Alessandro Circati: From Perth to Parma, the Socceroos defender embracing Italy's defensive art

Most football fans would be able to rattle off their favourite goals if pressed. Few, though, would be able to do the same with great tackles. Nonetheless, for Socceroos defender Alessandro Circati, there is a beauty to be found in keeping the ball out of the back of the net out, too.

“Every aspect in football can be considered an art form,” he tells the Guardian. “Defending well is just as hard as attacking well. The ultimate goal in defending, you may think, is smaller than the ultimate goal of what attacking is, but it’s actually the same. You stopping a goal is equivalent to you scoring.”

The 22-year-old has just finished the Serie A season with Parma comfortably safe from relegation in what is their second season back in the Italian top flight after three years in Serie B. After missing most of the previous campaign with an ACL injury, Circati has established himself as a regular in Carlos Cuesta’s defence, starting more than 30 games across their league and cup commitments and even wearing the captain’s armband on three occasions.

He is in his fifth year back in the north of Italy, having been born in Fidenza but moving to Perth as an infant after his father, Gianfranco, moved to Australia to continue his own footballing career. The elder Circati played as a libero for Perth Glory in the NSL. “The exact same position as me,” Circati says. “Back in the day, when I was a bit younger, maybe he had a bit more experience than what my coach in the junior levels did, so he would feed me some information. He’d feed me … bits and pieces on what I can do better, what I can work on, what I have to continue doing. His influence on me was bigger at the start of my footballing career. As I got older, when I was in a professional environment, he tended to leave it more to the coaching staff.”

Mostly a striker for much of his junior days, Circati shifted full-time into the backline upon entering the Perth Glory academy. In Perth, his path briefly crossed with Tony Popovic, although the current Socceroos coach was at that point more focused on guiding the senior team to a breakthrough A-League premiership. Circati quickly impressed, trialling across Europe before moving to Italy in 2021 and signing a professional deal with Parma the following year – a good move, because if there’s a nation that historically has made defending into an art form, it is Italy.

For all their recent struggles on the international stage, Italian football gave rise to the development and dominance of catenaccio, embodied by the Grande Inter sides that won back-to-back European Cups in the 1960s, and produced football artisans such as Paolo Maldini (who Circati models his game after), Franco Baresi, Gaetano Scirea, Fabio Cannavaro and Alessandro Nesta. The tactical system’s legacy of grit, organisation and determination has simultaneously produced some of the most evocative, cultured and cerebral players of all time. And it is against that backdrop that Circati has come of footballing age.

“I realised there were a lot more players with my quality, or even better quality, compared to Australia,” he says. “I realised it was very, very competitive. Everyone was there to get that professional contract. Everyone was there to make that debut. It was a lot of friendly competition. But that pushed me over the line, trying to be better than the people around me.”

The goalkeeping great, Gianluigi Buffon, was marking the final year of his career with Parma at the same time Circati’s journey began in 2023. The youngster was at that point torn between representing Australia or Italy, having played for the latter’s junior national teams at the time, and in something of a twist, it was the Azzurri legend who helped Circati decide to represent the Socceroos over Italy. Buffon, as Circati remembers it, simply asked him: “What do you feel inside?”

A first senior call-up followed in June, then an international debut in October. Joyful tears flowed in his home town of Perth when he staged a miraculous recovery from an ACL injury to start Australia’s crucial qualifying win over Japan last June, and, showing the esteem Popovic holds him in, he became the youngest Socceroo captain in nearly half a century in September last year. Now, the World Cup, likely as a starter, awaits.