LEGACY: Italy’s endless exile - how the four-time World Cup winners lost their way

First came a premature elimination from Euro 2024, knocked out in the round of 16 by Switzerland, leaving a dreadful image of the team’s play. Then, an exit in the quarter-finals of the Nations League, setting the stage for a disastrous start to the next World Cup qualifying campaign - a heavy 3-0 loss in Norway and a narrow win over Moldova - that led to Spalletti’s dismissal and left his successor, Rino Gattuso, with an almost impossible task of qualifying without the need for the play-offs.

Can all of this be explained simply by listing a sequence of bad results? Is that really enough to understand how a nation that has always been a point of reference in world football risks once again missing out on the World Cup stage, postponing its return until 2030 while extending its absence to sixteen years?

No. The reasons for this long crisis, perhaps the deepest Italy has ever faced, even worse than the dark years of 1954, 1962 and 1966, or the non-qualification of 1958, are multiple and profound. They are rooted in structural weaknesses, in the inability to adapt to the changes that have transformed football both tactically and physically.

But even more gravely, Italy has abandoned its own capacity to identify and nurture talent, embracing management models that have clearly failed to deliver results.

The extraordinary victory of 2006 in Germany marked the culmination of a generation of extraordinary players - Gigi Buffon, Alessandro Nesta, Fabio Cannavaro, Andrea Pirlo, Francesco Totti, Alessandro Del Piero, to name the most iconic - who had come close to triumph in previous years.

At the same time, that penalty shootout win in Berlin over France also marked the twilight of a great era. After it, not only did the national team’s results decline, but Italian clubs also stopped achieving major international success. Italy, which the following year celebrated glory in both the Champions League and Club World Cup via AC Milan, has not won either trophy since 2010, the year of Inter’s glory.

That same period also brought the first major warning sign: The disastrous 2010 World Cup in South Africa, where the reigning champions, under Marcello Lippi, crashed out early. Since then, Serie A clubs have reached four Champions League finals (two for Juventus, two for Inter), two Europa League finals (one lost by Roma under José Mourinho in 2023 on penalties to Sevilla, and one won spectacularly by Atalanta in 2024), and three consecutive Conference League finals, with Roma’s victory in the first edition in 2022 followed by Fiorentina’s defeats in 2023 and 2024.

Beyond those, there have been very few prestigious results, and there is a sense that the gap to Europe’s elite has not just widened since the golden era of the 1990s and early 2000s, but that the balance of power has actually been reversed.

A comparison with the Premier League is now almost impossible. England’s top-flight has created an unbridgeable gulf, being the first to grasp the Copernican revolution brought by the influx of billions from television networks and global investors. Clubs were forced to reinvent themselves, no longer as sporting associations, but as real entertainment businesses, capable of attracting capital from every corner of the world. They invested first in modern stadiums, designed to generate new revenue streams (merchandising, restaurants, shops, events), and then in acquiring the best players and managers available.

In Italy, however, the flood of money from television rights - first in lira, then in euros - instead fuelled a vicious cycle, as clubs focused on short-term spending to maintain appearances, rather than building a sustainable future. They ignored the ageing infrastructure, failing to modernise stadiums that were becoming increasingly outdated and unattractive, even for foreign fans who now represent a growing market. And they stopped investing in youth development, the very foundation of Italy’s footballing future - and by extension, the national team’s.

The sudden arrival of vast sums of money in the early 1990s coincided with another historic shift: The Bosman ruling of 1996. It triggered an uncontrolled pursuit of foreign stars - or presumed ones - in the hope of increasing competitiveness. But it deeply changed the fabric of Italian football. Entire academy teams, once known for producing homegrown talent, became filled with young players from every corner of the world, often chosen for economic convenience rather than merit. Youth coaches, under pressure to win and climb the career ladder, abandoned the mission of developing good players (and people) through sport.

This is one of the main reasons for the crisis of the past two decades, and especially of the last 11 years, the time between Italy’s last two World Cup appearances. How is it possible that a country which, in every post-war era, has produced players of the highest calibre now struggles to assemble a truly competitive national team - and, compared to many other nations, has so few internationally sought-after talents?

