"Oriundi": Foreign-Born Footballers Who Have Worn the Azzurri Shirt

By Ludovica Cerci

In Italy, perhaps no sport captures the passion and excitement of fans quite like football does. It has the unique power to unite people, but at the same time, it can also be deeply divisive—especially when it comes to issues that sharply split public opinion. One of the most hotly debated topics for decades has been the inclusion of so-called “oriundi” in the Italian national football team. The debate is split between those who support their involvement and those who see it as a distortion of the team’s identity.

What’s undeniable, however, is that many oriundi have proven to be valuable assets for the national team over the years. Before we dive deeper into this phenomenon, who exactly are the oriundi?

Oriundi are players who, although born outside of Italy, have Italian ancestry and dual citizenship, which allows them to represent the Azzurri on the international stage. The origins of this phenomenon trace back to the publication of the Carta di Viareggio in 1926, a document strongly supported by Mussolini. It's remembered as a turning point in Italian football history. Up until then, football was officially considered an amateur sport, but the Carta di Viareggio marked the beginning of its transformation into a professional one. How exactly is this document connected to the rise of the oriundi?

Mussolini issued this document because he wanted football to align with fascist policies, for this reason, he implemented a very specific measure: the closure of football borders to foreign players. The ban on foreign players was gradual: during the 1926-1927 season, two non-Italian players were still allowed per team, but only one could be on the field at a time. By 1928, however, the complete prohibition of foreign players was put in place.

Nonetheless, it's well known that the goal of any football team is to win, to assert dominance, and to improve its roster. Before the Carta di Viareggio came into effect, the possibility of fielding foreign players had, in many cases, greatly benefited the teams that took advantage of it. Suddenly finding themselves in a much less competitive league, the question arose: how could they circumvent this newly introduced rule? This is how the phenomenon of the oriundi came about (from the Latin oriri: to be born, to originate), a development closely linked to an event that took place a few decades earlier."

In the late 1800s, Italy had experienced a period of intense emigration, particularly to South America, with many Italians heading to Brazil and Argentina. By the early 1900s, in Buenos Aires, certain neighborhoods—most notably La Boca—had an Italian population, largely from Genoa, that made up over 50% of the total population. It’s no coincidence that Boca Juniors was founded in 1905 by five young Italian immigrants from Genoa, and that even today, the club’s fans are known as the “Xeneizes” — an Argentine rendering of the Genoese dialect word zeneize, which simply means “Genoese.” "It seemed that a clever workaround had been found to bypass the restrictions of the Viareggio Charter: the idea gained traction that the children of those who had emigrated from Italy in previous decades could be considered Italian—and thus eligible to play in both the Italian league and for the national team."

It was Edoardo Agnelli who ultimately persuaded Mussolini to allow the use of oriundi—foreign-born players of Italian descent—in the national league. As Mario Sconcerti writes in Storie delle idée del calcio, Agnelli convinced him that, even if they weren’t born in Italy, they were still “italiani di una grande patria che si estende anche al di là dell’Atlantico (Italians from a great homeland that stretches beyond the Atlantic).” Taking advantage of the exception granted by the Fascist regime to football clubs, Count Marone Cinzano, then president of Torino, became the first to bring to Italy the player widely recognized as the first oriundo in Italian football history: Julio Libonatti.

Born in Rosario—a city that would later produce some of Argentina’s greatest talents, including Messi, Di María, Valdano, and many others—Libonatti was a beloved figure in his home country. He had already won a Copa América with the Argentine national team in 1921. Once in Italy, he went on to win the International Cup twice with his new national side—an early forerunner of today’s European Championship. Libonatti broke the glass ceiling and paved the way for a new wave of oriundi stars like Luis Monti, Enrique Guaita, and Raimundo Orsi, who would go on to play key roles in Italy’s 1934 World Cup victory under coach Vittorio Pozzo.

After 1946, with the Viareggio Charter regulations officially shelved, foreign players began returning to the Italian league, and the number of oriundi in the national team continued to grow. In the early 1960s, it was the turn of Omar Sívori (a future Ballon d'Or winner), Humberto Maschio, and Antonio Valentín Angelillo—known as the “Angeli dalla faccia sporca (Angels with Dirty Faces)”—who wore the Azzurri shirt after previously winning a Copa América with Argentina. Around the same time, another exceptional player joined the national team: José Altafini, who had already won the World Cup with Brazil in 1958.

But the disastrous 1962 World Cup, which ended in a loss to Chile in what’s now infamously known as the “Battle of Santiago”—a match marred by a questionable referee performance and blatant Chilean foul play—created a rift between public opinion and the oriundi in the national squad. Altafini, Sívori, and Maschio, all called up for that tournament, were made scapegoats. They were seen as not being “truly Italian” and were accused of lacking genuine commitment to the Azzurri colours.

