Sailing, athletics, skiing, tennis, volleyball and so on and so forth. While the Italian football world mourns the exclusion from the World Cup, the national sport rejoices for an exceptional season of success. A generation of phenomena. You learn football.
There is a new generation of phenomena: the boys and girls born after 2014 who have never seen the tricolor flag at the World Cup. However, they have heard the Mameli Hymn resound on a hundred and one hundred occasions: they are surrounded by “myths” like Jannik Sinner, like Federica Brignone, like Mattia Furlani, curls as black as pitch, legs like a flamingo who at the age of twenty became world champion in the long jump, which had never happened before; he is the “twin” of Larissa Iapichino – the daughter of Fiona May, trained by her father Gianni Iapichino, a great pole vaulter – who won silver at the World Championships a few weeks ago and has the world record among the under 20s. The list is endless: it goes from Kimi Antonelli who, while Ferrari stands by and watches, in his second year at Mercedes becomes the youngest leader of the Formula One championship, winning two grand prix in a row, to Nadia Battocletti who ran the 3 thousand, the 5 thousand and the 10 thousand, winning everything that was winnable. From the maximum of technology and risk to the maximum of effort. Like Marco Bezzecchi who with Aprilia (Italian rider and bike) is leading the Moto GP and is the true heir of Valentino Rossi, and Francesca Lollobrigida who makes the ice shine with gold on two sheets of steel.
Italy’s sport is at the top of the world in almost all disciplines. At the beginning of 2026, our local athletes were able to set the medal record at the Olympics and Paralympics in Milan Cortina, and at the World Indoor Athletics Championships in Torun, Poland. For the first time in history, Italy has beaten rugby in the Six Nations, where we are no longer Cinderella, the masters of England. It is Italy that reaches, also a historic achievement, the semifinals of the Baseball World Cup and beats the United States 8 to 6 for the first time. It is Italy that teaches sailing to the world and, with Alessandro Marega, wins the Finn Gold Cup for the first time in 70 years. It may seem like a trivial result, but Finn is sailing; Alessandro comes from that prestigious Oscar Cosulich club in Monfalcone from which Mauro Pelaschiar emerged, also a “Finnist”, who – with Cino Ricci and Azzurra’s nights in the America’s Cup – reminded us that we are a people of navigators.
However, there really was a generation of phenomena in sport. It was the national volleyball team of the nineties; that of Andrea Lucchetta, Lollo Bernardi, Andrea Giani (to name a few) who won everything, including three World Cups in a row. At the net, today, there are two teams that the rest of the world envies us: that of tennis players and that of other volleyball players.
In tennis, Italy is the great power: behind the “monster” Jannik Sinner there are Lorenzo Musetti, Flavio Cobolli, Matteo Berrettini capable of winning three Davis Cups in a row (from 23rd to 25th, the last one without Jannik); among the girls, if the smile of Jasmine Paolini, five feet six inches of explosive power, lights up the ranking (she is eighth), you can count on the determination of Elisabetta Cocciaretto, the intelligence of Martina Trevisan, the grace of Lucia Bronzetti and the wisdom of Sara Errani, who in doubles with Jasmine even won the Olympic title. These girls have won the last two Billie Jean King Cups, the World Team Championship. And they are all male and female club kids. No hyper-expensive academy, like the Spanish or Americans.
In volleyball, the women’s national team, having won the Olympic gold in Paris, repeated it with the World Cup, which the men won twice consecutively.
Whether it’s parquet or a ski slope, the result doesn’t change. Sofia Goggia won the Super G cup, the last title came with Giulia Murada with the ski mountaineering world cup, in snowboarding the Azzurri hold the cup for nations, with Maurizio Bormolini, Roland Fischnaller and Michela Moioli, the same in ski-cross where, apart from the exploits of Simone De Romedis and Federico Tommasoni, everyone has the tears in their eyes of the almost-child Flora Tabanelli, bronze in free style: also an absolute first for her.
Also on the snow, there is the immense Lisa Vitozzi, gold in the Biathlon. Milan-Cortina was the Olympics of the Italian triumph both for the sporting results (10 gold medals, including the short-track mixed skating relay with Arianna Fontana who has the absolute record with 13 medals in various editions), but above all for the organisation, to the point that Giovanni Malagò, former president of Coni and head of the organizing committee, is invoked as the remedy for the football disaster.
Now, lining up this infinite series of laurels one wonders: is football still the sport of Italians? And, above all, can football be amended from its billions of failures? The numbers of the various Federations answer the first question, the second was attempted by Roberto Baggio who more than ten years ago – he was the unheard president of the technical committee – drew up a 900-page study which can be resolved into a slogan: football no longer has speakers and is in the hands of the prosecutors. All other sports, no.
When Gabriele Gravina, president of the FIGC, clinging to his seat after two consecutive world championship failures, tried to resist by accusing other sports of having athletes supported by the state, he faced a series of humiliations.
Taking an overview, there are 13 million athletes in 112 thousand sports clubs or associations (almost six thousand deal with disabled athletes) with around half a million people who make a living from sport: a sector with a turnover of 25 billion euros. Football makes up around 13 percent of the members: one and a half million people. The largest slice, but its federation – Fgci – is not the one that does the best business: 220 million against the 240 million of Federtennis (and padel). Tennis has just under 1.2 million members, with a boom of more than 266 percent since 2020.
Sinner effect? You could also say the World Cup effect for volleyball which, entrusted to the hands of president Giuseppe Manfredi (among his collaborators is Giuseppe Lomurno: he comes from Umbria who with SIR brought Italian volleyball to the top of the world and the minister Giancarlo Giorgetti was one of the managers for a long time), is third in terms of number of members, but has the record number of athletes: 300 thousand. The Fipav scheme is: youth sectors merged with the first teams, minivolley as a game and widespread diffusion in schools.
Athletics has 271 thousand members and the swimming of Gregorio Paltrinieri or of the two “terrible” Simona Quadrella or Sara Curtis has 210 thousand members, but it has no facilities: there are around sixty Olympic swimming pools, there are six diving platforms and the gold medal of Chiara Pellacani and Matteo Santoro at the world championships in Singapore is a miracle. As well as the career of Sara Raffaelli and the Italian rhythmic butterflies: a federation, that of gymnastics, which is based on volunteering. The maximum is the Federscherma: one hundred active halls, 23 thousand athletes and, in 2025 alone, it has obtained 140 medals between World and European Championships, 6 World Cups and 87 podiums overall.
Perhaps football, with its schools where you pay up to 1,500 euros a year, where kids end up under a prosecutor’s office at 16 where, according to many complaints, they pay up to 30,000 euros to play in the minor categories, has a lot to learn and a lot to reflect on. Starting with the words of a world champion, one of the last, Claudio Gentile who, after yet another world flop, vented to Repubblica: «The teams are made by the agents, especially the national team. When I was coaching the Under 21s they came to me with a bag full of money: it’s yours, they told me, if you summon who we say. I replied to leave otherwise I would have called the police. They ended up killing me.” Incidentally: Myriam Sylla, captain of the national volleyball team, had to emigrate to Türkiye to raise some money.
