Italy manager Roberto Mancini has bemoaned the shortage of players for him to select for the national side playing in Serie A.
Mancini believes a lack of children playing football in the streets is one of the reasons for the shortage of players coming through.
England boss Gareth Southgate has similarly spoken of a decreasing number of English Premier League players.
“We are worse off than Southgate,” Mancini said.
England travel to Naples to begin their Euro 2024 qualifying campaign against the Azzurri on Thursday.
Italy won Euro 2020 but failed to qualify for consecutive World Cups in 2018 and 2022.
Three Serie A sides – Napoli, AC Milan and Inter – have reached the last eight of the Champions League for the first time in almost two decades.
However, Mancini said that did not extend to improving the national team.
“I don’t know why there are so few strikers, we are very limited going forwards,” he said.
“We have three teams in the quarter-finals of the Champions League, but out of the three teams there are seven or eight Italians at most. This is the reality.”
Serie A high-flyers Napoli are the Champions League top-scorers this season, however their star man is Victor Osimhen, who plays for Nigeria.
Only one Italian-born player features in Serie A’s Top 10 goal scorers: Lazio’s Ciro Immobile in ninth, but he is injured.
The former Manchester City boss said he was looking at other leagues for players – including 19-year-old Leeds United forward Wilfried Gnonto – though he questioned why the player was not picked up by a Serie A club.
He also suggested there was a reason for the short supply of top players to pick from.
“We used to play for three or four hours on the street and then go to train, today this no longer happens. It is no coincidence that players are still discovered in those countries, such as Uruguay, Argentina or Brazil, where people still play a lot in the streets.”
Source – BBC Sport
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