Sean Stellato tries out for Italy's flag football team in Copenhagen

Sean Stellato was in Copenhagen, Denmark, trying out for Italy’s men’s national flag football team, a move that put a 48-year-old NFL agent and former receiver back on a field where the margin is shrinking fast. Stellato, who played at Marist College and spent time in AF2, was chasing more than a feel-good tryout. He was trying to force his way onto a roster that already belongs to one of the strongest programs in Europe.

Italy has earned that status the hard way. The men won IFAF Euro Flag 2025 by beating Austria 27-19, their first continental gold after finishing runner-up four times dating back to 2005. That breakthrough came on top of a deeper medal track: bronze at the 2010 World Games and bronze at the 2014 world championships on home soil, both wins over Canada. IFAF has also pointed to quarterback Luke Zahradka as a key piece of the current team, another sign that Italy is not searching for bodies so much as it is sorting through legitimate options.

That is what makes Stellato’s bid interesting. This is not a novelty roster spot for a name people might recognize from the football world. It is a test case for how open elite flag football has become as national teams race toward the sport’s biggest stage. The pool is widening, but the standards are rising with it. A 48-year-old with a football background can get in the door, but he still has to beat out players already embedded in a medal-winning program.

The timing is exact. Flag football will debut at the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, with the competition scheduled for July 15-22, 2028. Before that, the 2026 IFAF Flag Football World Championships are set for August 13-16 in Düsseldorf, Germany, where IFAF says the world’s top 16 men’s and women’s national teams will gather. The Olympic qualification system also runs through the 2028 Olympic Qualifier Series, where the three highest-placed teams in each gender will earn quota places for their national Olympic committees.

The sport’s reach has already climbed to an estimated more than 20 million players across 100 countries, according to Olympics.com. Stellato’s tryout fits that growth curve, but Italy’s track record says the roster is still earned, not granted.