Mafia godfathers in Sicily have been caught on wiretaps lamenting the “miserable” calibre of new recruits as nearly 150 alleged criminals were arrested in dawn raids involving 1,200 police officers.

Crime bosses from Cosa Nostra, the Italian island’s notorious mafia, unfavourably compared the new generation of mafiosi to those of the past, invoking the example of The Godfather, the classic 1972 film starring Marlon Brando as the Sicilian-American patriarch Don Corleone.

They said that, unlike their predecessors, new recruits were too quick to turn “pentito” – or state witness – as soon as they were arrested.

“The calibre these days is low, a miserable level,” Giancarlo Romano, an alleged mafia don, said in an intercepted conversation.

“If you watch The Godfather, the connections he had… he was very influential because of the power that he built at a political level. But us – what can we do? We’re on our knees, guys. We think we do business, but these days it’s others who do it. We used to be number one, now it’s others… we’re just gipsies.”

He told one young recruit: “You should go to school – that way you will meet doctors, lawyers, the people who run Italy, Europe.”

Telephone intercepts also revealed the nicknames by which godfathers refer to each other, from Spiderman and Robert De Niro to Bear and Nephew.