Serie A, 'zero risks': from De Bruyne to Modric, the market still relies on veterans

In an Italian football in an identity crisis, orphaned by a coach and increasingly distant from the stages that matter, the response of the summer market is clear, as well as worrying: everything is being put into veterans. While the National team risks having to cling to the playoffs for the third time in a row to get a ticket to the World Cup - absent for twelve long years - Serie A shows the face of a system that is struggling to renew itself, preferring the safe used to the unknown of the young.

Edin Dzeko, 39, is among the most sought-after names: Fiorentina, Bologna and Como want him for his experience and his eye for goal. In Milan, on the Rossoneri side, the arrival of the almost forty-year-old Luka Modric is being prepared, just as Milan sells one of its prized pieces, Reijnders, to Manchester City for 70 million euros. And if Napoli fans dream of the talent – ​​perhaps now nostalgic – of Kevin De Bruyne, expected in the city for his medical, rumors are multiplying about a possible (and sensational) return to Italy of Cristiano Ronaldo, with Como ready to shuffle the cards thanks to the unbridled ambition of the Hartono brothers.

Serie A, which sees its best young players fleeing abroad, continues to live in a paradox: it exports talent and imports the past. But not everything is stagnation. Hope is rekindled by the ideas and projects of non-traditional clubs: Como and Bologna they are trying to subvert the historical hierarchies, investing with vision and building value. Models that try to follow the example of Atalanta, perhaps the true construction site of modernity of our football. In the meantime, however, the World Cup remains distant, like a dream never awakened.