for the fourth and fifth divisions from 1990 until 2009, when he retired at the age of 37, having won a Serie D title. As sporting director, Giuntoli achieved one Serie A title, two Coppa Italia titles, and at least four promotions.
In 2007, Giuntoli took the licence to coach. In the summer of 2008, he began his sporting director career at Spezia. In the summer of 2009, Giuntoli moved to Carpi as deputy sporting director, before being promoted to sporting director in October 2009. During his tenure at Carpi, the squad he helped to build achieved four promotions in five seasons (from Serie D to Serie A), leading the club to Italian football's top division for the first time in its history.
In the summer of 2015, Giuntoli left Carpi to become sporting director of Napoli. Under his tenure, Napoli established itself at the top of Serie A in the following years, winning the 2019–20 Coppa Italia (the club's sixth title) and its third Scudetto by winning the 2022–23 Serie A, thirty-three years after the previous one. At the end of this last season, he ended his experience with the club after eight years. From the 2023–2024 season, he took over responsibility for Juventus' sporting affairs. In his first year, he won the 2023–24 Coppa Italia, the club's fifteenth title and its first trophy in three years; nevertheless, his overall performance was judged by the owners to be below expectations, and this led to the early termination of his contract at the end of a disappointing 2024–25 season.
Early life and career Giuntoli was born in Florence, Italy, on 12 February 1972, the son of entrepreneur and trader Tiziano and teacher Cosetta (). Giuntoli hailed from the near Agliana, located in the province of Pistoia. Vivante, Giuntoli's grandfather from his mother side, owned a bar, and it is there that he grew up, as he explained in his Ted Talk entitled "Application Beyond Talent" that customers constantly talked about sports, especially football and cycling.
After attending the liceo scientifico, Giuntoli studied architecture under his mother's pressure and took nineteen exams with an average score of 29 out of 30, before he switched to playing football. Giuntoli played as a defender (more specifically as centre back) in Serie C2 and Serie D clubs, including Prato, Colligiana, Latina, Imperia, Savona, and Sanremese, scoring 13 goals in 330 appearances, before ending his career at Valle d'Aosta, where he reunited with his Imperia coach Giorgio Benedetti. Giuntoli won the 1998–99 Serie D with Imperia, where he was a key player. The Giuntoli–Roberto Biffi centre back pairing at Savona and Sanremese was among the most feared in Serie C2 and Serie D. During his time at Imperia in 1998, Giuntoli also had an exhibition match against eventual 1997–98 Serie A champions Juventus where he marked the returning-from-injury Filippo Inzaghi.
While in Prato, Giuntoli met Christian Vieri, who was there as part of the youth team before embarking a successful centre forward career. Vieri called Giuntoli "an old-style sweeper, all about fights and punches". In July 2009, Giuntoli officially retired from the football pitch at the age of 37 but had already began his executive career at Spezia in the summer of 2008, although there is not much information about his role, which may have included a sporting director or deputy head coach position, other that it lasted little before his move at Carpi. He was also reported to have been offered the position of deputy head coach for the 2005–06 season, where Spezia were promoted from Serie C1 to Serie B and beat Napoli to win the Supercoppa di Lega di Serie C1. His friend Antonio Soda, who had been at one time his head coach at Sanremese, said that he had asked Giuntoli for the position but that Giuntoli had refused.
According to his former Sanremese teammate Silvio Cassaro, even while still playing for Sanremese, Giuntoli acted as a deputy head coach and was already a scout of his own, and told Cassaro that he would be become a great sporting director. According to Soda, Giuntoli had told him to confirm Giancarlo Calabria, who proved to be a key player to the club's promotion to Serie C2, and as a result he is credited with this promotion, alongside one with Spezia and the multiple consecutive ones with Carpi. In 2007, Giuntoli went to Coverciano and took his head coach UEFA-B licence, before returning to Florence in order to finish his ISEF (Higher Institute of Physical Education) studies, and graduated in Physical Education.
Sporting director Carpi In July 2009, Giuntoli joined Serie D club Carpi as deputy sporting director. In October 2009, he was promoted by the club owner Stefano Bonacini to the role of sporting director of Carpi. Giuntoli accepted on the condition that he could sell twelve to thirteen players. He also proposed Maurizio Sarri as head coach; however, Bonacini opted for instead. In this role, Giuntoli supported Bonacini's rebuilding initiative, placing a strong focus on the acquisition of young, emerging, and little-known players thanks to targeted scouting. Carpi had been founded in 1909 but were declared bankrupt in 1999 and re-established in 2000 starting from Serie D, the then Italian football's fifth division, and did not achieve promotions until 2009–10 and Giuntoli's tenure. Within six seasons starting from Serie D, Carpi achieved their first-ever promotions to Serie B and Serie A. Bonacini, who owned and administrated the club with clothing-industry firms Madrilena and Gaudi owners Claudio Caliumi and Roberto Marani and was himself co-owner of Gaudi with Marani, called their team the "Ryanair of Italian football" and a "low cost club who win". By 2014–15, the club had a reported turnover of €4.5 million, of which €3 million accounted for the players' salaries, which would not be enough to pay half the salary of Daniele De Rossi, a midfielder from Roma who was reported to be highest paid Italian player at €6.5 million. Giuntoli himself observed that no one at the club earned more than €100,000 a year. In 2020, Bonacini recalled how in the winter transfers of the 2014–15 Serie B season Giuntoli bought Marco Modolo (a centre back from Gorica) and Nicola Pasini (a centre back and right back from Pistoiese) for €27,000, and helped Carpi in their first-ever promotion to Serie A.
