Now you see him.
Not now.
Just when opponents thought they knew where Antonio Mancinotti was going to attack them next, the Mandarin High School forward found a way to fool them again.
“He used to just run away from people,” said Jason Cooley, Mandarin Boys football coach. “Now he’s changing his pace. He learned how to throttle down from 60 to 30 to attract them and then just hit the little burst on them.”
Whether on the right, left or in between, junior forward Mancinotti was a year-round goalscorer for Mandarin and was named the Times-Union All-First Coast Player of the Year for high school boys’ football.
Mancinotti finished the season with 30 goals and 15 assists, leading the Mustangs to a repeat Gateway Conference title.
For the 2021/22 season, he was, as he put it, “in the zone”.
“Everything changes in the game when I’m in the zone,” he said. “My speed, my shots, my mentality.”
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![Antonio Mancinotti will be shown in portrait at Mandarin High School in Jacksonville on Tuesday, June 28, 2022. The junior forward is the Times-Union All-First Coast Footballer of the Year for 2021-22. He recorded 30 goals and 15 assists while leading Mandarin to the Class 7A semifinals. [Corey Perrine/Florida Times-Union]](https://www.gannett-cdn.com/presto/2022/06/29/NFTU/ca501cf2-472a-4f12-a2b9-4e19328c21c5-JKI_062822_AFCSoccerMancin_1.jpg?width=300&height=451&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp)
Catch the football fever
Mancinotti got his first taste of the sport when he was 9 years old and soon got the football fever.
“Since then I’ve wanted to play football every day for the rest of my life,” he said.
Arriving at Mandarin, he found himself in a squad filled with several experienced Mustangs, with veteran midfielders Adel Iriskic and Amar Mesic at the helm. But he quickly settled into the lineup.
In nearly two decades around the Mandarin program, Cooley has seen plenty of explosive talent, from Jean Vega to Kacper Grzeszczak to Rijad Kobiljar. He quickly realized that Mancinotti would join the list.
“He’s always had a lot of speed, he’s really fast and he has a lot of good ideas,” said Cooley. “But he really wanted to work on shooting … he can [now] Carve it with your left or right foot, bending it into the top 90 on both sides.”
Mancinotti and the Mustangs advanced to the Florida High School Athletic Association Class 7A semifinals, where only a Tampa Plant goal kept them from qualifying for the second State Finals in team history.
He also made it big when it mattered, beating the late game winner for a second straight game against Stanton for the second straight Gateway Conference and earning a team captain’s role while still a junior year.
“He’s a special person and a big part of our team’s success, not just from a footballing perspective but also from a leadership perspective,” said Cooley.
Explosive Instinct
Instinct. It’s at the heart of Mancinotti’s game.
When he’s really on, he says, there’s not even time to think.
“I just knew what I wanted to do,” he said. “Take the turn, shoot sharp, and sometimes it goes in and sometimes it doesn’t.”
The big question: What part of the football pitch will Mancinotti appear on next?
Sometimes he stands on the right wing. At other times on the left or right in the center of Mandarin’s three-pronged attack – anything that creates additional complications for opponents, who often deploy multiple defenders to contain him.
“I’ve thought over the years that if I just keep shuffling back and forth, they’ll try to follow me and give space to my teammates,” he said. “That helped me alot.”
Mancinotti said he likes to model his game after the lightning-fast, direct style of Son Heung-min, the Korean striker for London club Tottenham Hotspur who scored 23 goals to lift the English Premier League title last year.
Mancinotti has also developed into an impressive goalscoring threat through the assertiveness that comes with experience and confidence, and a willingness to take on defenders one-on-one. When Mancinotti started at Mandarin, Cooley said he sometimes tended to bow down to older teammates, but now that he’s the leader of the offense he’s shown he’s ready to take charge again and again.
“We expected great things,” said Cooley, “and he delivered.”
Keep an eye on the pro game
Mancinotti doesn’t hesitate when he talks about his long-term goals.
One day, he says, he hopes to play football at a professional level.
In his eighth grade, he recalls, a visiting coach asked his club’s players what their ultimate goals were in the game. For most, the goal was to play soccer in college. Almost every hand went up.
Not Mancinotti. His reasoning: why stop here?
“I said, ‘Because I want to play professionally,'” he said. “There were a few players who laughed at me, so I wanted to say, ‘You know what? I’m going to stick with it.’ I’ll keep playing and I want to go pro. That’s motivation.”
Comparatively few players from Northeast Florida have made the pro leap, but it’s far from unprecedented. The list includes players such as former Mandarin winger Kobiljar, who now plays for Bosnian club FK Sarajevo; Nease graduate Nathan Sturgis, who played in Major League Soccer for a decade and represented the United States at the U23 level; and Bishop Kenny’s former forward Tony Taylor, who spent a decade in professional football, represented Panama in World Cup qualifiers and is now one of Mancinotti’s coaches, a football mentor to the young forward.
how far can he go Mancinotti can’t wait to find out.
“Football was just fun for me [at first]he said. “Well, I still enjoy it, but it’s pretty much my job to try and get to the top.”
Antonio Mancinotti, boys football
Jr. Mandarin
Age: 17
Summary: Scored 30 goals and 15 assists to lead Mandarin to the Class 7A semifinals. … Won a second consecutive Gateway Conference tournament and scored the winning goal against Stanton. … Led the Duval County Public Schools in scoring.
Clayton Freeman covers high school sports and more for the Florida Times-Union. Follow him on Twitter at @CFreemanJAX.