It's easy to remember that for years, when you thought of international football greatness, Italy, Brazil, and Germany came to mind.

Azzurri failed to qualify, and both Brazil and Germany have been eliminated In embarrasing ways. Needless to say all three have declined, particularly Italy and Brazil, though Germany isn't great either. As a Brazilian back then, I would usually support Italy if Brazil were out or not playing, but right now, I don’t have either of those teams to root for. Is this decline due a lack of tactical development, or have other countries simply caught up to the big three?

They are truly a quality side with a once-in-a-generation talent up top

I think we should get him if he steps down from the brazil job now that they are out

I've found this interesting article about the rebuilding of a competitive Italy's national team. As highlighted by the article and the graphics, the problem isn't the lack of talented players, it's rather how they progress (or, still better, don't progress) once they have to get into the first team from the youths rank.

GK – Carlo Ceresoli, Mario Gianni
DF – Felice Gasperi, Alfredo Foni, Renato Bodini, Alfredo Monza, Giuseppe Bonetti
MF – Aldo Donati, Pietro Serantoni, Renato Cattaneo, Pietro Buscaglia
FW – Silvio Piola, Renato Cesarini, Rodolfo Volk, Giovanni Busoni, Felice Levratto, Mario Romani
A surprisingly strong side. Leaving out Piola and Cesarini shows just how much depth Italy had in 1934. This B team would probably run circles around the clowns we've got today.

GK - Peruzzi, Antonioli, Lupatelli

DF - Pancaro, Negro, Ferrara, Adani, Pierini, Pessotto, Favalli

MF - C. Zenoni, Nervo, Tacchinardi, Fiore, Albertini, Ambrosini, Perrotta,

FW - Baggio, Hubner, Di Vaio, Chiesa, Corradi, Marazzina

Uneven team. Everything is just ok. Still can't believe they didn't take Baggio......More and more foreigners in the league by this time. Many of these players were pretty much bench players for their clubs. Chiesa was hurt the whole year but had 22 goals the year before. Hubner won Capocannoniere in 2002 (Tied with Trezeguet)

This is an article by Filippo Facci, a journalist I'm not particularly fond of. But maybe this time he's right?

OUR NATIONAL TEAM IS TERRIBLE (ALSO) BECAUSE IT'S STILL A NATIONAL TEAM.

But things will change here too. Just look at Cape Verde, who went toe to toe with Argentina, and ask yourself why. Here are the answers.

International football no longer aligns neatly with national borders. Many national teams are becoming stronger thanks to diasporas and dual citizenship, while Italy remains attached to a much more traditional model.

A natural question arises: how can a country like Cape Verde have such a strong national team? It's a small archipelago with a tiny population and very limited football infrastructure, yet it can compete with countries that are infinitely richer, larger, and better equipped.

The answer is simple: in footballing terms, Cape Verde is not just Cape Verde. It is Cape Verde plus its diaspora. And sooner or later, this will be the story of every national team.

Many Cape Verdean players did not grow up on the islands. They came through European academies in the suburbs of Rotterdam, Lisbon, Paris, Brussels, and London. They are Dutch, Portuguese, French, or British citizens. Many hold dual nationality. Some were born and developed entirely abroad. Yet they are still eligible to represent Cape Verde.

FIFA's eligibility rules are the same for everyone: a player needs citizenship and a recognized connection to the country, whether through birth, parents, grandparents, or residency. The real difference, however, lies in national citizenship laws and in how aggressively football federations identify and recruit eligible players.

Cape Verde is only one example. Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria, Congo, Jamaica, Curaçao, Suriname, Albania, and Kosovo have all built, strengthened, or in some cases practically created their national teams through emigration. For some countries, the diaspora adds extra quality. For others, it is the backbone of the entire squad. Without the children of emigrants, some of these teams would be little more than modest local selections. With them, they become genuinely competitive professional sides, filled with players trained in the world's strongest football systems.

This changes the very meaning of a national team.

