Italy has failed to qualify for the World Cup three times in a row. Not once. Not twice. Three times — and outgoing FIGC president Gabriele Gravina, who resigned on April 2, has left behind a damning autopsy of how Italian football got here and what it would take to crawl out.
His diagnosis isn't pretty. The Azzurri's collapse isn't bad luck or poor tournament preparation. It's structural rot that has been building for years.
The numbers behind the decline
The statistic that stops you cold: Under-21 Italian players account for less than 2% of total Serie A playing time. Two percent. Foreign players make up 68% of minutes played in the top flight — one of the highest rates in Europe. Italy is not developing its own talent because its own clubs have little incentive to play them.
Meanwhile, professional Italian football loses over 700 million euros a year. Clubs collapsing, debt spiraling, arenas crumbling. The financial model is broken at the same time the sporting one is.
Gravina's proposed fix? Redirect a portion of Italy's gambling revenue — and Italy runs Europe's largest gambling market, so there's real money here — into grassroots programmes, academies, and stadium infrastructure. He also wants to scrap the 2018 ban on betting advertising and sponsorships, arguing the sport needs those commercial relationships to stay solvent.
Incentives, stadiums, and a long road back
The specific proposals are sensible enough on paper: financial incentives for clubs that field young Italian players, faster approval for new or redeveloped stadiums, and deeper investment at academy level. None of it is revolutionary. All of it has been talked about for years. The question is whether a new federation president — due to be elected in June — will actually push it through, or whether this becomes another report that sits on a shelf.
After Italy's shock defeat to Bosnia sealed the qualifying failure, Gennaro Gattuso stepped down as national team manager and Gianluigi Buffon departed as team delegation head. The faces change. The underlying problems don't.
Gravina himself acknowledged the uncomfortable truth in his conclusion: leadership changes and isolated reforms won't be enough. The entire system needs to move together. Given that Italian football has struggled to agree on much of anything for the better part of two decades, that's a harder ask than any tactical fix.
- Italy has failed to qualify for three consecutive World Cups
- Foreign players account for 68% of Serie A minutes — among Europe's highest
- Under-21 Italian players represent under 2% of Serie A playing time
- Italian professional football loses over €700 million annually
- Gravina proposes redirecting gambling revenue into youth development and stadiums
- The FIGC betting advertising ban, introduced in 2018, would be scrapped under the plan
A new federation president arrives in June. By then, Italy will already be deep into another qualification cycle — chasing a World Cup spot they've missed three times running.
