It is an army of players who have left their respective teams to answer the call of the coaches in the senior selections or in the Under 21 ones. Here is the situation team by team.
It’s never happened before, but we’ll have to get used to it. Three weeks without championships and cups in the middle of autumn, twenty days off to make room for national team commitments in new calendar written by FIFA which has merged the international windows of September and October so as to at least partially limit players’ travel. A good intent whose impact on the clubs’ competitive activity will have to be measured.
Serie A sends 207 players between senior national teams and Under 21s around the world: the younger ones will also be added to these, drawing the picture of a real emptying of sports centers. Coaches and staff try to interpret this first time without certainties: there are those (Chivu) who have given the survivors a week off, with athletic training tasks at home, and those who have limited themselves to the canonical three days off and then start again like Allegri.
The bill for the new national parking will then be paid by the companies. Within these three weeks there is everything, from the matches of the European Nations League which, for example, brings Italy onto the field four times against Turkey (home and away), Belgium and France, to the friendlies of the South Americans. Argentina’s commitments should be marked on your calendar as they bid farewell to Leo Messi with the Albiceleste, challenging Bolivia in Cordoba on 30 September and then moving to the Monumental in River Plate for the double match against Burkina Faso (3 October) and Benin (6 October).
Team by team, here’s how many players have been called up
Limiting ourselves to the senior national team and the Under 21s, here is the team by team ranking of those who have seen the most players leave to answer the calls of their respective technical commissioners. This is the starting list, already purified by some lump sums such as those of the Roma players Cristante and Malen and the Inter player Dimarco:
- How – 15 players
- Milan – 15 players
- Frosinone – 14 players
- Turin – 14 players
- Atalanta – 13 players
- Rome – 12 players
- Inter – 12 players
- Bologna – 12 players
- Juventus – 11 players
- Sassuolo – 10 players
- Naples – 10 players
- Udinese – 9 players
- Genoa – 9 players
- Florentine – 8 players
- Monza – 8 players
- Lazio – 8 players
- Lecce – 8 players
- Cagliari – 7 players
- Parma – 6 players
- Venice – 6 players
The peculiarity is that a quarter of the 207 called up (48) were called up by their respective Under 21s. A sign that Serie A, in addition to being an “elephant cemetery”, is also transforming into a talent-developing championship. The next step will be to provide it with resources so that that talent, once embellished, can remain in Italy and not simply end up on the market available to the richest leagues of the Old Continent.
