Calcio Special : Creating A New Method For The Youth In Serie A

The latest 2010 World Cup results have put the Italian soccer's credibility at stake as they fail to qualify from the group stage despite their defending champion status. Making things much more worse, the Azzurri fail to win a single game on the group which consist of opponents that on paper are weaker than them.

That epic failure has slammed the face of the footballing country's soccer federation, resulting the implementation of some new rules and projects to get more quality local players for the Azzurri's future.

One of the most exciting projects is the plan to change the competition for youth players, usually called as the Primavera, so that Italy's young generation can produce talents like they usually did a while ago. The Azzurrini seems to have a gap of generation that doesn't allow them to have a proper deputy for their aging super stars such as Alessandro Nesta, Francesco Totti, Alessandro Del Piero or even Andrea Pirlo. The latest Italian young players that have a respectable result was the u-21 side that compete on 2009 UEFA Euro u-21 in Sweden.

That young team which consist players such as Mario Balotelli, Sebastian Giovinco, Marco Motta, Robert Acquafresca, Luca Cigarini, Domenico Criscito and others managed to reach the semi final before loosing to the eventual winners, Germany. However, despite displaying a pretty impressive performance on the tournament, there were only two players who managed to break into Italy's senior side in the 2010 World Cup. The worse part is that most of those youngsters failed to break into their club's first team that pretty much resulted in the usage of so many veteran in South Africa.

Seeing the fact that happened to those young Italian talents, people could pretty much figure out that Italy do have talented youngsters but there's something wrong with their development in club level. Many experts in the country believes that one of the biggest reasons that caused Italy's young talents fail to be a first time player in their clubs is because they are not ready to compete with senior players. This is what brought the idea of creating a new formula for the Primavera competition which will try to adopt the system done in England with the reserve team or in Spain with the B team.

“If there is a reformation of the Serie A and B structure in the works, then why not find space for reserve teams? In Spain, Germany, England and France they have different ways of achieving this. That's what FIGC vice president and former Ac Milan star, Demetrio Albertini, stated to the press regarding his vision for the Primavera's future system.

The idea of this new formula is creating a league where talented youngsters can play or compete with older players without having too much pressure to win something as the important part is getting them ready to face the real league which is Serie A. Should the FIGC decide to follow the English reserve league system, that means that every team in Serie A can put out some of their most talented group of young players and combine them with older players that fail to get a place in the first team or those returning from injuries. Those combination of players will be the team's roosters as they are set to compete in a league of their own. This concept would be a little bit similar to the Primavera as every team will have the same type of squad but it would be more competitive with the addition of the senior players.

Another method that can be used is the Spanish methods of creating a B team to compete in the lower division in the league so the youngsters can really play against older and more experienced players. In theory this formula should be more effective compared to the reserve league method as by regularly competing with more experienced players, the youngsters could grow faster and eventually become much more ready to play in the first team. Off course not all of the juniors can play in the first team but at least they will be much more prepared mentally and physically to play in Serie A.

Unfortunately, until this date the formula is nothing more than a plan, with the Primavera season already being scheduled surely this season everything just would stay the same. Hopefully with the statement from someone like Albertini, the new system can be concluded soon. The new system would also be the most appropriate answer to help young talents bloom instead of creating rules such as reducing the non EU players in the league. If the big clubs in Serie A can have a trustworthy young players on their ranks, they won't be bothered to purchase foreign talent that could cost them much more money.

note: this article was previously posted on Soccer 365 by me off course, it was released just after the 2010 World Cup, sometime around 2010/2011 season if I'm not wrong. Rather old but since it's still pretty much an interesting issue, I decided to publish it again, mainly because it has been taken off from Soccer 365 site.

However, I'm starting some new pieces again at Soccer 365, hopefully it would work out well :) Ciao Ciao