Under Giuntoli, the club achieved two immediate promotions (to Serie C2 and Serie C1) in the 2009–10 (despite finishing second and losing the playoff semi-finals) and 2010–11 seasons (Carpi finished first, while losing both finals of the Coppa Italia Lega Pro and Supercoppa di Lega di Seconda Divisione). After a third place and playoff loss to Pro Vercelli in 2011–12, which saw Carpi reaching the second round of Coppa Italia, the club was promoted to Serie B in 2012–13. In 2013–14, Carpi achieved a thirteen place, and safely avoided relegation in their first Serie B season while again reaching the second round of Coppa Italia, a feat that was further repeated in 2014–15, when they were promoted to Serie A. In their Serie B-winning season, Carpi had a record of 22 wins, 14 draws, and 6 losses, leading the league for the whole season, and the squad gained the Serie A promotion with four matchdays to spare. For the Serie B season, the club had put a limited budget of €3 million for the salaries of the players and €750,000 for the technical staff. The squad that Giuntoli helped to build had an average age of 24. There were questions about Carpi's stadium, the Stadio Sandro Cabassi, due to being significantly inferior to 20,00 capacity, with the same reported capacity of 4,144 when playing in Serie D. In February 2015, the Lazio president Claudio Lotito attracted criticism over a leaked telephone conversation in which he said that Carpi's Serie A promotion would be a financial disaster for Italian football's top division, stating: "If Carpi come up ... if teams come up who are not worth lira, in two or three years we won't have a penny."
According to Il Mostardino journalist Enrico Bonzanini, who frequented Giuntoli during his five-year stay in Carpi, the club boasted at the beginning of Giuntoli's tenure of Carpi in Serie D a net worth of just a few thousands more than €10,000, despite owning only a handful of players. By 2015, Carpi had 18 players under contract and an estimated net worth of €15 million. Key players discovered by Giuntoli included Kevin Lasagna, a striker picked up by Giuntoli from Este, an amateur team in the province of Padua. The head coach Fabrizio Castori, who was also brought to Carpi by Giuntoli, said that what convinced Giuntoli were videos of Lasagna "going so fast he was out of frame". Giuntoli also discovered Roberto Inglese (a striker from Lumezzane), Gaetano Letizia (a right back from Real Normanna), and Riccardo Gagliolo (a left back from Imperia), all of whom went on to have decent careers in Serie A and Serie B. Among the many successful signings at Carpi, the one said to have turned his career around by landing him at Napoli was Jerry Mbakogu. A striker and winger, Mbakogu was picked up on loan from Padova despite still suffering from and injury, and he was then kept at Carpi after the Padova's bankruptcy. Mbakogu was Carpi's prized possession thanks to a 15-goal season in Serie B, which attracted clubs including Napoli. While Mbakogu ultimately stayed at Carpi, Giuntoli moved to Napoli. After Giuntoli left Carpi for Napoli, the club was relegated to Serie B. According to Castori, if Giuntoli had stayed at Carpi, the club may have stayed in Serie A.
Napoli In summer of 2015, Napoli owner Aurelio De Laurentiis convinced Giuntoli to join his team that had begun to challenge for the Serie A title despite an unsuccessful spell with Rafael Benítez. He was reported to have signed a four-year contract with an annual salary of €600,000, which was significantly less than his counterparts at Roma, Milan, and Inter Milan. In his first transfer window, Giuntoli signed such players as Allan (a defensive midfielder from Udinese), Elseid Hysaj (a full back from Empoli), Pepe Reina (a goalkeeper from Liverpool), and Mirko Valdifiori (a central midfielder from Empoli), although Hysaj and Valdifiori were considered to have been Sarri's signings due to both have been at Empoli when Sarri was their head coach. Giuntoli called the signing of Allan, in exchange of €12 million plus centre back Miguel Britos and the two-year loan of forward Duván Zapata, "the most grueling negotiation of my career". With Sarri as their new head coach, Napoli were at the top of the league table halfway through the 2015–16 Serie A season. The club finished in second place behind their rivals Juventus amid their record-breaking nine consecutive league titles; Juventus had also signed Napoli striker Gonzalo Higuaín for €90 million in the 2016 summer transfer window.