Italy’s failure to qualify for recent World Cups has prompted renewed reflection on missed opportunities — none more striking than the reform blueprint once proposed by Roberto Baggio.

Long before the Azzurri’s unprecedented absence from three consecutive World Cup — Italy failed to qualify for this year’s edition after losing to Bosnia in the playoffs on Tuesday — the former forward had drafted a sweeping, 900-page document titled “Renew the Future,” a comprehensive plan aimed at rebuilding Italian football from its foundations, Italy’s Gazzetta dello Sport reported.

The newspaper added that the proposal, compiled with the input of 50 experts, laid out detailed structural, technical, and educational reforms. It was never implemented.

Baggio’s legacy in blue remains inseparable from the drama of the 1994 World Cup. On July 5 in Foxborough, Italy stood on the brink of elimination against Nigeria in the round of 16, reduced to ten men after Gianfranco Zola’s dismissal. With just two minutes remaining, Baggio, fondly called the ‘Divine Ponytail’, equalised before converting the decisive penalty in extra time to send Italy through. Yet he is more remembered for his missed penalty in the final against Brazil in the final 12 days later, which handed the trophy to the South Americans.

Years on, Baggio — scarred for life by the missed penalty — sought to shoulder a different responsibility: helping restore Italian football to competitiveness. His reform plan was not a rhetorical call for change but a meticulously structured programme.

It proposed the creation of 100 federal training centres, investment in modern sports facilities, and a nationwide system for monitoring and developing young talent. Central to the project was the training of qualified instructors with both academic credentials and strong educational skills.

At its core, the document identified a growing imbalance in youth development. Baggio warned against an excessive focus on tactics at the expense of technical ability — a concern echoed by figures such as Massimo Mauro. He advocated for constant engagement with the ball and the use of integrated physical and technical assessments, arguing that purely athletic testing was detached from the realities of the game. His vision also anticipated the digital age, calling for the computerisation of scouting and training data.

The proposal came in the aftermath of Italy’s disappointing exit from the 2010 FIFA World Cup, where the defending champions finished bottom of their group. Further early eliminations followed in 2014, and, in the years since, Italy’s absence from successive World Cups has deepened the sense of decline. Remarkably, the Azzurri’s last knockout match at a World Cup remains the 2006 final in Berlin.

Baggio’s plan also outlined an ambitious scouting network, dividing the country into 100 districts, each overseen by federal coaches tasked with observing up to 50,000 matches annually. The aim was to create a vast multimedia database of exercises, tests, and recorded games, fostering a more coherent and meritocratic system of talent identification and development.

None of these measures were adopted. Frustrated, Baggio eventually resigned. “I tried to carry out the role entrusted to me, but I was not allowed to,” he said at the time, according to Gazzetta dello Sport. “I worked to rebuild from the foundations—to create good players and good people. I submitted my project in December 2011, and it remained a dead letter.”