Youth player production in Italy: Is it really a problem?

By: Francesco | January 19th, 2011

campionato primavera

Last week, the new FIFA version of the Balon d’Or was handed out, and an interesting thing took place: all three players on the podium (Lionel Messi, Xavi, and Andres Iniesta) were all Barcelona players. But even more than that, all three had been produced by Barcelona’s famous Cantera youth system. It was a big achievement for the Catalan club, and one that few clubs can brag about. All three players wore the Blaugrana kit from when they were little kids all the way up to the present day. It makes you wonder: How many players currently in Serie A can say they have started with a club at the very bottom of the youth system and go on to make an appearance with that club?

The answer is very little. There are currently only 18 players in Serie A that have started from the Pulcini (the youngest youth team) and made their way through the Esordienti, Giovanissimi, Allievi, Berretti, and Primavera sides and then making an appearance with the first team. Here are the most notable:

Big team wise, Roma has Francesco Totti, Daniele De Rossi, Aleandro Rosi (started at Lazio, but moved to Roma at the age of 12), and for the first part of the season had Stefano Okaka (who actually started from the Allievi squad because of his great potential). Juventus boasts Claudio Marchisio and Paolo De Ceglie. Inter, despite being a mostly foreign team, has Davide Santon.

Sampdoria had two players in Guido Marilungo and Vincenzo Fiorillo, but just sold Marilungo to Atalanta and loaned Fiorillo to Spezia in Lega Pro. Fiorentina gave two hometown boys their debut this season in Michele Camporese and Cristiano Piccini. Cesena has two homegrown players that are actually starters: Emanuele Giaccherini and Luca Ceccarelli. Lots of teams don’t even have one, and those are: Chievo, Lecce, Palermo, Udinese, and Milan.

There are some players, like in the case of Alessandro Matri (who made 1 appearance for Milan) that made one appearance or a few appearances for the first team after going through the youth system and then were shipped away. Leandro Greco is a similar story, he only made a couple of appearances for Roma before being loaned out, and he was only kept by the Giallorossi this summer after nobody was interested in him. Some players had to go almost their whole careers before ever returning (Paolo Cannavaro with Napoli and Cristiano Zanetti with Fiorentina).

There are other players that went through the whole youth system and then didn’t ever make it to the first team, getting shipped away after being too old to play for the Primavera. Luca Antonini is a big name that had to go through this, and he was shipped away after graduating from the Primavera. He was only brought back to Milan after a good season at Empoli and when Milan had that disastrous 07/08 season they needed some players to fill out the roster. Paolo Orlandoni’s story is a rare one: after being shipped away from Inter in 1991 after graduating from the Primavera, he didn’t return until 2005 at the age of 33, when he was signed to be Inter’s third goalkeeper.

Also, there are many players in Serie A that were bought by clubs at the Primavera stage and spent the rest of their youth elsewhere. The best clubs at doing this seem to be Juventus and Inter. So players like Del Piero, Criscito, Palladino, Nocerino, Mirante, Masiello (Juve) and Potenza, Andreolli, Bonucci, Donati, Dellafiore, Siligardi (Inter) were technically produced in their youth system, but were bought only to play for the Primavera team and had started somewhere else.

You make the argument that Atalanta has probably produced the best players in the last 10 years, with players like Donati, Mutarelli, Agazzi, Lazzari, Canini, Pinardi, Perico, Pelizzoli, Natali, Montolivo, Motta, Brivio, Pazzini, Zauri, and Morosini all starting their footballing careers in Bergamo and 13 of those players currently important in Serie A.

The problem is not that Serie A isn’t producing players, it’s that they don’t give them a chance. Currently, the 20 clubs of Serie A have produced 110 professional players playing in Italy. Out of those 110, 48 of them (43.6%) didn’t even get a chance after the youth system (the most notable being Pepe and Galloppa with Roma, Bentivoglio with Juve, Caracciolo, Astori and Maccarone with Milan). Others were shipped out after their debut: Matri, Donadel, Zigoni and Antonelli all had one appearance with Milan and then were sent away, Meggiorini one with Inter, Squizzi one with Juve. Some were a little more lucky: Cerci four with Roma, Daniele Conti 5 with the Giallorossi. In comparison, players like Paloschi (7 appearances with Milan) and Di Vaio (8 appearances with Lazio) can consider themselves lucky. The stats show that 62% of youngsters are sent away after only one or two appearances.

So, is youth player production a problem? No, but courage is the problem. Because Italian calcio is focused always on the result being the most important thing, young players are rarely given a shot barring few exceptions (like a player really being a potential world class talent, like Cassano for Bari in 1999 or more recently Balotelli for Inter). While there are more and more cries for this to change and some signs that have showed improvement, it still will be something that will be very difficult to change in Italian calcio. It’s just the way it is. Maybe financial fair play will help, but we don’t know. Will Italy ever have it’s own Xavi, Iniesta, and Messi Balon d’Or top 3? At the moment, it doesn’t look very likely.

Some Related Serie A Posts:

Category: AC Milan, Bari, Bologna, Brescia, Cagliari, Catania, Cesena, Chievo, Fiorentina, Genoa, Inter, Juventus, Lazio, Lecce, Napoli, Palermo, Parma, Players, Roma, Sampdoria, Serie A, Udinese

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MM9

Excellent read, thank you.

