Roberto Baggio's forgotten 900-page Italian football reconstruction document suddenly becomes popular again

Legend Roberto Baggio once unveiled a 900-page project to rebuild Italian football in 2011, after the sky-blue team was eliminated from the World Cup in South Africa. That project is being mentioned again after Italy's national team failed to secure a spot for the 2026 World Cup.

Baggio's project, titled "Renewing the Future" (Rinnovare il futuro), is a 900-page dossier, the result of the work of 50 experts, meticulously researched in every detail to rebuild the football movement. Unfortunately, it was never even considered.

The forgotten project

Years ago, Baggio recounted: "When we arrived to present, they made us wait for five hours and then only allowed us to speak for 15 minutes."

Within those pages, one of the key points was the need to build "sports infrastructure suitable for approximately 100 federation training centers." Next was data collection, monitoring at the local level, training coaches with university degrees, professional playing experience, and good pedagogical skills. The project also proposed establishing a permanent research group (consisting of federation researchers and university interns) maintaining close contact with the actual coaching staff.

Even then, Baggio recognized that the youth player training method in Italian football was changing in a misguided direction, something many still emphasize today: an excessive focus on tactics over technique.

This viewpoint was also supported by Massimo Mauro in an interview with Gazzetta. The former Juventus player emphasized that young players must maintain constant connection with the ball. All young players need to undergo "tests that combine both physical and technical aspects, because purely physical tests are completely detached from the match context."

All can be summarized in a few words: Discovering and nurturing talent. And, this point shows Baggio was ahead of his time, namely the complete digitalization of the system.

In 2010, when Italy's national team was eliminated from the World Cup in South Africa, finishing last in their group (shared with Paraguay, Slovakia, and New Zealand). Following that, in the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, Italy's national team also failed to advance past the group stage after losing to Uruguay. And that was also the last time Italy's national team participated in a World Cup.

While Italy's national team missed the chance to attend the World Cup repeatedly, Baggio's project was completely disregarded and only recently mentioned again by media in the pasta country.

Scouting and training

The goal in Baggio's project was to restore the central role of developing both technical skills and ethics for young players, establishing a new local scouting system, and reviewing the training activities of football academies.

The role of the technical department should include strict nationwide supervision, divided into 100 areas with 3 federation coaches for each location. The aim was "to monitor 50,000 matches per year, interacting daily with youth teams to create a massive multimedia database: from exercises, tests to filmed and categorized matches." But ultimately, nothing was implemented.

Heartfelt words

At that time, specifically from August 4, 2010 after the failure in South Africa, Baggio was appointed as President of the Technical Council of FIGC (Italian Football Federation) to assist in the reconstruction effort.

"Last December, we sent FIGC the project I was working on, which is training football instructors," Baggio explained. "From my experience, I understand that the supply chain from the highest level to caring for young players cannot lack modernization of the technical department. But 10 months have passed and I'm still waiting for an answer. I cannot hide my disappointment. Funds were allocated, but so far only one initiative has been implemented in Tuscany and it succeeded beautifully. After that, nothing more. Political barriers perhaps? I don't know, but this time the clubs have nothing to do with it."

And later, after resigning, Baggio reaffirmed: "I tried to fulfill the role entrusted to me, but I was not allowed to do it and I am no longer willing to continue. I worked to renew the foundations, to create good players and good people. I presented my project in December 2011, 900 pages long, and it remains just words on paper. I don't like sitting idle to keep a seat, I want to work, so with a heavy heart, I decided to leave."

When asked if this was a permanent farewell, Baggio replied: "I love football and my country. I am ready for any initiative for the benefit of sports."