Juventus, AC Milan and Como have collectively used Italian players for fewer minutes in Serie A this season than Inter have managed on their own after five rounds.
Data from Transfermarkt, reported by TuttoMercatoWeb, shows the three clubs have given Italy-eligible players 1,361 minutes between them. That is 48 fewer than Inter, who have relied on only four Italians: Nicolo Barella, Alessandro Bastoni, Federico Dimarco and Pio Esposito.
Juventus rank 16th in the table with 754 minutes, of which 720 have been provided by Guglielmo Vicario and Manuel Locatelli. Locatelli is now expected to spend months out after undergoing knee surgery.
Milan are 17th on 383 minutes, with Alphadjo Cisse their leading contributor, while Como have used Italian players for 224 minutes. More than half of Como’s total has come from Moise Kean since his move from Fiorentina.
At the top of the standings, Massimiliano Alvini’s Frosinone have handed 12 Italians a combined 3,459 minutes. That figure is more than twice the total recorded by the bottom five clubs combined.
Fellow promoted clubs Monza and Atalanta follow Frosinone with 2,813 and 2,288 minutes respectively. Cagliari and Lazio complete the top five.
Venezia, the third promoted side, are bottom with 20 minutes from Italian players. All of those minutes have been played by Matteo Dagasso.
Italy-eligible players
A total of 122 Italy-eligible players have appeared in Serie A so far this season. Twelve have played every available minute, including six goalkeepers: Marco Carnesecchi, Elia Caprile, Lorenzo Palmisani, Guglielmo Vicario, Wladimiro Falcone and Edoardo Corvi.
Parma are the only club with three ever-present players. Corvi has been joined by Enrico Delprato and Emanuele Valeri.
Napoli’s Giovanni Di Lorenzo has also completed every minute, despite losing his starting place with Italy to Michael Kayode.
The figures have prompted calls in Italian football for greater scrutiny of clubs that field few or no Italian players. One view was that media criticism needs to be sustained whenever a side starts without an Italian, arguing that clubs may only change their approach if the issue becomes a public-image concern rather than an abstract collective problem.
Frosinone were praised as a “Proper Italian club”, while Juventus were described as “the biggest anti Italia of them all”.
Another proposal called for FIGC and Malago to mandate that Serie A clubs include at least four or five Italians in their starting line-up. It also argued that having Italian players registered in a squad was not enough, and that clubs should be required to promote players from their youth teams and integrate them into their senior squads.