England has been facing more and more criticism over the fact that the Premier League is so overpopulated with foreign players that young English players don’t have the opportunity to grow adequately. Italy seems to be under fire for the same sort of situation, with such a lack of talented Italian football players.
In recent times the Azzuri have been less than impressive. After a less than impressive qualifying campaign for the 2010 World Cup finals in which an equaliser in Ireland pushed them into the final after a sequence of drawn games, Italy has faced growing disappointment. Italy’s disappointment only grew in the finals, where their first two games against Paraguay and New Zealand were supremely lackluster.
Despite Italy’s strong reputation for defense, their lack of imagination in attack was painful. They missed the guile of Andrea Pirlo, they missed the threat of a player of the calibre of Francesco Totti and an in form Luca Toni and what is more, they may well struggle to find adequate long term replacements for all these players to put in the latest soccer jersey. Inter Milan made Jose Mourinho proud as the won the Serie A and Coppa Italia in 2010, ending up lifting the Europeans Champions League 2-0 against Bayern Munich at a match in Madrid. Disappointingly, Inter failed to contribute any players to the World Cup Squad for Italy. Inter’s first team hardly ever contained an Italian player for most of the season. Only youngsters Davide Santon and Mario Balotelli made a lasting contribution and they were used mainly from the substitutes bench and neither made the final squad for the summer’s showpiece event in South Africa.
Looking through Serie A big teams is enough to confirm this worrying trend. AC Milan have more Italians in their first team squad, but the vast majority are approaching or beyond 30 years of age. The picture is a little brighter at Juventus, but the team is only saved by Chiellni, Giovinco and De Ceglie rising up to support the phenomenal Marchisio in the midfield. Still, a majority of Juventus’s Italian nationals exceed the age of thirty, especially those that could be considered as first team material.
Increasingly, the bulk of the Italian national team is not now coming from the top four or five teams in Serie A, but from the teams who sit just outside of that elite group. The 2010 World Cup Italian squad has a total of six players from Juventus, with two coming from Milan, and one from Roma. However, the team also has 3 players from Napoli, another 2 from Sampadoria, 2 from Genoa, two from Fiorentina, and one apiece from Udinese, Cagliari, Bari, and Al Ahli of the UAE.
The trend is not stopping anytime soon, thanks to the ages of top players this may become a worry for both Azzuri managers and the Italian FA alike. A number of these Italian players are not currently participating in the Champions League every season, a wounding phenomenon that will fiercely impact performance abilities when such players are on the pitch.
It isn’t a bleak future by any means, youngsters like Salvatore Bocchetti, Leonardo Bonucci, Giampaolo Pazzini and Domenico Criscito are coming through the ranks, but unlike their predecessors, their football education will come on the pitches of Cagliari, Bari, Palermo and Lazio, rather than the Bernebeu, Nou Camp, Old Trafford and Allianz Arena.
The Italian side needs to begin worrying about the state of their leagues. Can a champions be said to be truly champions of a country, when it contains no nationals from that country and contributes no players to the national cause?
