Prandelli, a midfielder, started his playing career at Cremonese in 1974. He then moved to Atalanta in 1978, and then Juventus in 1979. He played six seasons with Juventus, winning the Serie A championship three times. He returned to Atalanta in 1985, where he ended his career in 1990. In total, Prandelli played 197 Serie A matches.
Prandelli started his managing career as youth team coach for Atalanta. He coached Atalanta's youth squad with excellent results from 1990 to 1997, except for a seven-months parenthesis, from November 1993 to June 1994, in which he served as caretaker for the first team, then relegated to Serie B. After a poor 1997–98 Serie A campaign as Lecce head coach ended in a sacking in January 1998, Prandelli headed Hellas Verona for two seasons, leading the gialloblu to an immediate promotion to Serie A, and then to a very good ninth place the next year. He later spent two years with Parma, where he fully reached national glory.
Starting the 2004–05 season for AS Roma, he left the team because of personal problems involving his wife, with her being seriously ill.
Prandelli joined Fiorentina as manager in the summer of 2005. His first season in Tuscany proved to be a huge success, as Prandelli transformed Fiorentina from relegation strugglers into a team worthy of a UEFA Champions League spot, finishing the season in fourth place. Unfortunately for Fiorentina and Prandelli however, as a result of the Calciopoli match-fixing scandal, Fiorentina were stripped of their Champions League spot and started the 2006–07 season in Serie A with a 15 point deduction.
The next year, despite the points deduction, Prandelli was able to guide Fiorentina to a 6th place finish in Serie A (with the same point tally as 5th placed Palermo), securing UEFA Cup qualification for the 2007–08 season. The team did very well in the competition, losing the penalty shootout against Rangers in the semi-final. In Serie A, the team finished fourth after winning a long race against Milan, earning a ticket to participate in the UEFA Champions League. His wife died during the season, making Prandelli's efforts all the more impressive.
For his work in the 2007–08 season, Prandelli was awarded the Serie A Coach of the Year at the "Oscar del calcio" awards in early 2009. He later managed to get Fiorentina into the group phase, after defeating SK Slavia Praha in the third qualifying round, and also guided Fiorentina to another fourth place spot, this time winning competition to Genoa (who ended the season with the same points as Fiorentina, but were classified at fifth due to head-to-head results) and a second consecutive participation in the UEFA Champions League qualifying rounds. After the departure of Carlo Ancelotti, Prandelli's tenure as Fiorentina became the longest of all incumbent Serie A managers.
In 2009, Prandelli surpassed Fulvio Bernardini as the longest serving manager in Fiorentina history, and guided the viola to a historic qualification in the round of 16 of the 2009–10 UEFA Champions League, where they were controversially eliminated by Bayern Munich (who later went on to qualify to the final) through the away goals rule. However, Prandelli did not manage to repeat such successes at the domestic stage, with things being made even more complex by his key player Adrian Mutu being suspended due to doping-related issues. Fiorentina ended the 2009–10 Serie A in eleventh place, well far from the top spots of the league.
On 20 May 2010 Fiorentina confirmed that Prandelli was given permission to hold talks with Italian Football Federation president Giancarlo Abete to replace Marcello Lippi as head coach of the Italian national team after the 2010 FIFA World Cup. On 30 May, the Italian Football Federation publicly announced that Prandelli will take over from Lippi at the head of the Azzurri after the 2010 FIFA World Cup.His official debut arrived on 10 August 2010, in a friendly match against Ivory Coast at the Boleyn Ground, finishing in a 0–1 defeat.
Then, during the 2012 Euro Qualifiers, Italy came back from behind to defeat Estonia 2-1. Italy's mtach against Serbia was plagued by crowd trouble and UEFA subsequently awarded Italy a 3-0 victory, putting them in pole position of their group. On March 25. 2011, Italy recorded a 1-0 win over Slovenia to secure their spot at the top of the qualification table. Before the Slovenia game, Prandelli said: “The moment has come for us to have faith in the former greats of our football and learn from them”. “My instruction is to work, work, work and I sincerely believe in rebuilding" he continued. “I don’t think it’s incredible the huge number of talents that Slovenia are producing, nothing is incredible if you program and cultivate your ideas about football."
