So I came upon this thought randomly today, and looked up when was the last time an Italian player scored a hat-trick in the Champions League. I was somewhat shocked to find out that it was Vincenzo Iaquinta for Udinese, in September 2005. That’s right, it’s been 17 years since an Italian has had a treble in the CL. Combined with Gilardino being the last scorer of a hat-trick for Italy a whopping 14 years ago, are these symptoms of the general decline of Italian football or simply Italian forwards?
Italy haven’t produced a lot of good strikers in recent years. They had lots of World Class strikers in the 90’s some of whom played well into the 00’s. Some very good strikers emerged in the 00’s such as Di Natale, Quagiarella, Iaquinta, Luca Toni, Gilardino and Pazzini, which is a pretty impressive array of talent although not quite up there with the 90’s crop.
It seems the drop off has been pretty big in the last decade, with a lot of the highly rated youngster failing to reach the heights they were expected to. Immobile has been the best but beyond that it’s hard to think of too many great strikers.