Lega B is doubling, then more than tripling, the under-21 minutes a club must reach to collect its youth reward. Serie B clubs that chase it will hand one or two young players whole seasons, because scattered cameo minutes collect nothing.

The vote came on February 17th and was unanimous. The under-21 playing-time threshold that triggers the reward, set at 900 minutes, doubles to 1,800 and then rises past 2,700 over the next two seasons. From 2027-28 the squad-list rule tightens from under-23 to under-21, and the academy bonus rises from 10% to 30%. ⁹

A club collects nothing for six under-21s playing 300 minutes each. The reward starts when one player crosses the bar, and 1,800 minutes is half a season of starts. The surest way to cross it is to sign a young player who has already shown he can hold a Serie B place, so the rule turns the ready under-21 into one of the most valuable signings available to a mid-table club.

Padova ran the new market first

Massimiliano Mirabelli, Padova’s sporting director, spent the Primavera 1 finals at Viola Park renewing contact with Fiorentina over another loan or a permanent deal for Jonas Harder, with Padova first in line for the renewal. Padova are also following Fiorentina forward Riccardo Braschi and Parma midfielder Abdou-Salam Konate. ^{1 2}

Harder is the profile the thresholds pay for. Fiorentina contracted him through 2029 with options and sent him to Padova on loan last July. He made 26 appearances with 17 starts and played 1,460 league minutes before a muscle strain ended his season, a pace that clears the new 1,800 bar over a full campaign. His market value is put at around 2 million euros. ^{3 4 11}

Braschi and Konate played the final in front of him. Viola Park staged the Primavera 1 semifinals and final, and Fiorentina and Parma, first and second in the regular season, met in the final on May 28th. Braschi entered it as Fiorentina’s top scorer with 18 goals and scored the 74th-minute penalty in the 2-1 win, and Konate started in Parma’s midfield, four months after scoring an 86th-minute free kick to complete a 3-2 comeback win at Frosinone. ^{5 6 7 8}

The demand side is already crowded

Avellino directors were at Viola Park during the finals too, interested in Harder, Braschi and Fiorentina’s Eddy Kouadio, and Fiorentina want another summer look at Harder before deciding. ¹⁰

In the first week of June, Padova asked Fiorentina about buying Harder outright as well as renewing the loan, and Sassuolo are now reported to want the midfielder too. ¹² Three clubs chasing a 20-year-old with 1,460 Serie B minutes is what the new demand looks like.

Poland has already run both versions

The Ekstraklasa introduced a young-player mandate in 2019-20, an obligation that grew into 3,000 required minutes a season with financial penalties behind it. Clubs answered with token fielding and squad places for prospects who were not ready, richer clubs simply paid the fines, and Jan Urban, Górnik Zabrze’s coach, called the rule a farce. ¹³

In January 2025 the league scrapped the penalties for a reward system, and young players’ minutes fell at once. Across the comparable opening rounds, under-21 minutes dropped from 2,387 to 1,990, and the number of under-20 players in starting lineups fell from 23 to 10. The reward was spread thin across every club, and it paid nobody enough to change a lineup. ¹⁴

Lega B’s thresholds answer both failures. A mandate bought token minutes and a thin reward bought nothing, while 1,800 minutes rising past 2,700 can only be reached with a real season, by a player good enough to be picked on merit. The clubs that clear the bar will be the ones that found their Harder.

What Serie B becomes

The incentives all point the same way. As the bar rises, Serie B will field more under-21 minutes, concentrated in the players clubs trust with real places. A league that pays for whole young seasons turns into the densest senior sample of Italy’s next generation, the place where an under-21’s level gets a 30-match answer. For the Serie A clubs that own these players, Fiorentina with Harder among them, the rule builds a destination league for development loans. ⁹

Nothing is signed yet, no Harder renewal and no move for Braschi or Konate, and the public record on Padova’s summer stops before any agreement. The behavior is the part already visible. Serie B sporting directors will keep opening their summers at youth finals, and the under-21s handed full league seasons in August are the ones Serie A clubs will be pricing a year later.