For more than a century, we imagined a national team as the football representation of a territory: the best players born, raised, and developed within its borders. Today, it is increasingly becoming the representation of a genealogy, a family history, an inherited sense of belonging. What matters is no longer only where you were born, but where your family comes from. Not only where you play, but which story you can legitimately claim as your own.

National teams have already ceased, or soon will cease, to be "national" in the twentieth-century sense. They are no longer simply teams made up of citizens produced by a single country. They are becoming global pools of eligible players: children and grandchildren of emigrants, naturalized citizens, second- and third-generation communities, identities scattered across the world and then brought back together. The shirt, the anthem, family heritage, and fan loyalty remain incredibly powerful, but the idea of a national team as a straightforward snapshot of a resident population is fading.

Football often gets there before politics. It shows us that nations are no longer merely places. They are networks, lineages, passports, memories, and increasingly, emigrants returning to the pitch wearing a different shirt.

And what about Italy?

Curiously enough, Italy could theoretically become one of the most diasporic national teams in the world, yet it still thinks of itself in traditional terms. The pool of people of Italian descent is enormous, stretching across Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Venezuela, the United States, Canada, Australia, Switzerland, and Germany. A century of emigration scattered Italian surnames across the globe. Thanks to jus sanguinis, many descendants can obtain, or already possess, Italian citizenship and, provided they are not tied to another national team, they can become eligible for Italy. It is hardly science fiction to imagine an Italian squad with a significant number of foreign-born players.

To some extent, this has already happened. From the oriundi of the 1930s to Sívori, Altafini, Camoranesi, Thiago Motta, Jorginho, Éder, Emerson Palmieri, and Retegui. Yet Italy has always treated them as exceptions, temporary fixes, or even slight embarrassments. It has never developed a systematic strategy built around its football diaspora. Perhaps out of pride, perhaps inertia, perhaps because Italian football lived off its past successes for too long, it has never seriously explored its global community the way Morocco, Cape Verde, or Algeria have.

The paradox is twofold. On one hand, Italy could draw from millions of descendants of emigrants around the world. On the other, it still struggles to integrate many young people who were born or raised in Italy by immigrant families, who speak Italian, came through Italian academies, yet often receive citizenship only late.

The future of the Azzurri seems to point in one of two directions. Either Italy clings to the twentieth-century ideal of the homegrown national team, hoping the domestic talent pipeline once again produces enough elite players, or it accepts that its football identity, like the country itself, has become broader, more complex, and less tied to geography.

It would not be a mercenary team, nor eleven hastily assembled passports, but rather a global Italian network: the children of emigrants, youngsters raised in Italy, dual nationals, people with layered family histories.

Perhaps it would be less romantic for those who still pretend Italy is the country it was a century ago.

As for me, I must admit that I'm no longer entirely sure what, or whom, I'm actually cheering for.

GK - Peruzzi, Marchegiani, Rossi

DF - Panucci, Negro, Ferrara, Porrini, Iuliano, Benarrivo, Favalli

MF - Fuser, Eranio, Conte, Tacchinardi, Di Canio, Carbone, Totti

FW - Zola, Casiraghi, Ravanelli, Mancini, Montella

This team is stacked in all areas. Look at the Italian forwards at this time! Madness that we played ultra defensively, trying to grind out 1-0 wins smh. Peruzzi, Ferrara and Ravanelli were all named to the squad but were hurt of course. Montella had 42 goals in two seasons and wasn't even on the radar. No room for Simone and Baiano, who had pretty good seasons in France and England.

Io onestamente speravo nell'olanda per Bobby Malen ma adesso mi sono rifugiato nelle braccia dei nostri cugini messicani

Seeing how Ivory Coast played against Norway compared to how we played against them, made me embarrassed.

Also, I don't know if people know but Amad Diallo could've easily played with Italy

FIGC President Giovanni Malagò insists he has ‘a Plan A, Plan B and Plan C’ for both the roles of new Italy coach and technical director. ‘I wouldn’t get too fossilized on certain names.’