I totally agree about the opportunities afforded to Italian youth -- I really hope this is something that is addressed in the near future.

Speaking of which, does anyone know how Arturo Lupoli is playing??
FrancescoItalyOffside

Lupoli plays for Ascoli in Serie B and is playing well. It's disappointing that he didn't turn out to be as successful as his Parma teammate Giuseppe Rossi. I remember Thierry Henry even said he could become the next Paolo Rossi. He's still young though, and I saw he's linked with a couple of smaller Serie A sides.
agiamba

Bari gave youth a chance, and look what happened...

(Not really. Blame the Matarrese's for not re-investing, those dipshits)
Dumitru86

another reason why theres few young players is because the game is slower in italy than in england, spain or germany, so old players can play at a much more advanced age and their experience gives them an edge over younger players. more older players means less places for younger ones.

also, alot of promising young players choose to go through the ranks of big clubs like juve, inter or milan where they have a very small chance to break in the first team, instead of going to smaller teams, where they have a much better chance to break in the first team. big clubs dont grow champions, they buy them. in that way, they get the finished product and weaken the competition. thats how juve, inter and milan maintain the monopoly over the league.
Jose P

i think that can be said about practically every big european club. it's rare that you see a balanced league in europe unless you're talking about scandinavia. and i don't think anybody outside the nordic coundtries watches them.
look at mls, every team has a chance at winning the league
Sampath

great work, was a great read
Kabir

Do you think the FIGC could do anything to encourage playing youngsters in the same way? I know that the transfer limit on foreign players was imposed to try and promote Italian players, do you think that they could realistically do something like that for young talents?
jorid22

Nice research. I enjoyed it.
Rossoneri_Ron

When people talk about teams that use youth Barca is always the first example. Do you think that's because there are only two teams in Spain, so Barca can afford to run the kids out there and not have to worry about the result? Or are their kids drastically better?
Kabir

It's not true that they run out kids because they're not worried about the result. The young players are the established starters...
Rossoneri_Ron

But how do they get that way? Barca throws three young kids on from the start against Getafe, you'll still get three points. Milan throws three kids on against Udinese and the points are going to Udine
mesasr

the gap is much bigger between Madrid,Barca and the rest and thats one of the reasons,which helps on the bigger picture as well,because even when those two are having a disastrous season,they are just too strong for the others and can easily finish in top 4,so playing some youngsters is never a risk or problem
also some primavera teams like Villareal B are playing in their Serie B,so instead of loaning some guys to the 2nd division to get some experience,they can just keep them in the B squad until they will be ready for the first team,unlike it Italy,where talented boys keep warming the Serie B bench,because their 2nd team took them for short term only and doesnt care if their development stops
jorid22

Barca has Leo Messi, Xavi, Iniesta, Pique to play besides Jeffren, Thiago Alcantara (who's a stud anyways), Muniesa etc.

Milan has nonno Seedorf next to Odoumadi and Merkel.
Juve has Amauri next to Giannetti, Giandonato etc.
Jose P

this is sad because i don't see any changes coming in the near future. as an american fan of the italian national team i really hope that the FIGC loosens up on these regulations concerning youngsters and contracts. though i consider myself a diehard football(calcio) fan, i've only been watching it for about 4 years, but it's an obsession. this makes me really doubt the azzuri's chances of winning the WC come 2014.
Thowley88

I remember reading something somewhere about Fed Macheda, (probably on wikipedia) - something like Italian regulations prevent under 18s to sign pro contracts. So, instead of staying at Lazio's youth system, he got paid big money to sign with Man U. It seems like this is also partially a reason why Italians don't stick through one clubs youth system.
FrancescoItalyOffside

Yes, that is another problem. Youth players can't sign professional contracts until their 18th birthday, and it is a main reason why many jumped to the EPL in recent years. Happened to Giuseppe Rossi, Arturo Lupoli, Davide Petrucci, Fabio Borini, Federico Macheda, and many more.
ricci

A lot of the teams in Spain also have "b" teams which play in the equivalent of Serie C or even B. The big squads could probably take a hint from this and play their b squads (made up of mostly youngsters) in lower divisions to give them match experience. Jump from Primavera to Serie B for most players is just too big.
FrancescoItalyOffside

Sacchi was all for implementing this idea and inserting B sides into Lega Pro, but Lega Pro head Macalli said no.
jorid22

Macalli is a true genius, just like Abate.

I don't see what's the big problem with it, you mean to tell me that fucking Valle del Giovenco, Pistoiese, Carrarese, Real Marcianese, Taranto, Poggibonsi, Cosenza etc would mind getting a brand new team full of hungry Primavera youngsters from Serie A and B teams without having to pay a dime? These are teams that will (99% of them at least) always linger in Eccellenza/C1 anyways, why waste their wages on unknowns/has beens when they can have a chance at going somewhere?

All Serie A and B teams have Riserve squads but they don't really count for shit lol. The Primavera league is not bad but still somewhat worthless when you consider that some teams seem to value the Viareggio tournament more than the former anyways.

You think the whole 2 teams can't be controlled by the same owner/company at the same time thing has something to do with the Gaucci case?