Palmieri (Sassuolo): ‘Let young people make mistakes in peace. And clubs need to invest ‘

“Now that the national team has been eliminated from the playoffs for the World Cup, we realize that there is no generational change and we wonder why there are no new talents: the reality is that things have not worked for many years and the critical issues had to be addressed. a long time ago. Perhaps we would not have reached this point ”. Francesco Palmieri is 54 years old and after playing with several clubs in Serie A and B, he is now responsible for the Sassuolo youth sector. A club that, just as Mancini tried to do with Italy, when it comes to young people goes against the trend and tries to enhance them at home and launch as many as possible. It is no coincidence that at one point, against North Macedonia, two thirds of the blue trident was made up of black-green players, Raspadori and Berardi. Maybe in the future some boys of the current Under 18 will also wear that shirt, currently engaged in the Viareggio Tournament. Right under the eyes of Palmieri, Adrian Cannavaro (son of Paolo) and his teammates reassembled Fiorentina 2-1 earning the semifinal. “We – he says – are lucky because Giovanni Carnevali strongly believes in young people and we work every day to find them and then develop them to the best of our ability. But the truth is that there is an underlying problem and if there are no rules from above, I don’t think the situation will change ”.

Facilities and coaches

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Of the best talents under 20 globally, no one plays in Serie A and the playing time of those coming from the nursery is still too low. “Something will change only if we all start to really believe in it – comments Palmieri -. Young people must play and make mistakes, not be killed at the first mistake. But it should happen everywhere, which is why I say that a top-down approach would be needed, such as the obligation to bring one or two youth players to the first team every year. Kids are never ready… if you don’t believe in it, it’s hard “. “And then – he adds – clubs should be forced to invest in sports centers, it is not possible that some teams do not even have the fields to train the various under teams. We talk about young people in difficulty, but we forget that they need constant attention and only with state-of-the-art facilities and paid coaches is it possible to really follow them and not waste them “. Underpaid technicians are a sensitive issue when it comes to nurseries. “The mentality must be changed – he confirms – it shouldn’t be a problem to hire an extra coach or observer, but in some cases it is. These investments must be favored “.

Foreigners and second teams

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“The fact that there are many foreigners in the youth and Primavera squads – explains the head of the Sassuolo youth sector – is normal given that today the market is free and costs are limited. To ours, on the other hand, we give exorbitant values ​​without the possibility of making them grow “. For the moment, the experiment of the second teams is also shipwrecked as Juventus is the only one to have created an Under 23 formation that plays in Serie C. “I think it could be one of the solutions, because the gap between academy and series A is wide, so much so that only the best start from Serie B and almost all end up in C, but behind it there is also an important economic issue. We are making our considerations, in recent years we have already grown exponentially “.

“Lack of talent”

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Stefano Luxoro is one of the closest observers to the Viareggio Tournament, with which he has also collaborated in the past. He has worked for Roma, Milan, Juventus and other Italian clubs. For him, the “culture of results” that has also infected the Italian youth sectors is the mother of the worst consequences, and originates from “the lack of investment in coaches and the poverty of managers able to evaluate their work with quality”. The result is that in Italy “there is a lack of talent”. “It is true – he clarifies – that only those players who can really make a difference and improve our young players through sporting comparison should arrive from abroad, but the real problem is upstream: we condition the boys without giving them the opportunity to really express themselves and when they approach the first teams they are not ready ”. “We do not encourage them to make a technical gesture, to have courage, to develop their talent – he adds – we do not get them used to making decisions under pressure, which for example is one of the cornerstones of the Barcelona cantera, but we cut their technical development by caging them in the our tactics. The conditions have to change, we cannot speak of collective tactics to 15-year-olds ”. There are several reasons. “One of these – he concludes – is certainly the need for coaches, often unpaid properly, to respond to a need for results. They are neither protected nor well valued and this has triggered a contraction rather than a development mechanism. So much so that many of them use the youth teams only as a springboard for the first team “.