It was last March 31st and Italy, defeated on penalties by Bosnia and Herzegovina, resigned itself to missing a third consecutive World Cup. From the very beginning, one of the main causes of yet another failure had been identified in the inability — through lack of courage, enterprise and poor planning — to invest in youth academies, to involve Under-age players in first-team squads so as to develop them and thus feed the national team with fresh talent. An accusation levelled above all at Serie A clubs, "guilty" of being willing to take risks (and, above all, invest) not in the next Haalands and Bellinghams, but in foreign players whose talent has yet to be discovered. Conversely, they remain very cautious when it comes to bringing through the players they already have at home.
Four months later, as if the difficulties the national team is encountering in choosing its next head coach were not enough, the battle to give more space to the young generation seems lost before it has even begun. And yet even today FIGC president Malagò returned to stressing the importance of "working with young people, with those who are 15, 16 or 17 years old today. Sowing in the field in order to reap later."
But the summer transfer window, at least up to now, has seen very few Italian names in the spotlight being contested between clubs eager to roll the dice on the roulette wheel of the future.
One is Mattia Liberali, 19 years old, playing as a trequartista and winger, who came through Milan's academy. Como have lured him away from Catanzaro on a contract until 2031. Also at Catanzaro is Costantino Favasuli, a target of Atalanta and Napoli, 22 years old, a midfielder called up to the senior national team by interim head coach Baldini. At Milan there is Francesco Camarda (19 years old, returned from his loan at Lecce and tied down until 2031 at the express request of manager Amorim) and Christian Comotto (last season at Spezia, 18 years old, also "locked in" for five years).
Scrolling through the list of new arrivals and ongoing negotiations, many foreign players little known to the general public and plying their trade abroad stand out instead. Such as Mikel Amondarain, 21 years old, an Argentine midfielder from Estudiantes, or Ognjen Ugresic, a born-2006 midfielder from Partizan Belgrade (Bologna); Demi Akarakiri, an English midfielder of Nigerian origin, signed from Everton (Cagliari); the Moroccan with a Dutch passport Anouar El Azzouzi, from the Bundesliga (Frosinone); Franz Ethan Meichtry, a Swiss midfielder of Cameroonian origin taken from Swiss side Thun (Genoa); John Kennedy, born in 2002 and owned by Fluminense, who has attracted interest from Lazio; Manga Foe-Ondoa, a French midfielder (Monza); Arijanet Muric, a goalkeeper whom Sassuolo have bought outright from Ipswich Town.
The hope is that each of these gambles will prove to be a winning one. But they remain players who, albeit entirely legitimately, will end up taking opportunities away from their Italian counterparts. And they feed the suspicion that the next potential azzurri star will continue to languish on the bench, if not in the stands, waiting for an opportunity that will never come, stifled by the prevailing obsession with foreign players. Despite everything.
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