Italy’s elimination from Euro 2024 has relaunched this and other stereotypes about the entire movement.
Minute 92 of Switzerland-Italy, first round of 16 of Euro 2024: Polish referee Szymon Marciniak blows his whistle three times and puts an end to one of the most disheartening matches in the recent history of the Italian national team, in which we were never able to really worry our Swiss opponents. Our European Championship ends deservedly, but, as with every stinging elimination of the Italian national team – we had already heard it after Uruguay, Sweden and North Macedonia – here the football experts (that is, everyone, when Italy plays the European Championship or the World Cup) roll up their sleeves and come up with a maxim that has never been abandoned: children no longer play in the street.
We are talking about a cliché that has now become a habit to use in these circumstances, a bit like the smug “Italy always gives its best when it has its back to the wall” in situations where the Azzurri manage to get by despite having water up to their necks, the hopeful “player X will be the new Schillaci” for any young emerging player surprisingly called up to a major tournament (in 2021 this was said of Raspadori) or the optimistic “but as always the Italian tournament starts now” recalling illustrious historical precedents after a disappointingly successful group stage (it would then be necessary to understand what these precedents are, given that the case described occurred only in 1982 and 1994).
Support Sportellate: join Our work is based on the commitment and passion of a young editorial team. Through the association you help us to grow and always improve the quality of the contents. Join now!
It makes sense, we are the country of sixty million coaches and sports commentators and therefore it is normal that each one has his own truth. It is a little less so, however, when it becomes the official narrative, spread by celebrities, eminent sports journalists and even figures within the world of football. Is it really like that? Obviously not, and not only because in Switzerland if you play football in the street it is very likely that you will be fined, so evidently we have not been beaten by footballers who grew up playing football in the favelas. Let’s take a closer look.
The subtext of “children no longer play in the street” is that young Italians are no longer there, so that, to make a long story short, Yamal was born in the province of Barcelona and not in the province of Novara. Right? Well, although the football knowledge of those who talk about children who no longer play in the streets is usually limited to knowing that Ronaldo is Portuguese and Messi is Argentine, in fact the last semblance of possible generational talent seen in Italy was represented by Balotelli, who unfortunately for us never managed to emerge for reasons that we will not discuss above.
Let’s analyze it carefully, though. From 2023 to today, Italy Under-20 has come second at the World Cup in Argentina, Italy Under-19 has won the European Championships in Malta and Italy Under-17, about a month ago, did the same in Cyprus. Oh, evidently someone who knows how to play the ball is there.
Let’s get this straight: not everything is fine. We already achieved excellent results in the Under-20 World Cup in 2017 and 2019, but many of the members of those squads did not live up to expectations. Don’t worry, you won’t read any invective against bad clubs that don’t let Italians play, but it is clear that there is a problem.
In youth tournaments at a national level, Italy always does well up to the Under-21s, that is, until the others start fielding players who are already top-level starters who find themselves facing more or less debuting boys. Perhaps this is not the only problem, but it is no coincidence that both Mancini and Spalletti have suggested that young Italians go abroad to play more and develop in different contexts. Advice followed, among others, by Simone Pafundi, who, after trying to make space for himself at Udinese, spent six months on loan at Lausanne to play more, as well as Daniele Natali, who has just moved from Barcelona to Leverkusen.
So how do we solve this problem? It is possible that the B teams offer interesting opportunities: the level of the Primavera Championship is too low to really train young talents, who are unlikely to be able to immediately make the leap to Serie A and who are therefore often sent on loan to the lower leagues, where they end up getting lost. However, the B teams offer the possibility for young players to play under the control of their own club in Serie C.a championship that is very demanding in terms of competition, maturing much more quickly. Juventus Next Gen has thus brought out SouléIling-Junior, Yildiz and, among the Italians, Fagioli and Miretti, so much so that it has been imitated by Atalanta, Milan and hopefully others too.
But let’s go back to the federal sphere, it cannot be denied that the work of Maurizio Viscidicoordinator of the youth national teams since 2016, has been excellent. The FIGC scouting, led by him, has proven to be very effective: under his management, among the players called up for the Italy Under-17 team (so when they were sixteen or a little older) we find people like Bellanova, Sticks, Kean, ScamRicci, Beans e Udogie. If we look at the Italian Under-19 and Under-20 teams, here we have Zaniolo, Frattesi, Tonal, Raspadori e Good morning. All footballers who then, some more than others, have demonstrated their worth.
Many of these were also in Spalletti’s list of players called up for Euro 2024 or would have been without injuries.
