How is it possible that a football movement at the forefront of youth competitions has not played a World Cup since 2014? And has exited in disgrace from the European Championship in Germany, refusing to defend the title won at Wembley only three years ago? That it has not played a knockout World Cup since the final in Berlin 2006? Above all: who is to blame for the dispersion of talent in the final passage from breeding to production?
Having said that the flop of the European Championship was first and foremost a question of errors by those who managed the national team in the month of preparation and then in Germany (poor physical condition, tactical confusion, players as if paralyzed by chaos and fear), the debate has returned to shift to the progressive loss of competitiveness of our football. In the crosshairs is Gabriele Gravina’s FIGC. In the dock are the Serie A clubs, not willing, however, to be pointed out as responsible for the impoverishment of Italy.
In the middle are the numbers, which rarely lie. And which in the case of Italy explain why the national teams from Marcello Lippi onwards have had less and less human material at their disposal, to the point of the paradox that Serie A is the championship among the top leagues in Europe in which the selectable players are in a lower percentage together with the English Premier League. As if the thread between the pool of young talent that resists and the football of the greats were constantly breaking, dispersing a wealth of potential that fails to emerge.
SERIE A FULL OF FOREIGNERS (BUT SOME HAVE IMPROVED OURS TOO)
The Italian championship is not for… Italians. Last season, only 37.6% of the minutes played were played by athletes eligible for the Italian national teams. The rest (62.4%) was covered by foreigners with a very high percentage even among the big teams, if it is true that Milan, for the first time in history, did not have anyone called up from Italy for a major tournament. There was the Italian block of Inter, a reversal of tradition, some signs from Juventus and little else. Only the Premier League did worse than us in Europe with 36.9% of English minutes. In La Liga the proportion was inverted: 60.9%.
The footballers’ union led a battle against the Growth Decree (tax relief for those coming from abroad) and in the end the Government removed it, despite the protests of the Serie A League. It was above all an ideological war. It should be remembered, in fact, that the Growth Decree was already in place in 2021 when Mancini made us win the European Championship and that, in addition to some poor players, champions also arrived in Italy who allowed us to return to the top in the cups in the last three seasons: Atalanta’s victory in the Europa League in 2024 and Roma’s 2022 Conference League, Inter’s Champions League finals (2023), Roma’s Europa League (2023), Fiorentina’s Conference League (2023 and 2024), three semi-finalists in the various cups and the second best UEFA ranking.
Instead of defending shop interests, salaries and jobs of low-value Italians, it would have been smarter to maintain the tax breaks by raising the ceiling so as to incentivize only the best; the FIGC tried, but the wind was blowing in the opposite direction.
YOUNG PEOPLE LITTLE USED
Second sore point: young players play little. Very little, in fact. CIES data says that no Azzurri player is present in the top twenty Under 20s for use in the last season. Scrolling through the rankings, Kayode of Fiorentina appears with his 2,586 minutes, far from the top (Joao Neves of Benfica 4,905′) followed, as far as Serie A is concerned, by the Argentine of Bologna Santiago Castro (1,913′) and the Turkish of Juventus Kenan Yildiz (1,873′). Three out of 100: an admission of guilt for those who have carried out these choices, not for those who have had to deal with inheriting them from their reference championship.
Serie A invests in youth teams, but then abandons the fruits of their efforts. Only 5.5% of the total minutes were guaranteed by the so-called ‘Club trained’, products of the clubs’ youth sectors, compared to 19.6% in Spain and 18.3% in Switzerland. Only Greece and Turkey are lower than us. On the same level as the others, however, are also France (14.9%) and Belgium (14.8%).
MANY FOREIGNERS EVEN IN THE MINOR CHAMPIONSHIPS
Anyone who thinks that the problem is only Serie A is wrong. In the last season of Serie B, foreigners reached 33.2% of the rosters: 265 out of 798. Hardly of such a high level to justify their use. In 2023 there were more, but the trend has been growing steadily for a few years. And the Lega Serie B is fighting furiously to ask the FIGC to liberalize the registration of the first non-EU player for each team; all this while it is ready to go to court against the B teams that are the small/big reform that is finally taking hold: after Juventus there was Atalanta and now Milan. We should push, instead we are entrenched in our positions of income and the system is suffering.
The Primavera are also full of players who cannot be selected by the Italian national teams. Not as is being said around (the 2023 Italian champion Lecce without Italians is an exception), but still with an impressive progression: from 29.2% in 2021 we have reached 32.4% in 2024 for the Primavera 1 which is the top of the category.
THE AZZURRI AT THE EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIP WITHOUT EXPERIENCE
Result: Serie A sent 68 players to the European Championship, which is not a small number. On the contrary. It means that it is not true that the foreigners who come to us are scarce: they are often an enrichment. The problem is that Spalletti’s Italy was, after England, the team that drew the least from other tournaments (12%), which means having had as a reference pool only the selectable players from Serie A, which, as demonstrated before, are too few. Spain (27%) and France (68%) indicate that the right path is another.
So we fielded a young national team (only two under 30), inexperienced with its average of 21 appearances per player against Germany’s 35, France’s 34, Switzerland’s 43 and Croatia’s record of 45. Multiplied by 26 players called up, it means a gap of over 600 caps to be thrown onto the field with all the weight of experience needed to navigate the stormy seas of a major event. The same gap in terms of minutes played in the Champions League throughout their careers: 24,808 for the Italians, 82,797 for the Germans, 73,139 for the Portuguese, 59,314 for the French and so on. An embarrassing comparison born of the legitimate choices of the clubs.
So, we return to the initial question. Who is to blame for the dispersion of talent (little or much) that exists in Italy at youth level? Who should beat their chest and say mea culpa and who, at least, should avoid profiting from positions of presumed advantage after the flop of the European Championship, trying to think and work as a system instead of pushing for a showdown?
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