Italy's Best Football Academies Beyond the Traditional Giants
Today we bring you the second edition in this series on the best academies, this time focusing on Italy. Unlike Spain, where academies have played a crucial role in the success of both the national team and clubs, which have faced limitations due to financial controls in the national league, Italy's national team has had a difficult last decade, missing out on the last three World Cups. Despite this, Italy boasts many excellent academies that continue to supply Serie A with talent. As we did in the Spain edition, we have excluded the country's top clubs, such as Juventus, Inter, Milan, Roma, Lazio, and Napoli.
Atalanta
Atalanta has been one of the most fashionable clubs in recent years in Italy and, to some extent, in Europe, competing for places in European competitions and even winning the Europa League in 2024. The club's management has been very good, as they have been adept at both signing and, above all, selling players, a fact further enhanced by the talent they have developed in their own academy. In fact, historically, Atalanta has been a source of talent for Italy's biggest clubs, having produced players like Roberto Donadoni, Riccardo Montolivo, Alessio Tacchinardi, and Giampaolo Pazzini. Currently, the Bergamo club has capitalized on this academy, giving players opportunities in the first team and then selling them for a good price, as seen with Dejan Kulusevski, Amad Diallo, and Alessandro Bastoni. In the 2023/24 season, club-trained players accounted for 18.7% of Atalanta's Serie A minutes, the highest figure in the league at the time.Fiorentina
Fiorentina is another club with an academy that has historically contributed many players to top-level Italian football. While they aren't known throughout their history for using many academy players in the first team (in fact, many tend to move to other Serie A and B clubs), they do often give opportunities to important talents, as was recently the case with Federico Chiesa, for example. Lately, they have made a huge investment in their academy, building a modern training center and establishing an international technical development network for their players. This is with the aim of giving more opportunities to their own players in the first team, and the academy has remained highly productive, with 27 players from Fiorentina's youth system reaching Serie A since 2021.Empoli
Empoli is a club that, despite being over a century old, has spent much of its history in the lower divisions of Italian football. It wasn't until 1986 that they first reached Serie A, and from the late 1990s onward, they alternated between Serie A and Serie B. This is no coincidence, as the academy's development improved during that period, allowing the club to produce highly talented players such as Antonio Di Natale, Alessandro Birindelli, and Vincenzo Montella, all of whom went on to represent Italy internationally and were prominent figures in Serie A for many years. In recent years, they have continued to produce talent from their academy, with Samuele Ricci, Daniele Rugani, and Elseid Hysaj being prime examples. It's worth noting that Empoli continues to rely heavily on its academy, with numerous homegrown players forming part of the first-team setup.
Parma
Parma's approach is somewhat closer to that of most Serie A teams, which tend to favor foreign talent over Italians or those from their own academy. However, they are usually quite successful with the academy players they give first-team minutes to. Here we find some very high-caliber players like Giuseppe Rossi, Carlo Ancelotti, and Gianluigi Buffon. It's also worth noting that, although they don't always fully utilize the potential of their academy players, Parma have produced a long list of players who went on to compete at the highest level. This shows that the work in the academy serves to train players who compete at the highest European level.Torino
The Turin club is a historic Italian club, having won Serie A seven times and producing one of the country's greatest teams, the Grande Torino of the 1940s. Reviewing some of the outstanding players produced by Torino's academy is a journey through several important figures in Italian football over the last 30 or 40 years. These include, to name a few, Fabio Quagliarella, Dino Baggio, Christian Vieri, Samuel Kuffour, and Federico Balzaretti. Interestingly, several of these players would later play for Juventus, Torino's eternal city rival. In recent years, the club has sought to internationalize its academy, expanding its activities to other countries such as Brazil and Canada.
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