🤑 World rankings: England top the pile 👑 Italy trail, but Bastoni shines 🔝 | OneFootball

International break week, with Serie A coming to a halt. On the pitch tonight the Azzurri, coached by Gattuso, visit Moldova, in a match that could end up being meaningless if Norway beats Estonia at 6 PM and thus celebrates first place in the group with one matchday to spare.

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Italy is paying for the defeat—the only one in these qualifiers—suffered precisely in the first-leg match against the Scandinavians, but given what we've seen and the period our National Team is going through, second place should come as no surprise.

Today, our country struggles to produce talents who can keep up with the likes of Yamal, Bellingham, Vinicius, and this despite the fact that Italy has many more players compared to other nations.

🥇 Dominant English model and... with fewer players!

This was revealed by a Transfermarkt study, which took into account the number of registered players in the various Federations, players who also have an identifiable market value.

The result, as mentioned, sees us far from the top spots. Leading is England, which, despite not lifting a trophy in 60 years, continues to churn out talent after talent. Bellingham is the crown jewel, but Tuchel at the World Cup will also be able to count on Kane, Saka, Foden...

It’s worth noting that, while the other two nations on the podium—Brazil and Spain—have a high number of players, the English have "only" 1,675, more than a thousand fewer than the South Americans and almost 2,500 fewer than the Spaniards.

🤔 Italy, are you missing superstars?

And the Azzurri? Well, seventh place isn’t even that bad, considering who’s ahead. The problem, as we mentioned, is that no other country in the ranking has such a high number of players, which means the total market value is divided among more people (4,879 in Italy’s case).

No generational superstars, in short, except for a few exceptions. One above all? Bastoni, who with an estimated value of 80 million euros remains the most valuable defender in the world, along with Saliba from Arsenal and Cubarsí from Barcelona.

He, the Nerazzurri’s number 95, is the most expensive Italian, even though we’re still far from the figures concerning the world’s top players: Bellingham, Mbappé, and Haaland, for example, are worth 180 million euros; Lamine Yamal even 200. Astronomical figures, which once again highlight just how far away the times are when Italian football used to teach the rest of the world a lesson.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇮🇹 here.

📸 ANDREAS SOLARO - AFP or licensors