The Tiny Club Near Bergamo Making a Huge Mark on Italy’s National Team

Two Italy debuts at the Stadio Olimpico, a goalkeeper in Roberto Mancini’s squad and a vintage Andrea Belotti bicycle kick: the past week or so has been a showcase for Serie C outfit AlbinoLeffe and for the work it does with young players from its own territory.

A night at the Olimpico with a Bergamo accent

Italy’s night against Belgium last week did not go to plan. Roberto Mancini’s first game back in charge ended in a 2-0 Nations League defeat in Rome. For one club near Bergamo, though, the result was almost a footnote.

In the closing stages Mancini sent on two debutants, Mohamed Alì Zoma and Issa Doumbia. Both were born in 2003, both grew up in the AlbinoLeffe academy and both made their senior debuts in the club’s blue and light-blue shirt.

Sitting in the same squad was Massimo Pessina, the Bologna goalkeeper who spent five years in the AlbinoLeffe youth sector before moving to the Rossoblu. Three names from one Serie C academy in the same Italy squad is no coincidence.

And five days earlier, the player who first put AlbinoLeffe on the national map, Belotti, had marked his return to Serie B with Modena by scoring the kind of goal that made him famous.

Built on the territory

AlbinoLeffe has never been a club built on big budgets. The first team plays in Serie C, Group A, at the AlbinoLeffe Stadium in Zanica, a compact, club-owned ground a few kilometres south of Bergamo. What sets it apart is what happens below the first team, and above all, where the players come from.

The youth sector is organised as a single pathway, from the Under-7s all the way to the Primavera, and recruitment is deliberately local: the club looks for talent within roughly 40km of its training centre, across the Bergamo plain, the valleys and the neighbouring provinces. Very little is bought in. Boys are scouted young and grow up in the same environment, with the club working closely with families as well as players.

The club has always described the development of its own academy players as the mission rather than a side project, and backs that up with decisions. In the summer of 2024 alone, six academy graduates signed their first professional contracts with the first team. For families and grassroots clubs in the area, AlbinoLeffe has become the natural reference point: the place where a talented local teenager can train at a professional level without leaving home, and where the route to senior football is visible every weekend in Zanica.

Primavera 1: the proof on the pitch

That work produced a landmark result on May 31, 2026. After finishing fourth in their Primavera 2 group, AlbinoLeffe’s Under-20s won the play-offs without playing a single home game, beating Modena 3-2 in the final to earn promotion to Primavera 1 for the first time in their history. They are now the only Serie C club in Italy’s top youth league, sharing a division with the academies of Juventus, Atalanta and the rest of Serie A.

It did not take long to show they belong. On September 12, the Blucelesti came from behind to win 2-1 at Juventus, the club’s first victory at that level. Every week, teenagers from the province of Bergamo are now measuring themselves against the best academies in the country, and the last few weeks have shown where that road can lead.

Mohamed Alì Zoma: from Merate to Nürnberg

Born in Merate in December 2003, Zoma joined AlbinoLeffe and came through every level of the academy. Between 2021 and 2025 he became a first-team regular in Serie C, playing more than 100 games and scoring close to 30 goals across four seasons, as a quick, direct forward who can also play wide.

In August 2025 he moved to Nürnberg in the 2. Bundesliga; his first season in Germany brought 14 goals in 29 league appearances, and he has started 2026-27 in even better form, including a hat-trick against Dynamo Dresden. Those goals caught Mancini’s attention and, in turn, earned him an Italy shirt at the Olimpico.

Issa Doumbia: Treviglio, Venice, Lisbon

Doumbia, born in Treviglio in October 2003, followed a similar path: academy, first-team debut and three full seasons in Serie C with AlbinoLeffe between 2021 and 2024, making more than 70 league appearances as a tall, physical central midfielder. In summer 2024 Venezia signed him and he played Serie A in 2024-25 and Serie B the following season.

In June 2026, Sporting CP brought him to Lisbon, in a deal reported to be worth over €20million. After three Under-21 caps, he made his senior debut, alongside the team-mate he grew up with in Zanica, and made another substitute appearance in the win over Turkey a few days later.

Massimo Pessina: the goalkeeper who started in Zanica

Pessina is the youngest of the group. Born on Christmas Day 2007 and raised in Songavazzo, in the Val Seriana, he joined AlbinoLeffe and then moved to Bologna to complete his youth development.

His rise since then has been rapid. He was part of the Italy side that won the 2024 European Under-17 Championship, named in the team of the tournament, and made his Serie A debut for Bologna against Napoli in November 2025, keeping a clean sheet in a 2-0 win. Still only 18, he is now in Mancini’s Nations League squad.

Bologna completed his education, but the first chapter was written in blue and light blue.

Belotti: the one who opened the door

Before Zoma, Doumbia and Pessina, there was Belotti.

After an unsuccessful trial at Atalanta, the young striker from Calcinate found his way into the AlbinoLeffe academy, made his senior debut in Serie B in 2011-12 and then scored 12 goals in the third tier the following season. In 2013 he moved to Palermo, and the rest is well known: Torino, the captaincy, 44 caps and 12 goals for Italy, and a place in the squad that won Euro 2020.

On September 20, 2026, now at Modena, Belotti came off the bench against Empoli at the Braglia and, five minutes later, controlled the ball on his chest inside the box and equalised with an overhead kick. Modena went on to win 2-1. It was his first goal in about a year, and his first in Serie B since his Palermo days in 2014.

Why this matters

International breaks usually belong to the big clubs. This one has told a different story: that a club with a single-stand stadium and a Serie C first team can still produce players for the national team, by recruiting close to home, offering a real pathway and giving young players the patience to grow. Zoma, Doumbia and Pessina are the latest proof, and not necessarily the last.

For travelling fans, that is also a reason to go and see AlbinoLeffe. A matchday in Zanica is intimate and relaxed, with the pitch close to the stand. Some of the players you watch there today could be wearing an Italy shirt a few years from now.