Former AC Milan chief executive Marco Fassone says Italy’s failure to qualify for three successive World Cups reflects a deep structural problem in Serie A rather than the work of one coach or a single campaign.
Speaking to Flashscore at the Portugal Football Summit, Fassone said Italian players were being used too rarely in the domestic league and warned that the “football product generated by Serie A today is weak”.
Italy are the first former world champions to miss three consecutive World Cups. No Italian club has won the Champions League since Inter in 2010.
“There are a lot of reasons, not just one,” Fassone said. “But when you have a cycle this long, you are obliged to look at the structure and the rules of the system. When you check the data available today, you see that Italian players are barely being used in Serie A.”
Fassone, who now advises football clubs, believes the regulatory framework needs to change. “The current rules are not supporting the development of Italian talent and Italian players,” he said, adding that he hoped Roberto Mancini and the new president of the federation could establish measures to strengthen Italian football.
He said the national team’s potential selection pool had become “very, very low”, with Mancini recently having to look outside Italy for eligible players. Fassone added that, under European Commission laws, clubs which develop players for the national side should be rewarded.
Como a test case
Como’s rise has highlighted the conflict between individual clubs’ ambitions and the federation’s wider interests. The club have been criticised for using few Italian players, while they could register only around 20 players for the Champions League and paid a premium for homegrown players including Moise Kean.
Asked whether Como were part of the problem or the solution, Fassone replied: “Both.”
“I like what they have done in the last three or four years. I think they are a benchmark for other clubs,” he said. “But the perspective of a single club is not the same as the perspective of the federation. They do not have the same goal.”
Como’s strategy, built around investment, marketing and the global appeal of Lake Como, naturally led to a squad with relatively few Italian players, Fassone said. He argued that the club instead exposed weaknesses in financial regulations, which limit spending on wages and transfer fees to between 70% and 85% of revenue, depending on the country.
“Como are not compliant with FFP, because you cannot grow your club if your revenues are low,” he said. “If Como had respected these rules, they would not be where they are today.”
Fassone said responsibility lay with the Italian federation and UEFA, not Como, and that football needed examples of ambitious clubs willing to invest. However, he rejected the idea of simply paying Financial Fair Play fines: “That’s not the solution. It is not a long-term solution.”
He said Como had followed an entrepreneurial model by investing in infrastructure and players before revenues increased. “Revenues grow after you have invested,” he said.
Fassone also believes multi-club ownership can work, citing networks such as City Football Group and Chelsea owners BlueCo. He said successful models required clubs of different sizes and from different countries, allowing players a career path and owners to use loans and transfers effectively.
Finally, Fassone warned new investors not to assume football operates like real estate or another industry. “Football is a completely different world,” he said. “It is the only world where your players, your employees, are a financial asset.”