Italy U20 v Australia U20 | Match Preview | FIFA U-20 World Cup Chile 2025™
The CommBank Young Socceroos will kick off their FIFA U-20 World Cup 2025™ campaign against 2023 finalists Italy on Monday morning (AEST).
An appearance on one of world football’s biggest stages is just reward for the AFC U20 Asian Cup 2025™ champions, who boast some of Australia’s brightest young talents.
Read our preview of Australia’s opening match in what is the inaugural meeting between the two nations at this age level of the tournament.
The Squad
Head Coach Trevor Morgan finalised his 21-player squad on Thursday, after a nine-day training camp in Santiago, Chile that included friendlies against Ukraine and Nigeria.
The squad features 16 members of the team that lifted the U20 Asian Cup trophy earlier this year.
Fourteen members of the squad are based in Australia as part of A-League Men clubs, while the others are from clubs in Italy, England and Denmark.
Melbourne City forward Max Caputo is among the five players who have been rewarded for their recent form with a call-up after missing out on the Asian Cup squad. Caputo scored five goals in the latter half of the A-League Men’s season to earn his place.
Paul Okon-Engstler will follow in his father’s footsteps if he takes the pitch, potentially becoming one half of the first father-son duo to represent Australia at a FIFA U-20 World Cup after Paul did so in 1991.
The Opposition
Italy U20 are led by Carmine Nuntziata. As a player, he is best known for his six-year spell at Padova, with whom he achieved promotion to Serie A in 1994. He has been involved in managing Italian youth national teams since 2012, when he was appointed as an assistant for the U21 team.
Nineteen of the squad play for teams in Italy, with defenders Emanuel Benjamin at Real Madrid and Andrea Natali at AZ Alkmaar the exceptions.
Italy has never won the FIFA U-20 World Cup but were finalists in the previous edition, in 2023. None of the players from that squad have been selected for a second U-20 World Cup.
FIFA U20 World Cup History
Australia U20
Qualified: 15 (last: 2013)
Group Stage: 8
Round of 16: 3
Quarter-finals: 2
Fourth Place: 2
Italy U20
Qualified: 8
Group Stage: 2
Quarter-finals: 3
Fourth Place: 1 (2019)
Third Place: 1 (2017)
Runners-up: 1 (2023)
What They Said
Trevor Morgan, Head Coach
From our first match in June 2023 until now, this group of players have shown themselves to be very competitive with quality, character and a great desire to represent Australia with pride.
We have built a great deal of self-confidence through the experiences gained in multiple tournaments along the way developing great belief and team culture within this squad.
Winning the Asian Cup has raised the team’s expectations of the performances they can deliver and given them the chance to test themselves at the highest level in a World Cup.
Panagiotis Kikianis
You obviously want to play against the best. We are playing Argentina, Italy and Cuba, and none of them are easy games. No game in this World Cup is going to be easy. So to be able to showcase our talent, our togetherness against the best countries in the world is a privilege.
Sebastian Esposito
Our whole journey has started two and a half years ago, and we've had a lot of experience together. We've played against multiple nations across multiple continents. We've played against the best, and we've kind of proven to ourselves we belong at the level. Obviously, Asia was a big indicator that we were right in our belief and in our processes, and we just will keep doing that. We know kind of the quality we have and the group we have is very special. So belief, yes, but we internally know what we're going to achieve and what we can do. So we're just going to keep going.
Luka Jovanovic
I've been on most of the camps since the first one we had in Portugal, more than two years ago now. And I think you've seen from the first camp, in the first game that we always had a special group, and we understood the way that the staff wanted us to play straight away. We've been building on from there.
Fabian Talladira
I [am] quite excited actually, my grandparents are Italian. My parents are Italian, so to face them (Italy) in the first game, I think would be pretty cool. And then obviously, Argentina, we played them a few months ago. We've got a bit of a sense of how they are. And Cuba, don't know too much about them. But again, that'll be another test. It's a World Cup, so we expect the best.
Match Details
Italy v Australia
Date: Sunday, 28 September 2025 / Monday, 29 September 2025 (AUS)
Time: 5.00pm (local) / 6.00am (AEST)
Venue: Estadio Elías Figueroa Brander, Valparaíso, Chile
Broadcast: Live on SBS, SBS On Demand, FIFA+