[2][3] He later served as assistant manager of Crotone, and also had spells in the lower divisions of Italian football with Lumezzane and Orceana, as well as Pspitaletto, with whom he won the Serie C2, Girone B title during the 1986–87 season.
Maifredi was eventually sacked at the end of the season, following the club's failure to qualify for European football after placing seventh in Serie A, also losing out 5–1 to Napoli in the 1990 Supercoppa Italiana final; however, he managed to reach the semi-finals of the Cup Winners' Cup and the quarter-finals of the Coppa Italia.
Following his disappointing spell with Juventus, over the course of his coaching career, Maifredi managed several clubs in Italy, such as Bologna once again, Genoa, Venezia, and Brescia, among other teams, as well as having short coaching spells in Tunisia with Esperance Sportive de Tunis, and Spain with Albacete Balompié; however, he encountered less success with other teams.
His period as a manager was only on a caretaker basis, as he left after only one game – a 0–2 loss to Latina – to leave room for new boss Cristiano Bergodi.
[3][13][14] Maifredi's footballing approach, which made use of tactics based on a defensive line which employed zonal marking, and an overall fast, attractive, and dynamic playing style, has been famously described as calcio champagne ("champagne wine football", in Italian) in the media; this was due to both his teams' prominent attacking and entertaining style of play, and also as a reference to his former professional career as a champagne wine representative for Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin.