There are young people in Italy and they play, the problem is that they don’t exalt. The U21 European Championship begins

The most used, abused phrase when it comes to young people, football and Serie A is that Italy is not a country for young people. It has been read and listened to to such an extent that it has become a commonplace, something necessarily true. It is brought out often, always when the Under 21 national team something important has to be played. Like these days that the Azzurrini are playing the European Championship and qualifying for the Olympics. This has been the case at least since the early 2000s, since the Under 21 team that won titles in the 1990s – three European Championships in a row with Cesare Maldini as coach – won several fewer and then never won again. Back then, young people played, they say now. Not like now that they can’t find space, they say.

There is something true. At the time, many of the successful players with coach Maldini were already great protagonists in Serie A. Since then, however, everything has changed: the transfer market was less invasive than today and the youth sectors were a necessity because scouting was more difficult. Above all there was more choice. Since 1990, the number of minors registered in football teams has dropped by about 40 percent. And if there are fewer kids, the lesser the chance of finding talent. This applies to everyone, especially in Italy where the demographic decline is greater. The absence of ius soli or ius scholae amplifies the problem.

Yet not everything is correct. Because there are good young people and when they are really good they play. Even in level teams. What has changed is where they come from, but does it go like this with football, does the ability to intuit talent move with the movement of projects that believe that shaping young people is a resource, the only one? to survive in football that matters. The Cremonese and Fiorentina of 1992, the teams that provided Maldini with a substantial part of the group of the first European success, are now called Atalanta and Empoli. It is there where the Under 21s play the most and best. The rest has changed little. The youth sectors continue to provide good prospects, someone gets lost, someone resists. To these U21 European Championships all the players called up by head coach Paolo Nicolato they have played continuously, almost all of them in Serie A.

Nor is it correct to say that Italy is light years behind the major foreign championships. In France, young players play a lot, but Ligue1 is not very competitive: it’s since the 1996 Cup Winners’ Cup won by Paris Saint-Germain that a French team hasn’t celebrated in Europe. Young people play a lot because the clubs can’t do anything else. Not being able to compete for money and prestige, PSG aside, with the other European teams, must exploit what they have, i.e. youth sectors capable of intercepting talent and then reselling them at the highest possible price abroad. And all this is good for the national team. The leaders would gladly do without it, they would gladly serve their interests by disregarding those of the Blues.

Apart from France, the minutes played by the Under 21s in Italy are in line, according to data from the latest Opta Analyst report, with those of Spain and Germany (5,3,000 minutes more overall in the last season than in Italy) and better than those in the Premier League. The big problem compared to Spain and Germany is that Italy has been waiting for a while for those two or three players capable of capturing the eyes and making the heart beat faster. We haven’t seen great strikers for a while and even the playmakers are on the run. Elsewhere perhaps there is more choice, more abundance. We have to understand if this is a generational problem – take a long line of this generation – or systemic. Maybe i would need bigdata, but better not to say it in Italy. Every time you talk about it, football sentiment is offended. Even the ball here has his feelings.