Four years later, in 1966, things didn’t just stay the same for oriundi—they actually got worse. That year marked one of the darkest chapters in the history of the Italian national team. During the World Cup held in England, Italy suffered a shocking elimination in the group stage after losing to North Korea—a team widely seen at the time as having little to no football pedigree. In the wake of the disaster, the Italian football authorities felt the need to take drastic action. Forty years after the introduction of the Viareggio Charter, they once again decided to ban foreign players. This time, though, the ruling also applied to oriundi, who were now being blamed by many for failing to lift the national team out of its prolonged slump.

This renewed ban on foreign players lasted for a full fourteen years. Only in 1980  the gates reopened, although with restrictions: each club could only register a limited number of non-Italian players. Despite this reopening, the era in which oriundi played leading roles in the national team was now a thing of the past. After their prominence during the fascist years and again in the 1950s and ’60s, the oriundi phenomenon came to an abrupt halt.

It wasn’t until 1995 that the Bosman ruling once again turned everything upside down, sparking a new revolution in the world of football—one that also ended up involving oriundi. The ruling abolished the cap on the number of EU players allowed on club rosters. Up until then, limits had been in place for so-called “non-national” players—those born outside the Federation of the club they were signed with.

From 1995 onwards, EU players were granted full freedom of movement across European leagues, while restrictions remained in place for non-EU players. As a result, a new trend began to emerge: agents and club scouts started actively searching for European ancestry among non-EU players. The goal was to obtain EU passports and dual citizenship for them, allowing clubs to avoid using up the limited and highly valuable non-EU player slots.

In this context, the number of players with dual citizenship began to rise significantly. Starting in the early 2000s, having oriundi in the national team was no longer seen as taboo, and many dual-nationality players began wearing the Azzurri jersey once again. The first to end this long absence was Mauro Camoranesi, an Argentine with Italian citizenship through his great-grandfather, who had emigrated to Italy in the late 1800s. Camoranesi made his debut for the national team in 2003, under Giovanni Trapattoni—the coach who first called him up—and went on to represent Italy until 2010.His inclusion in the squad sparked debate and controversy, and he was often the target of criticism and insults. Nevertheless, Camoranesi left his mark on the history of Italian football.In 2006, under coach Marcello Lippi, Camoranesi became a World Champion. Fresh off that historic World Cup win, he gave a statement that perfectly captured the essence of oriundi—the deep bond with their country of birth and the pride of wearing the jersey of their ancestors.““Me siento argentino pero he defendido los colores de Italia, que está en mi sangre, con dignidad. Eso es algo que nadie puede quitar - I feel Argentine, but I’ve defended the colors of Italy, which I have in my blood, with dignity. That’s something no one can take away from me.”

After Camoranesi—who still holds the record for most appearances by an oriundo in the national team, with 55 caps and five goals—many other dual-nationality players have gone on to wear the Azzurri jersey. Amauri, Ledesma, Thiago Motta, Osvaldo, Schelotto, Paletta, Vázquez, Éder, Tolói, Emerson, Jorginho, Luiz Felipe, and João Pedro have all featured for Italy at least once.

The fortunes of oriundi in the national team have varied widely. Some, like Jorginho, Emerson Palmieri, and Rafael Tolói, became European Champions, while others, like João Pedro, were called up only briefly—he featured just once, in the ill-fated match on March 24, 2022, when Italy lost to North Macedonia in Palermo, a defeat that marked their second consecutive failure to qualify for the World Cup.

Following this painful disappointment, and in an attempt to inject new life into Italy's attack, head coach Roberto Mancini called up Mateo Retegui on March 17, 2023, for the Euro 2024 qualifiers against England and Malta. Retegui added his name to the long list of oriundi who have worn the Azzurri jersey. An Argentine with Italian citizenship through his Sicilian grandfather, Mateo made an immediate impact, scoring on his debut for Italy and repeating the feat in the following match.

His impressive 30 goals in 48 appearances during his loan spell at Tigre from Boca Juniors caught international attention. In 2023, he moved permanently to Genoa and is now playing for Atalanta, where he currently ranks among the top scorers in the Serie A standings.

After the change in coaching staff, the new national team manager, Luciano Spalletti, has continued to place his trust in Retegui, calling him up for various Azzurri matches. With 18 caps and 6 goals to his name, Italian fans are hoping that he can help the team secure qualification for the 2026 World Cup. We’ll just have to wait and see.