Let’s talk about something in which Germany, which is often taken – not only in football – as a North Star to follow at all costs, is lacking: many German fans fear that this European Championship could be the swan song of this generation. And, in fact, except for Wirtz, Beier and Musiala (who grew up in England, however) no player in Nagelsmann’s squad is younger than 25.
In short, it may also be that none of the various KayodeNdour, House of the House, BoldInfinity, Koleosho and Camarda becomes really strong (of course we hope the opposite), but it cannot be denied that the work done with the youth national teams is truly excellent. Just think, for example, that last year Italy was the only team in Europe to have qualified for the Under-17, Under-19 and Under-21 European Championships. So the young people are not there? Not only are they there, but they are also discovered very early and immediately inserted into the Italian youth national team system.. Why they then fail to be at the level that the ambitions of the senior national team would require, well, that depends on other factors. Unfortunately, we add.
Another common phrase that is often heard is that of “structural problems” of Italian football. It’s a catchphrase that convinces so many people that if you go to a bar and say that Italy loses because of structural problems, they’ll probably look at you like a Harvard physics graduate. Except that, if you then ask what these structural problems specifically are, the aforementioned expert will probably start sweating like Ted Hays in “The Craziest Plane in the World” when he has to land the plane, and then he sketches out without much conviction some speech about corruption, about recommendations and – it goes without saying – about children who no longer play in the streets.
Ok, let’s reason. That Gabriele Gravina’s management of Italian football is not the most enlightened in the history of football is beyond discussion. In recent years, the FIGC has been guilty of wicked decisions, if not bordering on criminal, such as the decision to extend the timeshare cap from 2024 to 2028which sacrificed the legitimate sporting ambitions of the fans of the Bari on the altar of the good relations between Gravina and De Laurentiis, who then repaid the favor with the hallucinatory show staged for the payment of Spalletti’s clause, against which he never even appealed.
But how much does all this have to do with the national team and, specifically, with the European Championship? The answer, as often happens when these issues are touched upon, is: little, very little. The structural problems we are talking about have never affected the national team, which instead must be admitted has often been managed efficiently – it is worth mentioning the example of the idea of including Vialli in Mancini’s staff, which then proved important for the victory of Euro 2020 – with some serious exceptions, such as the decision not to change technical leadership after the defeat against North Macedonia – something that, in hindsight, probably impacted Italy’s preparation for Euro 2024.
If we add to this the aforementioned work that is being done with the youth national teams, we get that there is no overwhelming bureaucratic burden holding back the fortunes of the Italian national team. Also because, already in 2021, the FIGC was anything but an example of good management, yet this did not prevent us from winning the European Championships with full merit, bringing a team with a defined playing identity like perhaps never before.
In short, perhaps it would be better to start talking about concrete problems. Also because this leopard-like machine of talking about everything to talk about nothing is likely not to displease those who sit at the top of Italian football who, seeing people talk about the highest systems and not about the real problems of this national team, may feel authorized not to change anything.
So what’s the gist? The gist is that we should talk about why this national team, tactically, has not shown, except for the first half against Albania, anything of what it expressed from September to March. But we could also discuss why the team was in a terrible mental condition, evidenced by the tears with which Calafiori vented after Zaccagni’s goal against Croatia. Or we could talk about some questionable choices by Spalletti, such as insisting without any second thoughts on a terrible Di Lorenzo.
It was such a disastrous European Championship that we could talk for hours and hours about what went wrong, but it was a very football-related and not very structural failure. Of course, we would have material available even if we wanted to move on to “civil” issues: why hasn’t the multi-ethnicity that we see in France, England and Germany spread in Italian football? Do Italian citizenship laws and the racism that second-generation immigrants experience in everyday life have something to do with it? The answer, in this case, is left to the reader.
And with all this, be careful, we do not want to say that football in Italy works perfectly. Sport in schools is reduced to two hours a week of physical education that are used mostly to waste time, football schools are often characterized by worrying nepotism, by increasingly high costs for families and by coaches who are not always adequately trained. But these are problems that always exist, not only when Vargas he curls the ball and scores the 2-0 which makes everyone understand that it wasn’t his night.
Pulling them out when the national team is eliminated also has the effect of demeaning them, because they should be treated day by day by the FIGC, CONI and the Government. Even without the children playing in the streets, in short, young Italians are there and they are also strong, as demonstrated by our youth national teams that are a European if not world excellence. The European Championship went badly and it is right to talk about it, but for once it would be good not to further pollute a football debate that is already decidedly murky.
2024-07-03 13:00:00
#Italy #true #children #longer #play #streets
