Italian Players Struggle for Minutes as Serie A Clubs Turn to Foreign Talent

Italian players have accounted for just 28.2 percent of the total minutes played in Serie A during the opening five rounds of the season. The figure highlights the growing reliance on foreign players across the league, with several clubs featuring relatively few Italian players in their regular line-ups.

A study published by Il Fatto Quotidiano after 50 Serie A matches found that 71.9 percent of the 454 players used so far were foreign. That figure is higher than last season's average of 69.1 percent, suggesting that the presence of overseas talent has continued to increase at the start of the current campaign.

Venezia recorded the lowest involvement of Italian players, with domestic talent accounting for only 0.4 percent of their playing time. Udinese followed with 4.2 percent, while Como ranked third from the bottom at 4.5 percent despite signing Moise Kean, Samuele Ricci and Mattia Liberali during the summer in part to meet UEFA's homegrown player requirements.

Several of Italy's biggest clubs also relied heavily on foreign players. Milan gave Italian players just 7.7 percent of their minutes, while Juventus recorded 15.2 percent. Inter and Roma had considerably higher figures, with Italian players making up 29.3 percent and 29 percent of their playing time respectively, despite both clubs sitting near the top of the league standings.

Frosinone provided the biggest share of playing time to Italian players at 69.9 percent, followed by Monza with 56.8 percent and Atalanta with 46.2 percent. Cagliari and Lazio completed the top five with 43.6 percent and 36.2 percent respectively, showing the significant differences between clubs in their use of domestic players during the early stages of the season.