The Irish face the hosts in the southern Italian town on Monday evening (5.00pm Irish) as they build up preparations for the UEFA U19 Championships Qualifying Round which takes place in November when the Irish host Group One which includes Slovenia, Lativa and Scotland.
"It's great to play Italy at any time and we've only met them once in recent years when we qualified for the 2011 finals after we beat them 3-0 so I'm delighted to get a game like this," said Doolin.
"You will always get a test against Italy and it's a lovely place to play football at this time of year so from that point of view it's very positive."
Ireland's U19 side had an excellent campaign last year which began with a home win over the Netherlands and Doolin admits a similarly strong test in their opening friendly game can stand them in good stead for the season ahead.
"Last year's group were an excellent collection of players but it came together from the U18 game against the Czech Republic the season before. The opening game saw us introduce a lot of players for the Netherlands game and overall they were an excellent group," he said.
"You can see players like Josh Cullen and Connor Dimaio doing very well at club level this season. They got results against top nations and the brand of football they played as a group was exceptional.
"This year's batch sees us bring in a few in from the SSE Airtricity League including first team players and players doing well with their clubs in the U19 League.
"There's always one or two players unavailable through injury. Ryan Sweeney was with us in Luxembourg and suffered an injury with his club last week, Corey Whelan was also unavailable and Dom Bernard is also injured.
"There's an opportunity for other players. Hopefully this is a start of building a squad as we can't keep changing and changing. We've Ukraine next month and then the qualifiers in November so we want to be ready for that.
"We've had these lads a few times at U18 level and took players to Portugal at U18 level. That was basically a home-based squad as it was a non-FIFA week so perhaps that needs to be looked at. We beat and drew with Luxembourg in U18 games in June but the performances weren't great so we have to improve.
"You are always looking to work with the players and this is the third time we've had this age-group in the past year. Slovenia in our group will have met 13 times so you'd prefer to have more opportunities to work with the players."
REPUBLIC OF IRELAND U19:
Colin McCabe (Celtic)
James Talbot (Sunderland)
Jack Tuite (Derby County)
Danny Kane (Huddersfield Town)
Tom Cadman (Brighton & Hove Albion)
Dan Casey (Sunderland)
Robbie McCourt (West Bromwich Albion)
Anto Breslin (Wolves)
Tom Holland (Swansea City)
Anto Dolan (Fulham)
Adam McDonnell (Ipswich Town)
Daire O’Connor (UCD AFC)
Connor Ellis (Cork City)
Graham Kelly (Sheffield United)
Dylan Watts (UCD AFC)
Kyron Farrell (Millwall)
Khius Metz (Burnley)
Shane Elworthy (Fulham)
Nathan Corkery (QPR)
George Poynton (Dundalk)
FIXTURE
Monday, September 7
U19 International Friendly
Italy v Republic of Ireland, Stadio Simonetta Lamberti, Cava de' Tirreni (5.00pm Irish)