My first vague memory of the Italian national team is Dino Zoff lifting the World Cup back in 1982, and since then following the Azzurri in the major international tournaments has probably been my favourite part of being a football fan. Other than captain Zoff, the most famous player on the 1982 squad was striker Paolo Rossi, his hat trick against the Selecao in the quarterfinals inspired the brilliant title of his autobiography “Ho fatto piangere il Brasile” (I Made Brazil cry).
 

While the Italian national team is most often associated with catenaccio and great defenders like Scirea, Cabrini, Maldini, Baresi, Nesta, Cannavaro  there has always been at least one iconic attacker on the team since Paolo Rossi- Toto’ Schillaci’s wild celebrations were the most memorable thing of Italy’s team in 1990 that also featured Gianluca Vialli, Roby Baggio almost single handedly won the World Cup in the United States four years later and after that we of course had a golden generation featuring Bobo Vieri, Francesco Totti, Alessandro Del Piero and Luca Toni.


 

But after Italy won the World Cup in Germany, the quality of the attacking options on the Azzurri plummeted to the point that Fabio Quagliarella was the most productive striker for Italy in South Africa, while Balotelli and Cassano were used as the scapegoats for the disastrous World Cup in Brazil. There’s no doubt Antonio Conte re energised the Azzurri and lead them to a surprising run at the recent Euros  but it felt like Italy was winning despite the likes of Graziano Pelle’ and Eder.
 

But finally things are radically changing and new Italy manager Giampiero Ventura now has so many options that Azzurri fans no longer need to worry if Mario Balotelli will ever get his act together. Interestingly Manolo Gabbiadini’s fantastic start in the Premier League as well as Ciro Immobile’s remarkable comeback season at Lazio should also really help the market appeal of Mauro Icardi and Andrea Belotti (two players with massive exit clauses) as well as Dries Mertens next summer.
 

In the past 16 months, Andrea Belotti has been as a good a finisher as any in Serie A. He left Palermo in the summer of 2015 to join Torino but he never fully exploded for the granata until Ciro Immobile returned to the club for the second half of last season- since then the player known as Il Gallo (the Rooster) hasn’t stopped scoring. Because of his great form, Torino decided to reward Belotti with a raise and a new contract which features an exit clause of 100 million euro valid only outside of Italy.


 

Mauro Icardi also has an exit clause valid only outside of Italy for a reported amount of 110 million euro; this was agreed to in his last contract negotiation with Inter last summer. Icardi’s camp was able to use their leverage after Napoli made them a huge offer, at a time that they were flush with cash after Higuain’s departure, to get the Argentine striker his second raise in the span of two years.
 

Serie A clubs saw what happened when Juventus was able to take advantage of the exit clauses in Miralem Pjanic and Gonzalo Higuain’s contracts, and while they wanted to give a concession to Icardi and Belotti’s agents by giving them a clause, they certainly don’t want to take a chance Juventus would once again get better while weakening them (Napoli also signed right back Hysaj to a new contract with an exit clause valid only outside of Italy).
 

While it wouldn’t surprise anyone to see a foreign club willing to pay Mauro icardi’s exit clause since he has already over 75 career goals despite just turning 24, getting him to agree to leave Inter is another story- new ownership group Suning has a very ambitious project and Icardi is very happy living in Milano. Belotti is an a pretty different situation, on one hand he plays for a club who is known for selling their best players (Cerci, Immobile, Darmian, Glik, Bruno Peres, Maksimovic just in the past two years) but on the other he has a considerably smaller track record than Icardi.
 

In a recent interview, Torino’s president Urbano Cairo mentioned how at the time the contract was signed Belotti’s clause felt like almost a joke, and while it’s not likely that any club would pay the full amount, there have been some recent developments that could help Torino receive a fee of at least 50/60 million- while Belotti’s scoring rate is certainly the most important one, the Rooster is helped by Manolo Gabbiadini’s explosion in the Premier League and Ciro Immobile’s remarkable comeback season at Lazio.
 

Before Manolo Gabbiadini took Southampton by storm, the track record of former Serie A players in the Premier League was abysmal- especially for attacking players since Balotelli, Cuadrado, Paloschi and Iturbe who all returned to Serie A quickly after struggling in England. In addition to Gabbiadini, we have also seen Andrea Ranocchia and Mbaye Niang contributing to their new teams. This will certainly help the way Belotti is perceived abroad, it will be much harder to simply dismiss him as a Serie A player who is bound to flop if he goes abroad.


 

In the past few months, I have also seen many mention Ciro Immobile’s career arch as a cautionary tail for Belotti. After leading Serie A in scoring, the former Juventus youth team product struggled at Borussia Dortmund and Sevilla before agreeing to return to Torino to re establish his value. But this season Immobile has had a renaissance at Lazio, he has now become the player to score the most goals in a single season at the club since the beginning of the Lotito era. You simply can no longer say that Belotti could be just a one season wonder like Immobile.
 

However it’s hard to envision that Gabbadini and Immobile’s current seasons will be enough to convince a team to invest 100 million euro on Belotti- the good news for Torino is that because of the expected revenues from the options to buy for Bruno Peres and Nikola Maksmimovic, they won’t be forced to sell Belotti next summer unless they receive an offer they consider to be at least fair.
 

Aside from the transfer market implications, it’s just great to see Italy finally having great options up front. In recent years we had seen excellent defensive prospects (Donnarumma, Romagnoli, Rugani) and the emergence of Marco Verratti as a legit piece to build a midfield around- the PSG player has already been paired with Roberto Gagliardini and Napoli uber prospect Diawara has filed paperwork to get his Italian citizenship- and now the Azzurri finally have strikers who could make opposing nations cry if they face them just like Pablito Rossi did back in 1982.




David Amoyal is the manager of the English page on Gianluca Di Marzio's website where he also writes weekly articles. David covers transfer news for ESPN, and has appeared on numerous radio shows on Sirius XM in the US as well as TalkSport in the UK. David is the former editor in chief of Vavel USA and his articles have been featured in many sites around the world. You can follow him on Twitter @DavidAmoyal