Italy national football team players: Mancini’s 31 for France and Belgium in November 2026

Italy have seven points from their first four Nations League games under Roberto Mancini, second in Group A1 behind France, and the squad he has named for the last two, at home to France on 12 November and away to Belgium on 15 November, is younger again. Thirty-one players were called up. Seven of them have never played for the senior side, and five are teenagers, the youngest of them 17.

Mancini returned to the Italy bench in late July 2026, three years after resigning, with Claudio Ranieri appointed alongside him as technical director. He is the coach who won Euro 2020, still the only thing Italy have won since the 2006 World Cup, and he is rebuilding a team that lost a World Cup play-off final on penalties to Bosnia and Herzegovina on 31 March, drawing 1-1 and going out 4-1 in the shootout.

Italy’s squad for France and Belgium, November 2026

The list below is the squad as it stood on 7 November 2026, after Roma defender Gianluca Mancini withdrew injured and Udinese’s Matteo Palma, an 18-year-old centre-back, was called up for the first time once FIFA had cleared his change of sporting nationality. Riccardo Cassano and Simone Lontani are with the senior squad for the first part of the camp only, before joining Italy’s under-18 and under-19 sides. Caps and goals are for the senior national team up to the 3-1 win over Turkey on 5 October; ages are as of 9 November 2026.

Goalkeeper	Club	Age	Caps
Gianluigi Donnarumma (c)	Manchester City	27	87
Guglielmo Vicario	Juventus	30	5
Marco Carnesecchi	Atalanta	26	0

Defender	Club	Age	Caps	Goals
Alessandro Bastoni	Inter	27	46	5
Federico Dimarco	Inter	28	38	3
Riccardo Calafiori	Arsenal	24	17	1
Giorgio Scalvini	Atalanta	22	11	0
Michael Kayode	Brentford	22	3	1
Honest Ahanor	Crystal Palace	18	2	0
Marco Palestra	Chelsea	21	2	0
Daniele Ghilardi	Roma	23	0	0
Matteo Palma	Udinese	18	0	0

Midfielder	Club	Age	Caps	Goals
Nicolò Barella	Inter	29	73	10
Davide Frattesi	Lazio	27	38	9
Sandro Tonali	Tottenham Hotspur	26	36	4
Samuele Ricci	Como	25	11	0
Nicolò Fagioli	Fiorentina	25	9	0
Issa Doumbia	Sporting CP	23	4	0
Niccolò Pisilli	Roma	22	4	0
Alessandro Romano	Cagliari	20	3	0
Riccardo Cassano	Como	17	0	0
Simone Lontani	Parma	18	0	0

Forward	Club	Age	Caps	Goals
Gianluca Scamacca	Atalanta	27	25	2
Nicolò Zaniolo	Udinese	27	19	2
Pio Esposito	Inter	21	13	7
Nicolò Cambiaghi	Bologna	25	3	0
Sebastiano Esposito	Sassuolo	24	2	0
Luca Koleosho	Paris FC	22	2	0
Antonio Vergara	Napoli	23	2	0
Alphadjo Cisse	Milan	20	0	0
Mattia Liberali	Como	19	0	0

Who is in and who is out since September

Mancini called up 34 players for the four games in September and October. Twelve of them are not in this squad: Massimo Pessina, Giovanni Di Lorenzo, Gianluca Mancini, Diego Coppola, Eddy Kouadio, Matteo Ruggeri, Rolando Mandragora, Giacomo Raspadori, Moise Kean, Daniel Maldini, Samuele Inácio and Mohamed Ali Zoma. Di Lorenzo, who started the Euro 2020 final and played in three of the four autumn games, is the most experienced of them. Kean and Raspadori, two of the three players in the September squad with double figures for international goals, are missing as well.

Nine come in. Federico Dimarco is back after pulling out of the September camp, and Marco Palestra of Chelsea, Niccolò Pisilli of Roma and Luca Koleosho of Paris FC have all been capped before. The other five are new: Palma, Cassano, Lontani, Milan forward Alphadjo Cisse and Como’s Mattia Liberali. Cassano, born in March 2009, is 17 and the youngest in the squad.

