Italy National Soccer Team: Do the Azzurri Rely Too Heavily on Juventus?

According to the research of ESPNSoccernet's Norman Hubbard, Juventus have supplied more World Cup-winning players than any other team in the world.  The bianconeri have been the club base for 24 players who have had the honor of lifting the Cup.  Of those, 22 of them were Italians—the only two foreigners being Zinedine Zidane and Didier Deschamps of France's triumphant 1998 side.

The 2006 World Cup champions boasted five Juventus players, four of whom were regular starters throughout the tournament, and the other, Alessandro Del Piero, serving in the role of close-game super-sub.

In 2010, six Juve players were on Marcello Lippi's squad—twice as many as any other club that represented on the team.  One of those players, Claudio Marchisio, went unused through the three games of the group-stage debacle.  Two others, Gianluigi Buffon and Mauro Camoranesi, were limited by injuries through most of the tournament, while the remaining three—Vincenzo Iaquinta, Giorgio Chielliini and Fabio Cannavaro—were all regular starters.

The fact that so many Juventus players were representing Italy in 2010 was questioned by ESPN play-by-play man Ian Darke here in the U.S.  Juve had just finished a dismal campaign that had seen them finish in seventh place with a 16-7-15 (W-D-L) record, 28 points off champions Inter, and with a minus-one-goal differential.  Iaquinta in particular had had a terrible season, scoring only seven goals in all competitions.  After such a bad season, why was Juve disproportionately represented on the field during the World Cup?

The trend has actually ticked upwards in recent years.  In Cesare Prandelli's latest squad for the February friendly against the United States, seven of the 23 players were based at the Juventus Stadium.  Add Simone Pepe's call-up late in 2011 and eight Juventus men have played for Italy in the last year.

February's Juve contingent produced mixed results.  Buffon—fully recovered from his 2010 injury and at the top of his form again—played well.  The only goal of the game was on an unstoppable shot.  Chiellini, Andrea Barzagli and Leonardo Bonucci played well in central defense.  In the midfield, Andrea Pirlo was his usual masterful self, while Marchisio had an average game in which he failed to fully make his stamp on the match.  Alessandro Matri had a goal called back for offsides but otherwise looked fairly ordinary.

This has led me to question whether or not the Azzurri are getting slightly too top-heavy with Juventus players.  

As the most successful club in Italy, they have traditionally been a key pipeline to the national team, having supplied a whopping nine players when Italy first won the World Cup in 1934.  In 17 World Cups and seven European Championships, 110 Juventus players have represented Italy (counting repeats)—nearly 20 percent of the total.  

Why so many?  Well, for one thing, the best Italian players have a historical tendency to stay in Italy.  Only two Italian World Cup teams (1998 and 2002) boasted players who played on a club outside of Italy, along with the same number of Euro teams (1996 and 2008)—a total of only eight players.  Juve has had long runs as being the dominant team in Italy; therefore, it only seems natural that they would supply so many members of the national side.

But recent years have not been kind to Juve.  Their seemingly quick recovery from the forced relegation that was the result of the calciopoli match fixing scandal ended up being fool's gold, and coming into the 2011-12 season, they had endured two consecutive seventh-place finishes and had been totally shut out of European soccer this season.  While this season's resurgence seems to be hailing the true return to prominence for the beleaguered club, the Azzurri seemed to have taken on more Juve players as the club's fortunes—and form—were dropping substantially.

Is this reliance on Juve coming to an end?  It could be.  Italy's best players are still, for the most part, staying in Italy.  Currently, only three players who can be considered likely members of the Euro 2012 roster play outside of the Serie A.  Serie A has a parity it has not had in many years, but a lot of the ascendent teams like Napoli, Lazio and Udinese are doing so with squads that depend a good deal on non-Italian players.

Juve tends to have a larger proportion of Italian players on their roster—17 at present—and look to be a major supplier to Cesare Prandelli for the foreseeable future.  There are some players whose place with the Azzurri whose places on the team should be automatic—Buffon, Pirlo, Chiellini.  But are others there solely based on the Juventus name more than their performance, as a player like Iaquinta in 2010 may have been?  

Prandelli will have to cut through that to make sure that the 23 men he takes to Poland will be the 23 that truly deserve it.