Italian football and the loss of talent
Italia were beaten by Bosnia in the World Cup play-off, but since the last World Cup in Brazil, they have lost 40,000 young footballers along the way
Having beaten Northern Ireland, Italia lost the World Cup play-off against Bosnia. The Azzurri’s performance confirmed that one of the most serious problems plaguing Italian football for the past couple of decades is the lack – or rather, the dispersal – of talent, with consequent sporting, social and, ultimately, economic damage.
The statistics on the limited playing time afforded to Italian Under-21 players are well known (in line with the Premier League and the Bundesliga, but half that of La Liga and Ligue 1), yet on their own they say both a great deal and very little about the phenomenon. If Italian Under-21s are not being fielded, it is also because they are not considered ready by managers who cannot risk failing to achieve certain results (failing to qualify for the Champions League means financial turmoil for almost all Italian clubs).
So why is it that young Italian players are not considered ready, unlike their peers in many other countries? Evidently, because even when youth academies are able to identify and nurture the talent that exists across the country, the professional or semi-professional system is no longer capable of developing this talent within a reasonable timeframe (to the extent that some of the best prospects are now forced to move abroad). If we look at the playing time accumulated in the first team in the major European club competitions by the Italian talents called up for the youth national teams in the World and European Championships in their age groups held between 2023 and 2025 – in which Italia has often excelled – the gap in experience accumulated compared to their opponents is striking. One need only mention the names of Desplanches and Casadei (2003), Hasa (2004), Pafundi (2006) or Liberali (2007) and their foreign peers to understand this: Gavi (2004), Douè (2005), Bellingham (2003), Cubarsì (2007).
But this isn’t just a phenomenon affecting top players. If we look at the number of players aged between 15 and 21 registered with the FIGC for Serie A clubs in the 2014/15 season, as recorded in the Reportcalcio 2025 produced by the Italian Football Federation, PwC and Arel, it is clear that after 10 years, in the 2023/24 season, just 4.5 per cent – or 109 players – were still playing for top-flight clubs, 3.6 per cent were in a Serie B team and 8.6 per cent in Serie C. Of the 2,175 players registered with Serie B clubs, again in the same age group and in the 2014/15 season, just 1.5% were still in the second tier ten seasons later, and just 13, 0.6%, managed to make the leap to Serie A. Of the nearly 5,000 registered players per club in the third tier of professional football, only 90, or 1.8%, remained at the same level a decade later, 0.3% made it to Serie A and 0.6% to Serie B.
More generally, of the 9,600 players registered with professional clubs – young people who train at least four days a week, plus the commitment of a match at the weekend – ultimately, after ten years, just 0.5% make it to the top. Forty-six per cent are absorbed into the amateur sector and 42% (4,000 players) are ‘unregistered’ after ten years, meaning they have given up football. This means that since the last World Cup, in which Italia qualified in 2014 in Brazil, around 40,000 players aged between 15 and 21 who had started out in the youth teams of professional clubs have been ‘lost’.