Only in recent years have Italian leagues showcased players like Marco Verratti, Gianluigi Donnarumma, Riccardo Calafiori, Guglielmo Vicario, Sandro Tonali, Destiny Udogie, and more recently Federico Chiesa, Giacomo Raspadori, Matteo Ruggeri and Giovanni Leoni, who have sought success abroad. Previously, high domestic wages and a certain reluctance among Italian players to challenge themselves overseas kept most at home, apart from a few exceptions, such as Gianluca Vialli, Paolo Di Canio, Gianfranco Zola in England, or Christian Vieri in Spain.

It is no coincidence that Italy’s last major triumph, at Euro 2020, was built around a handful of players who had grown and matured abroad, such as Donnarumma, Jorginho and Verratti, whose experiences outside Serie A allowed them to raise their game.

Today, as Italy aims to return to the World Cup after years of absence, it again places its hopes in players of higher international standing: Donnarumma, now at Manchester City after his European successes with Paris Saint-Germain; Calafiori of Arsenal; Tonali, the midfield anchor at Newcastle; and Moise Kean, who after difficult stints with PSG and Everton, has found a home at Fiorentina.

All good or even very good players, but apart from Donnarumma, few could truly be called champions. Those once abundant in Serie A, and therefore in the Azzurri, are now an endangered species.

Of the current crop, It is difficult to find - apart from Donnarumma - a single player capable of establishing himself as a starter in one of Europe’s top clubs. This lack of quality reflects a system that is unable to keep up with the times; a football culture that has failed to place pure talent at the centre of its thinking or to show courage in trusting its young players.

Many, despite promising careers in club academies and youth national teams, end up in Serie B or Serie C just to find minutes, or move abroad for experience. That was the path of Francesco Pio Esposito, now Inter’s new striker, who impressed on loan at Spezia last season, earning himself a place in the senior squad before scoring his first goal for Italy against Estonia. A 2005-born forward already drawing heavy comparisons to past Azzurri greats like Vieri and Luca Toni but who remains an exception, not a trend, in a football culture that still sees youth as a weakness.

Another is Giovanni Leoni, Italy’s new defensive hope. Before suffering a serious injury on his debut for Liverpool in the Carabao Cup, he had impressed with Parma and sparked a bidding war between Inter and Milan. Born in 2006, his £30 million transfer to Liverpool would be considered normal in the Premier League, but almost reckless for a Serie A club.

Alongside them stands Francesco Camarda, the youngest debutant in Serie A history having had his development accelerated by Milan during one of the Rossoneri’s toughest periods. Guided by Zlatan Ibrahimović, Camarda is now out on loan at Lecce, seeking experience in a more modest environment. After shining with Italy’s Under-17 European champions in 2024, his goal is to return to Milan and become an option for the national team, perhaps by Euro 2028 or the 2030 World Cup, rather than next summer’s tournament in Canada, Mexico and the United States.

Esposito, Leoni and Camarda; three faces of Italy’s footballing future, but also talents who carry a broader challenge: Reigniting passion among a new generation of fans.

That is because another worrying trend has emerged in the decline of the number of young Italians who are choosing football as their sport. The rise of new national heroes in other disciplines has shifted attention, with Jannik Sinner and Matteo Berrettini leading lights in the world of tennis, Sofia Goggia and Federica Brignone in skiing, and the resurgence of Italy’s volleyball teams.

In this context, full of contradictions and difficulties, national team coach Gattuso has had to live under immense pressure. Another failure would represent the final blow to a political and managerial system that, in recent years, has produced disappointing results, very few structural reforms, and now risks part of its reputation on passing a long-promised law on stadiums — a reform crucial for modernising Italy’s infrastructure ahead of Euro 2032, which they will co-host with Turkey. The long and exhausting saga surrounding the new San Siro in Milan, and the stadium projects in Bologna, Florence, Rome and Naples, have become almost as vital as avoiding a third consecutive failure to qualify for the World Cup.

The moment of truth for Italian football is now.