🇮🇹 Born late in the year? In Italy, you don't play! Other countries' fixes 🧠
🇮🇹 Born late in the year? In Italy, you don't play! Other countries' fixes 🧠 Fabio Caressa said it 12 years ago, then Alessandro Del Piero repeated it, and after that pretty much all of Italy got behind this idea: "We only want them big and fast.
" Whether they are Italian or not matters little, at least to clubs. And do those who, at 16, still haven’t developed the physique of a fully grown footballer get to play? Generally, no.
The same fate that befalls most boys born in the second half of the year: because those born from July to December practically never play. Young Italians: those born from July onward... don’t play The math is simple: if you were born in the last 6 months of the year, you don’t play.
That’s what the numbers revealed by Sky Sport tell us: in the Italy Under-17 squad at the 2025 World Cup , only 14% of the players were born in the second half of the year. An incredible 0% were born in the last quarter: from October to December. ITALY U17 AT THE 2025 WORLD CUP: Born January-March: 62% Born April-June: 24% Born July-September: 14% Born October-December: 0% The problem (called the Relative Age Effect ) becomes slightly less serious the closer players get to physical maturity: because at 16, in 10 months, the body can change completely.
At 21, that rarely happens. U21 PLAYERS IN SERIE A Born January-March: 33% Born April-June: 31% Born July-September: 19% Born October-December: 17% If we look at Italian U21 players getting minutes in Serie A ( still very few, in any case ), we can see that the gap remains significant. The boys born in the first quarter are almost double those born in the last quarter.