Italy’s absence from the 2026 World Cup has me feeling depressed. Not because the Azzurri deserve to be there (they don’t), but because it is a confirmation of just how far one of world football’s giants has fallen. Three straight failures to qualify have now pushed the Azzurri into territory no former champion has ever occupied. The shock of Italy missing the World Cup is officially old hat. Something has to change.
The first step in solving a problem is acknowledging the problem. Patterns like three straight World Cup misses don’t happen by accident. This isn’t about one playoff loss or one bad international window, and Italy didn’t stumble into this. The Azzurri have been trending to this point for years, building toward exactly this kind of failure through a series of decisions that, taken individually, looked defensible and, taken together, look deeply flawed.
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At the center of this issue is an idea that I’ve been harping on since I started writing for Chiesa di Totti: from the national team down to the smallest clubs on the peninsula, Italian football does not trust young players enough.
To be clear, that doesn’t mean nothing has changed. Under Gennaro Gattuso (who I’m hoping won’t have a job soon, but who’s to say, really), there has been at least a visible attempt to widen the player pool and bring younger profiles into the national setup. Players like Giorgio Scalvini, Destiny Udogie, Samuele Ricci, and Giacomo Raspadori have all seen opportunities at various points. That matters. It’s not nothing. It’s also not enough.
That’s because calling a young player into a squad for either club or country is one thing, and building around them by trusting them with real responsibility is another. So is putting them in positions to influence matches consistently. Too often, even when younger players break through in the world of Italian football, they are slotted into limited roles, asked to simplify their games rather than expand them.
We’ve seen this with the Azzurri just like we’ve seen it with Roma. Think of the typical timeline for a Roman academy graduate. They break onto the scene, there’s a lot of fanfare, and Romanisti hope they’re going to become a mainstay of the starting eleven. Yet the development often stalls there, with the player working as a rotation option or a starter due to lack of other options. When the player inevitably leaves, like Nicola Zalewski, fans almost seem happy they’re gone, instead of frustrated that the training staff couldn’t take a low-cost, high-potential youngster and turn them into the kind of diamond that Roma would spend tens of millions of euros on if they were developed in France or Germany.
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Which brings me to take a look at the national teams that have actually succeeded over the last decade. France gave their youngsters agency and were rewarded. Players like Kylian Mbappé weren’t eased in through the margins. They were made central, quickly, and allowed to grow at full speed. The system bent to their strengths, not the other way around. Of course Mbappé is a truly unique player, but situation determines a player’s ability to turn into a superstar nearly as much as their talent; if club and country won’t give youngsters opportunity, then even the most talented player will never reach their true potential.
These problems start at the club level for the Azzurri. Serie A remains one of the most tactically sophisticated leagues in the world, but it is also one of the most risk-averse. Managers operate under constant pressure, and coaches for sides ranging from Juventus to Roma to Venezia often feel like they’re one or two results away from dismissal. In that environment, the incentive structure is obvious: trust the player who won’t make the catastrophic mistake, even if he also won’t create the decisive moment. Wouldn’t you do that if your million-dollar job was on the line?
The problem is that this deference to experience works as both a shield for managers and an insurmountable wall for younger players. You see it every weekend. A 31-year-old journeyman keeps his place in the starting eleven because he “knows the system.” A 20-year-old with higher upside waits, or gets ten-minute cameos in matches already decided, or is asked to perform a narrowly defined role that strips away the very qualities that made him worth developing in the first place. He’s then sent on loan to a small side, or sold to a club outside of Italy who actually turns him into a star. Riccardo Calafiori could have been a success in Serie A, if he had been given a chance. Instead, he took a sojourn to Switzerland before finding stardom in the Premier League, and Serie A is worse off for it.
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Some might argue that young players do play for club and country now, and that this attack on Italian football is stale. So let me clear: throwing youngster minutes is useless unless they’re developed optimally when they see the pitch. Minutes without responsibility don’t accelerate growth, and roles without freedom don’t produce difference-makers.
The result is a generation of players who arrive at the international level having been managed, contained, and delayed. They are technically sound, tactically aware, but often lacking the decisiveness and adaptability that comes from being trusted earlier and more completely.
Roma has existed inside this same ecosystem. For years, the club has oscillated between leaning into youth and retreating into caution when that youth wasn’t 100% ready for prime time. A young player emerges, shows something, and then finds himself reduced to a secondary option behind someone more “reliable.” It’s understandable in isolation. It’s damaging in aggregate, both for the player and for the club.
Thankfully, there are real signs that Roma might be starting to push against these decades of stunting what is known as one of the best academies in Europe. Niccolò Pisilli doesn’t look like a player content to exist on the margins. He plays with urgency, with a willingness to make mistakes if it means influencing the game. That’s exactly what the Giallorossi need from him to thrive, and it’s what Italy will hopefully seize on once international football restarts post-World Cup. Daniele Ghilardi has the profile of a modern defender, comfortable in space and on the ball. He’s shown himself to be the kind of player Italy should be building around moving forward. Lorenzo Venturino is another step in that direction. He’s not the finished article, but he’s exactly the type of player who benefits from exposure rather than protection.
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Then there’s the broader shift that Roma is undergoing: they’re also integrating these younger Italian players alongside emerging talents from abroad, like Robinio Vaz and Evan Ferguson (who admittedly has had a tough go at it in the Eternal City, but hey, it’s important to try). That matters too, because true player development has to happen in competitive, dynamic, and evolving environments. Learning the ropes at a small side with no pressure will only get you so far; the future of Roma and the Azzurri will need to prove their mettle under bright lights, otherwise when the lights do get bright, like in a penalty shootout with World Cup qualification on the line, even the most promising youngsters will falter.
Roma isn’t fully bought in on playing youngsters. The instinct to default to experience still exists, and the caution hasn’t disappeared. Still, at least the team is trying, and if there’s a path forward for Italy out of this embarrassing era, it runs through clubs like Roma, clubs like Juventus, and even the smaller clubs evolving to match the moment.
While I believe the Azzurri need to update themselves tactically as well as developmentally, the philosophical overhaul can’t succeed until there’s a longer-term realignment. The national team can only nurture the players that the club game produces. If Serie A clubs continue to prioritize short-term security over long-term development, the national team will continue to reflect that tradeoff.
Italy has spent too long managing its future instead of investing in it. Thankfully, I don’t think reversing this requires a miracle: it just requires greater short-term risk tolerance for longer-term gain. It requires clubs to accept that development is uneven, that mistakes are inevitable, and that the payoff comes later.
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Roma can’t fix the system on its own, but if players like Pisilli, Ghilardi, and Venturino are given real roles, then the outline of something better starts to emerge. Let’s hope it does, because I can’t bear to see the Azzurri miss another World Cup.