It is December 2011 when former top footballer Roberto Baggio full of courage presents a nine hundred-page plan that should help Italian football get back on its feet. La Squadra Azzurri was ingloriously eliminated the year before at the World Cup in South Africa in a group with Slovenia, Paraguay and New Zealand; the writings on the wall for the Italian Football Association (FIGC). Investments in youth training and scouting, focus on technique and tactics instead of results and attention to individual development of youth players are the most important points in Baggio’s plan. “A Revolution”based on a Dutch and Spanish model, it had to be.
After Italy’s elimination against Bosnia and Herzegovina in the play-offs for the 2026 World Cup (1-1, loss on penalties) last Tuesday, Italian newspapers again on the ambitious, comprehensive plan. But mainly about what the world could have looked like if it had actually been implemented. A frustrated Baggio pulled the plug in 2013. “I was forbidden to work. [..] The project was approved, but funding never materialized. The project was literally dead.”
Without reforms, the sporting crisis has only worsened since then. Italy – four-time world champions – did not participate in the World Cup in 2018 and 2022, and will not participate this year for the third time in a row. “The Third Apocalypse and the Worst of All,” wrote La Gazzetta dello Sport Wednesday. National coach Gennaro Gattuso put on the sack on Tuesday. “I’m sorry”, said afterwards he cried to the Italian people. But according to experts of Italian football, the decline of the former football superpower mainly conceals persistently conservative, short-term thinking.
No urge to innovate
“It has once again mercilessly come to light that the roots of Italian football are rotten,” says David Endt, former team manager of Ajax and Italy expert, by telephone. NRC. According to him, it starts with the fact that Italian clubs, up to Serie C, still live according to the issues of the day. “The result is sacred, even in youth teams. As a result, little individual class is trained. Clubs would also rather buy an experienced foreigner than give a young talent the opportunity. This ultimately affects the national team.”
The alarmist book has a similar tendency La fine del calcio italiano (The end of Italian football) from 2018. In it, journalist Marco Bellinazzo explained how Italian football has been “ravaged and ruined” by incorrect spending by club directors since the late 1990s. A lot of money goes to agents or is siphoned out of club coffers. According to Bellinazzo, there is no urge to innovate.
No Totti or Del Piero has broken through for years.
What is most surprising to Willem Haak is that the clubs did not change anything after 2018. He’s been making for years the podcast Lo Stadio about Italian football, and leave by phone NRC know that there is still little truth in the Italian youth training structure. “In major football countries such as France or Spain, clubs work together, with a network of football schools, for example. Something like that does not exist in Italy. The talent is probably there, but it is not even discovered. No Totti or Del Piero has broken through for years.”
Player Pio Esposito cannot believe the elimination.
Photo Matteo Ciambelli/Reuters
According to Haak, conservative thinking runs deep in Italian football. He finds the attitude of trainers such as Gian Piero Gasperini (AS Roma) and Massimiliano Allegri (AC Milan) towards the Spanish Como coach Cesc Fabregas illustrative. With attacking football and young (foreign) talents, Como is currently fourth in the Italian league. “Those trainers simply cannot stand it when such a smartass with a different way of thinking shakes up Serie A,” says Haak. “While they should embrace his ideas.” He also finds it significant that the progressive former Ajax coach Francesco Farioli was not in the picture at any Serie A club last summer.
The three missed World Cups do not correspond with the European Championship win of 2021. According to Haak, that was one of the few times that the team formed a close collective, partly because the players went through the fire for the then seriously ill assistant coach Gianluca Vialli – who has since passed away. “And they played a number of home games, which also helped.” Endt calls the European Championship win a “masquerade”. “It all fell just right then.”
Criticism of sports minister
But Andrea Abodi, the Italian Minister of Sports, also sees that the problems are deep-rooted. He suggested the departure of federation president Gabriele Gravina on Wednesday. “It is clear that Italian football needs to be rebuilt from the ground up,” he said. “That starts with changes at the top of the FIGC.”
It is clear that Italian football needs to be rebuilt from the ground up.
Abodi’s statements followed an accusation from the unpopular Gravina, chairman since 2018. That one claimed that Abodi does not sufficiently support football, in contrast to a number of ‘amateur sports’ and ‘state sports’. By this he was referring to the successful Italian Winter Olympians – they won thirty medals in Milan-Cortina, an Italian record. According to Abodi, it was “a mistake” for Gravina to “blame institutions” for the missed World Cup.
Despite the criticism, Gravina, chairman since 2018, does not want to hear anything about leaving for the time being. National coach Gattuso is also allowed to stay in his seat. Endt suspects that this is just a reflex. “It will be hopeless for them, I think. But even after a dismissal, the question is: is there a plan to structurally change football? It will have to be revolutionary. If it is not, then I have a gloomy outlook.”
