Instead, Meluso says it's the consequence of years of poor planning, warning the country's football authorities that cosmetic changes will not solve a structural problem.*
By his own admission, Meluso has been making the same argument for almost two decades.
The former Napoli, Lecce and Spezia sporting director believes Italian football has ignored warning signs for years, with the national team's decline reflecting deeper issues throughout the professional game.
Speaking to Football Presse, Meluso insisted Italy's future depends on bold decisions rather than short-term fixes.
"The future of Italian football depends on the choices that are made," Meluso said. "Serie A is declining. There are too many foreign players.
"The future of Italian football will depend very much on the decisions the new federation president makes. The policies applied today will be reflected in our championship and throughout the whole movement."
Italy's absence from three successive World Cups has sparked repeated debates over coaching, player development and the standard of Serie A. Meluso believes those discussions often miss the central issue.
Rather than blaming individual coaches or generations of players, he argues the foundations of Italian football have been neglected for years.
"There is a need to introduce new policies and new rules because football needs them," he explained.
"I have been talking for years about measures that should have been introduced 20 years ago and whose benefits we would perhaps be seeing today.
"In fact, we have missed qualification for the World Cup three consecutive times because of policies the federation never implemented."
Meluso is not calling for restrictions on foreign players entering Serie A. Instead, he wants regulations that force clubs to continue investing in Italian talent throughout every level of the professional pyramid.
He believes the current system encourages clubs to search abroad rather than develop players at home.
"People misunderstand this discussion," he said. "I wouldn't stop clubs signing foreign players.
"In fact, I would allow clubs to sign as many non-EU players as they want.
"But every professional club, from the youth teams through to the first team, should have six, seven or eight Italian players on the team sheet every weekend.
"That doesn't discriminate against anybody and it doesn't go against the freedom of movement laws.
"It simply means clubs would have to invest in Italian players and Italian academies."
For Meluso, the proposal is about creating opportunity rather than closing doors.
He argues that if clubs were required to include more Italian players in their matchday squads, they would naturally invest more heavily in youth development instead of relying on recruitment from overseas.
That, he believes, would strengthen every level of the national team structure.
"It would have benefited all of our national teams," he said. "It would have helped the development of our young players."
Meluso fears Italy has drifted away from producing elite attacking talent that once defined generations of Azzurri success.
He points to some of the country's greatest forwards and playmakers as evidence that talent still requires careful development.
"Today the Giordanos, the Altobellis, the Inzaghis, Del Piero, Baggio and Totti are no longer appearing," he said.
"But above all they are not appearing because they are not being developed."
The experienced sporting director rejects the idea that outstanding footballers simply emerge without guidance.
Instead, he believes coaching standards and development structures have failed to maximise young players' natural ability.
"There has only been one Diego Maradona," he continued. "He would have shown his talent anyway, even if he hadn't trained.
"The others, even Totti and Baggio, had extraordinary talent, but they were coached properly and that talent was brought out.
"We have to return to doing that."
Those comments reflect Meluso's own career.
Before working at clubs including Lecce, Spezia and Napoli, he built his reputation identifying undervalued players and constructing squads capable of exceeding expectations on limited budgets.
He has frequently argued that intelligent recruitment should complement youth development rather than replace it.
Meluso believes Italian football has become too reactive, chasing immediate solutions instead of implementing long-term planning.
For him, qualification failures are symptoms rather than the disease itself.
Changing managers alone will not reverse the trend if the development pathway remains unchanged.
"We have to use methods that encourage professional clubs to invest much more in Italian players instead of constantly looking abroad," he said.
"It is a choice.
"The future of Italian football depends on the choices we make today."
For Meluso, Italy's latest World Cup disappointment should not simply trigger another coaching debate.
It should become the moment Italian football finally confronts the structural decisions it has postponed for far too long.