No Eye-catching Italian players?

As the World Cup is attracting all headlines related to soccer, there’s always a small echo of transfer market news which now, after Italy’s elimination from the World Cup, becomes much more than an echo for Italy fans. And as you read about transfer rumors and deals, you hear the names like Di Maria, Maicon, Mascherano, and Kuyt, but none of these names are of Italian players…

Italy has always had a high amount of transfers from clubs within the Serie A, there’s always plenty of internal loan deals and low-cost transfers that take place in the Italian leagues. While this isn’t a bad thing, it’s something which limits the amount of foreign players coming in, and Italian players going out. While there are few big-name players coming to Italy, there’s even more that are leaving only to be replaced by aging players who used to be the real deal.

Kaka and Ibrahimovic, two players who could’ve been considered among the top five in the world, left the Serie A only to be replaced by an old Ronaldinho and Eto’o. The standard is just not good enough to attract the world’s best players, and if things continue like this, the German Bundesliga could overtake the Serie A. But this isn’t even touching on the true problem; there are no Italian players that other teams are interested in.

When a great player emerges from his country and moves to a top league, this attracts interest from scouts and other teams to take a look at that nation’s league and its players. This just isn’t happening, nobody is interested in Italian players from the Serie A. There hasn’t been a true Italian star that is considered at the same level as Cristiano Ronaldo, Messi, Rooney, Kaka, or David Villa for quite some time now. There isn’t an Italian player that people would put in their dream team, or in the top 20 best players, and maybe even in the top 25.

You might be asking why there aren’t any great Italian players, but the answer is simple, and we all know it deep-down inside ourselves; Italy just isn’t that good anymore, the players aren’t good enough. Italy has fallen behind, you watch young crops of players from Germany like Muller, Ozil, and Khedira all shine and lead their national team to victory at the young ages of 20, 21, and 23. Italy doesn’t spend money where it needs to, while Coverciano is good, it’s not good enough. Italy need to spend some serious money and build one of the finest academies in the world like France’s Clairefontaine academy, then in 10 or 20 years, we’ll begin to see a World Cup winning side.

While I may seem harsh, I do think that Italy have some good talent like Balotelli, Montolivo, and Rossi, I still don’t think it’s enough to win a World Cup. When Italy gets a top-level academy up and running, they’ll start producing world-class players, and then get exposure for the league and hopefully attract better players and bring in more money for what seems to be a dying league.