That experience has given him a view of the Italian game from both sides. He has been the young player waiting for his opportunity, the established professional playing in one of Europe's strongest leagues and, later, someone responsible for helping develop the players coming behind him.
So when Poggi describes Italy's failure to qualify for a third consecutive World Cup as an organisational problem, he is speaking from considerable experience.
“It’s an organisational problem," Poggi tells Football Presse. "It’s not a cultural problem because football in Italy remains almost a religion.
“There could be a generational problem, but if there is a generational problem, then the responsibility still belongs to the people who run the game because they have not invested correctly in the younger players.”
Italy's 1-1 draw with Bosnia and Herzegovina and subsequent penalty shoot-out defeat in March confirmed their absence from the 2026 World Cup, following failures to qualify for Russia in 2018 and Qatar in 2022. It was the first time Italy had missed three successive World Cups.
For Poggi, the sequence is too consistent to be dismissed as bad luck or the failure of one generation of players.
He does not believe Italian football has lost its ability to produce talent. In fact, his view is almost the opposite: the talent is there, but too many young players are not being given the conditions or opportunities required to develop into international footballers.
“The Italian player only lacks the opportunity.
“There are many good young Italian players, many, many. Some clubs invest a lot in youth, but not all of them. I would like all clubs to have the desire to invest.”
It is an argument that carries particular weight from Poggi, who has spent much of his post-playing career around youth football and technical development. After retiring in 2009, he worked in technical roles with Mantova, Udinese and Venezia, including responsibility for Udinese's youth department and later senior technical responsibilities at Venezia.
His criticism, therefore, is not simply that Italy needs better players.
It is that the system needs to create more opportunities for the players it already has.
Poggi believes that responsibility ultimately belongs to those running Italian football, and the three successive World Cup failures have made that responsibility impossible to ignore.
“When a federation like Italy, which has won four World Cups, cannot qualify for three World Cups in a row, it is obvious that mistakes have been made not only by the players but also by those at the top.”
That is where his argument becomes more uncomfortable.
Italy's three failures have come under different circumstances and against different opponents. Sweden stopped them in the 2018 play-off, North Macedonia eliminated them four years later and Bosnia and Herzegovina ended the latest campaign after Italy had been forced back into the play-offs.
The common factor, Poggi argues, is not the players on the pitch.
It is the structure around them.
“The people who did not allow Italy to qualify for the last three World Cups are the same people who are still there now.”
That statement takes the debate beyond another post-match argument about tactics, selection or whether the national-team coach should stay.
Poggi does not believe replacing the coach is enough because the coach is only one part of a much larger system.
“Usually when you make a change, you have to change everything, not just the coach of the national team.”
Italy's experience since winning Euro 2020 only strengthens that argument. Roberto Mancini's team proved that Italian football could still produce a side capable of winning a major international tournament, yet that success was followed by another World Cup absence.
The problem, Poggi believes, is therefore not that Italy has forgotten how to play football.
It is that the country has failed to turn its football culture, its talent and its enormous public support into a sustainable system.
That distinction matters.
Italy remains a country where football is deeply embedded in everyday life. Poggi rejects the idea that supporters have somehow stopped caring about the national team. The affection is still there; what has been missing is a team and a structure capable of rewarding it.
Three consecutive World Cup absences have now transformed a sequence of shocks into a pattern.
Poggi's solution is not another short-term fix at the top of the national team.
It is a much bigger change — one that begins with the people running Italian football, the investment made in young players and the opportunities given to them long before they ever pull on the Azzurri shirt.