Ancelotti: Italy lost one ‘fundamental’ thing, football ‘not only about scoring’ | OneFootball

Carlo Ancelotti argues that Italian football has lost ‘pace’ and warns that the Azzurri ‘must recover defenders’ as the game ‘is not only about scoring more goals than your opponent.’

Brazil coach Carlo Ancelotti examines the Italian football crisis in an interview with Il Giornale.

The Azzurri have missed out on World Cup qualification for the third time in a row, and no Serie A clubs will be involved in European cups’ semi-finals this season.

Ancelotti started by examining the gap between Serie A and Champions League matches.

Ancelotti: Italy and Serie A have ‘lost pace’

“The fundamental difference is the pace,” he said.

“Not just the physical running, but the mental pace, the constant involvement, the intensity, which is not an empty word and cannot be applied only in certain phases of the match. Italian football has lost exactly that.

“It has also lost solidity,” Ancelotti continued.

epa12137461 Italian Carlo Ancelotti attends a press conference where he was presented as new head coach of men’s Brazilian national soccer team in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 26 May 2025. Ancelotti announced his first squad list for Brazil’s 2026 World Cup qualifiers against Ecuador and Paraguay. EPA-EFE/Andre Coelho

“We already lack talent in other areas of the pitch, but the excessive focus on tactics has distorted our characteristics, the ones on which we have always built our history.”

José Mourinho’s Inter were the last Serie A club to win the Champions League in 2009-10, and only Atalanta made it to the Round of 16 of Europe’s elite competition this season, with Inter and Juventus eliminated in the knockout-playoff and Napoli in the league phase.

“The great foreign players no longer come to Italy. Abroad, with substantial TV rights and powerful investors, a more attractive market is formed,” Ancelotti said.

“So in Serie A, there are no longer internationally outstanding players like Falcao, Maradona, Platini, Krol, Rummenigge, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho and all the others from a distant era. Who do young Italian players learn from?”

Como is one of the most exciting emerging clubs in Serie A, but Ancelotti feels they are not making a significant contribution to Italian football.

“I don’t see many Italian players there,” argued the Brazil coach.

“But talking about defensive fragility, Atalanta play aggressive one-on-one football and, for this reason, they take enormous risks. Just watch their match against Bayern again.”

Lastly, Ancelotti added: “Either we recover defenders, or rather the defensive mentality that has brought us club and national team success, or we will continue to suffer. Football is not only about scoring more goals than your opponent, but also about conceding fewer. That’s not a trivial statement.”