The caps column is still where the story is

Two players in the squad have more than 50 caps: Donnarumma with 87 and Nicolò Barella with 73. After that it falls away fast, to Alessandro Bastoni on 46, Dimarco and Davide Frattesi on 38 and Sandro Tonali on 36, then nobody else above 25. Gianluigi Buffon’s Italy record is 176 caps; Donnarumma, at 27, has 87.

The other end of the list is more striking. Seven of the 31 have never been capped, and another five have played once or twice, so twelve of the thirty-one have a senior international career you could describe in a sentence. Four of them, Honest Ahanor, Palma, Lontani and Cassano, were born in 2008 or 2009.

Goals show the gap even more clearly. The whole 31-man squad has scored 44 international goals between them. Gigi Riva, still Italy’s record scorer more than fifty years after he stopped playing, scored 35 on his own. Barella leads the current group with 10, Frattesi has 9 and Pio Esposito 7, and Barella is the only one in double figures.

Where Italy’s players play their club football

Twenty-three of the 31 are at Italian clubs and eight play abroad. Inter supply four players, more than anyone, Atalanta and Como three each, and Roma and Udinese two each; nine more Serie A clubs have one.

Of the eight abroad, six are in England: Donnarumma at Manchester City, Riccardo Calafiori at Arsenal, Tonali at Tottenham, Michael Kayode at Brentford, Ahanor at Crystal Palace and Palestra at Chelsea. The other two are Issa Doumbia at Sporting CP in Portugal and Koleosho at Paris FC. Nobody in the squad plays in Spain or Germany.

Italy’s Nations League results and what is left

Italy were drawn into Group A1 with France, Belgium and Turkey, one of the strongest groups in League A. They started with a 2-0 home defeat by Belgium in Rome, then won 4-1 in Bursa, drew 1-1 with France in Saint-Denis, where Bastoni equalised, and beat Turkey 3-1 in Bologna.

Date	Match	Score	Italy scorers
25 September	Italy v Belgium, Rome	0-2	–
28 September	Turkey v Italy, Bursa	1-4	Bastoni, Frattesi, Kayode, Pio Esposito
2 October	France v Italy, Saint-Denis	1-1	Bastoni
5 October	Italy v Turkey, Bologna	3-1	Scamacca, Calafiori, Pio Esposito

Pos	Team	P	W	D	L	Goals	Pts
1	France	4	3	1	0	7-2	10
2	Italy	4	2	1	1	8-5	7
3	Belgium	4	2	0	2	6-5	6
4	Turkey	4	0	0	4	2-11	0

Two games are left. Italy host France at San Siro in Milan on Thursday 12 November and travel to Belgium at the King Baudouin Stadium in Brussels on Sunday 15 November. Both kick off at 20:45 local time, which is 01:15 IST the following morning in India.

The top two in the group go through to the quarter-finals in March 2027. Italy cannot finish bottom, because Turkey can reach six points at most, and a win in Brussels would be enough on its own to finish in the top two, whatever happens against France. Third place is not automatically safe: the two worst third-placed teams across the four groups go into relegation play-offs against League B runners-up. Our squad guides for Turkey, Belgium and France cover the other three sides in the group.

What Italy have won, and how long ago

Italy are one of the most decorated teams in the game and almost none of it is recent. Four World Cups, in 1934, 1938, 1982 and 2006. Two European Championships, in 1968 and 2020. Only Brazil have won the World Cup more often.

The record since 2006 is harder to square with that. Italy went out in the group stage in 2010 and 2014, missed the 2018 and 2022 tournaments entirely, won Euro 2020 under Mancini, and then missed 2026 as well. A country with four stars on the shirt has not played a World Cup match since June 2014.

Who is worth watching

Pio Esposito is the one. He is 21, he plays for Inter, and he has seven goals in 13 appearances, including one in each of the two wins over Turkey. That is the best scoring rate in the squad by a distance; among players with ten caps or more, the next best is Frattesi’s 9 in 38. If Mancini has a centre-forward to build the next four years around, it is probably him.

Donnarumma matters for a different reason. He is the captain, and with Di Lorenzo left out he and Barella are the only two men here who started the Euro 2020 final at Wembley. Those two are the whole of the living link between the team that won something and the one that has not qualified for a World Cup since.

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