Italy's top football coaches association has called for a sports-based pathway to citizenship. The country is losing talent to international rivals while bureaucratic obstacles prevent thousands of young athletes—raised in Italian academies but born abroad—from representing the national team. Legislative reforms have tightened ancestral citizenship rules while leaving sport-related naturalization largely unaddressed.
Why This Matters
• 367 of 534 Serie A players (68.7%) are foreign nationals, yet many young athletes trained in Italy cannot obtain citizenship before age 18.
• The Italy Parliament approved ius soli sportivo on January 14, 2026, allowing underage foreign residents to register with sports federations—but this does not grant full citizenship or eligibility for the national team.
• Restrictive citizenship laws force Italy-trained talent like Kristjan Asllani to play for Albania, while players like Mateo Retegui gain citizenship through distant Italian ancestry.
• France's 1998 and 2018 World Cup victories were powered by squads built on birthright citizenship laws—a model Italian football officials now cite as essential for competitiveness.
Impact on Expats & Young Families
For foreign residents with children in Italy, the current system offers little predictability. A child born in Italy to non-citizen parents has no automatic claim to citizenship, even if they complete their entire education and athletic training domestically. The 2026 Budget Law extended the window for registering foreign-born minors to three years and waived the €250 fee, but these are procedural tweaks, not structural reforms.
Parents should note that the ius soli sportivo facilitates club registration—not citizenship. If your child excels in a youth academy, they can now compete domestically without bureaucratic hurdles. However, representing Italy at the international level requires full naturalization, which remains tied to the 10-year residency rule and post-18 application.
There is a temporary provision for 2026–2027 allowing individuals who lost Italian citizenship before 1992 to reclaim it without residency requirements—useful for older emigrants, but irrelevant to the youth sports debate.
The Case for Sports Citizenship
Renzo Ulivieri, president of the Italy Coaches Association (AIAC), has reignited the citizenship debate by pointing to global football realities. At the 2026 World Cup, 292 out of 1,248 players (23.4%) were born outside the country they represented—a statistic Ulivieri argues reflects a "complex world" that Italy cannot ignore.
"How can we fail to see that ius soli, perhaps in a mediated form—sports-based or education-based—is one of the great challenges we must face as a country?" Ulivieri wrote on the AIAC website. He singled out Switzerland and other European quarterfinalists as examples of nations that benefit from inclusive citizenship frameworks, contrasting them with Italy's reliance on ius sanguinis (bloodline citizenship).
The coach criticized current procedures that delay citizenship applications until after an athlete turns 18, calling them "historically outdated" and marginalizing to thousands of young people who are Italian "in fact, but not in law." His remarks emphasized Italy's commitment to integration for young people raised in Italian institutions.
What the Law Actually Changed
In early 2026, the Italy Senate passed Law 1871/2026 in January, enabling foreign minors with legal residency to register with sports federations under the same rules as Italian citizens. Crucially, this registration remains valid after age 18 while citizenship applications are processed—a bureaucratic fix, but not a fast track to the passport.
The measure does not alter the underlying citizenship framework, which still requires ten years of continuous legal residency before a foreign-born minor can apply for naturalization. This means a child who arrives at age 8 cannot obtain citizenship until 18, and the application process itself can stretch for additional years due to administrative backlogs.
Meanwhile, in June 2026, the Italy Cabinet approved a separate sports decree, allocating €4M for university scholarships for high-performing student-athletes—an incentive for merit-based sports development, but unrelated to citizenship.
The Ancestral Citizenship Paradox
Previously, in 2025, Italy moved in the opposite direction on ius sanguinis reform. Law 74/2025, upheld by the Italy Constitutional Court in Sentence 63/2026 (April 30), imposed generational caps on automatic citizenship for descendants born abroad. Now, at least one parent or grandparent must have been born in Italy or held citizenship at the time of the applicant's birth—a response to concerns about extended diaspora applications.
This creates an uncomfortable irony: Italy naturalizes foreign-born players like Jorginho (born in Brazil to an Italian great-grandfather) while Asllani—born in Albania but raised in Italian football academies—plays for Albania because he cannot secure Italian citizenship in time.
The contrast has fueled accusations of selective inclusivity. Critics note that Serie A's Italian player share has plummeted to 31.27%, with only 28% of starters in the latest match-day holding Italian passports. Yet the national team remains closed to those developed domestically but born elsewhere.
The French Model and International Comparisons
France's success is frequently cited in these debates. The 1994 ius soli law granted automatic citizenship to children born in France if at least one parent was also born there (double ius soli), or at age 18 for those born in France to foreign parents with sufficient residency. This created a pathway for talent from immigrant communities into the national team.
The result: World Cup titles in 1998 and 2018, both featuring squads with players from diverse ethnic backgrounds. However, the model remains contested in French public discourse. Some sociologists have examined whether football integration reflects broader social integration patterns, while political figures have debated the cultural dimensions of national team composition.
In Italy, debate over similar models reflects broader questions about national identity and integration policy. Some Italy Football Federation (FIGC) officials and political figures have raised concerns about rapid citizenship policy changes, while sports leaders like Ulivieri argue that talent development and national competitiveness require more inclusive frameworks.
What Happens Next
The legislative calendar offers limited opportunity for major citizenship reform. The Italy Ministry of Foreign Affairs is currently centralizing processing for adult descendant applications under Law 1683/2026, but this focuses on diaspora logistics, not domestic integration.
Ulivieri's AIAC has no formal legislative power, but its voice carries weight in the FIGC and with sports ministry officials. Whether his appeal translates into policy depends on coalition dynamics in the Italy Parliament, where citizenship reform remains politically sensitive.
For now, young foreign-born athletes can train and compete in Italy's clubs. But until the law changes, they face a choice at 18: wait years for Italian citizenship while their careers advance elsewhere, or accept a call-up from their parents' homeland—taking with them the investment Italy made in their development.
