Ex-Arsenal star makes winning return to English football with League Two club

Former Arsenal goalkeeper Vito Mannone kept a clean sheet to help new club Crawley Town beat York City 2-0 on Monday and reach the Carabao Cup first round proper. Mannone, 38, signed for the League Two side as a player-coach in June after spending last season as a free agent while earning his coaching badges.

The Italian got the nod for Crawley's first game of the season, travelling to York's LNER Community Stadium in a preliminary round of the Carabao Cup. Mannone and his team-mates advanced thanks to goals from Gianmarco Di Biase and Danilo Orsi.

The victory booked Crawley a trip to Watford this Saturday. It was Mannone's first competitive appearance since February 2025 with former club Lille.

He was on Arsenal's books for eight years, making a total of 23 first-team appearances. Mannone left the Emirates in 2013 to join Sunderland for £2million, spending the next four seasons at the Stadium of Light before moving to Reading.

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He then plied his trade in France after signing for Monaco in 2020, later joining Lorient and finally Lille. Crawley convinced Mannone to make the drop from the French top flight to the fourth tier of English football by handing him a dual role, with the 38-year-old having recently been coaching at Brighton.

Mannone will head up Crawley's goalkeeping department, taking training sessions and leading player development. "I am delighted and proud to take on this role and can't wait to meet everyone at the club and to start working with the staff and players," he said.

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"I'll give everything to the cause and hope to pass on my experiences as a player, leading into a successful season."

Crawley's manager, former Premier League striker Colin Kazim-Richards, explained: "To be able to add to my coaching staff, to the club, someone of Vito's calibre is a credit in itself.

"His knowledge, his footballing experiences, playing at the highest level with some of the best coaches in terms of standards, what it actually takes and ideas coming from a country that creates amazing goalkeepers, has really taken us up another level.

"Vito comes with an intensity, and it's something I'm looking forward to in terms of creating a relationship and benefiting from his skills from a goalkeeper's perspective, and also as a person. As soon as we spoke, I knew he was the right man, so I can't wait to work with him."