In a bottom up Tuttosport, Guido Vaciago spoke about the crisis in Italian football strengthened by the recent elimination of the national team from Euro 2024: “In the end it wasn’t clear who was to blame, because it seems like everyone took it a bit. On the other hand, it was clear who will pay: nobody. Failure at the European Championships won’t cost anyone anything, just as the defeat against North Macedonia which kicked us out of the 2022 World Cup didn’t cost anyone anything. Two sporting disasters which do not represent unfortunate competitive episodes, but are indicators of a system that doesn’t work also because it has, perhaps irremediably, become entangled around the preservation of power and individual interests. In fact, it is not a system.”
On the reforms that should be made: “1) The reform of the championships. There are twenty teams in Serie A, 20 in Serie B, 60 in Serie C. One hundred professional clubs are too many (no one has them in Europe), the industry of football does not produce enough resources to keep a hundred clubs alive, which moreover have sensationally different dimensions from each other 2) Improving the federal technical centers The federal technical centers are a project that is evidently not bearing fruit if they no longer exist talented Italian players to bring to the national team. Working at a local level on young people, not leaving the task only to the clubs, would be a starting point for creating the national team of the future.”
Closing with other possible reforms: “3) The second teams. There is a black hole that swallows up our talents between the ages of 17 and 22. This is because only a few of them, once they leave the Primavera, are able to make the leap to Serie A, so they are dispersed in loans that slow down or block their growth. 4) Train instructors. In Italy, youth sectors follow perverse logic. And everything arises from the presence of “coaches” or presumed such instead of instructors. Generally, the youth coach thinks about emerging, his goal is success in his championship, in the hope of being noticed, and not that of training players of the future. 5) Create the structures. In Spain, a percentage of the money from TV rights is assigned to those who have a sports center suitable for the growth of young talents. Do you have the right structure with the standards dictated by the Federation to raise young people? Good, you participate in the division of that slice of the cake. Don’t you have it? You get less money”.