Italy's missing the World Cup is the Fault of Modern Football

The modern footballing machine is manufacturing efficiency at the cost of the soul. We are witnessing the death of the "unique being"—the player whose individuality is not a flaw to be coached out, but how the game turns. From the underproducing academies of "advanced" nations to the viral robot drills on social media (imagine a group of 10-year-olds performing a series of Cruyff Turns in sequence), we have mistaken uniformity for mastery.

The runaway genius, Roberto Baggio, the brute poet, Daniele De Rossi, or the progressive passer, Michael Carrick, are dying and being replaced with a duplicative conveyor belt. Children are us. The modern, risk-averse copyists reflect their development. This homogeneity is our fault. Anomalies, such as Max Dowman and Lamine Yamal, do not prove that the system works; rather, they demonstrate that the soul prevails despite suppression.

While my work in the Kingdom of Eswatini in Southern Africa with Fisher Talent Group, a football scouting nonprofit, reveals a desperate need for the infrastructure, investment, and formal academy systems that Africa lacks, it also exposes the "cutting-edge" world's greatest shortage: the loss of the spirit. I sell a quote called SOULtalent in our online store, The Soul Store. It means what I am saying.

Football is an open field designed for freedom, a canvas where the individual asserts their own ethos onto the game rather than surrendering to the system—they must integrate with their true self, not succumb to what they are not. This pursuit is life.