Mark Bosnich has warned the Socceroos to “tread carefully” with teenage star Cristian Volpato as coach Graham Arnold reportedly prepares to offer him selection in the national team next month.
After being snubbed by the Western Sydney Wanderers and Sydney FC academies, the 18-year-old attacking midfielder is suddenly hot property following his Serie A debut for Jose Mourinho’s AS Roma against Inter Milan this month.
Already involved in Italy’s youth set-up, Volpato is managed by Azzurri legend Francesco Totti and there is chatter of an imminent call up to their national under-19 team.
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Hence the urgency from an Australian perspective, with FTBL reporting that Arnold will pick Volpato in his squad for next month’s World Cup qualifiers against Vietnam and Oman.
“I’d tread carefully to be honest,” Australian football great Mark Bosnich said on the latest edition of Stan Sport FC.
“Because the bottom line is you’ve got to look at it from the boy’s point of view, and the parents. They’ve been rejected here so they’ve gone over, Italy’s given him pretty much everything, they’ve already picked him for the under-18s so I think it’s highly unlikely that he’s going to change allegiance back to Australia now.
“Just prepare for him to say, ‘thank you but no thank you’.”
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Sydney product Volpato is the first Australian to play in the Serie A since Trent Sainsbury in 2017.
And the obvious question is why Mourinho and Totti could spot his talent but A-League clubs could not?
“Hopefully they’re big enough, the people in those clubs, to go back and fully assess it,” former Socceroos captain Craig Foster said on Stan Sport FC.
“This is an opportunity to go back and say, ‘were we right, why were we wrong, what did we miss, maybe we did miss something.’ And that’s what the game doesn’t do well.”
Bosnich was asked by host Vince Rugari how he would handle the situation if he were the Socceroos.
“I would first of all ring him up and congratulate him,” Bosnich said.
“Second of all… maybe go to his parents, his father and just say, ‘look, what happened here locally? Can you just tell us the experience?’
“Because when you don’t share information – we’ve seen this with far bigger things than football – but when government agencies don’t share information, that’s a cue for trouble sometimes.
“So they may not want to talk about it, that’s bad luck then, if that happens.”