Italy “woke up angry and disillusioned” after their play-off defeat to Bosnia and Herzegovina meant they missed out on a third consecutive World Cup, “prolonging a sporting nightmare for the football-mad country”, said Al Jazeera.
Italy have won the tournament four times but are now suffering from a “World Cup curse”, said Corriere della Sera on its front page. The last time the Azzurri “actually won” a knockout match on the game’s biggest stage was “before the first iPhone was released”, said Politico.
‘Outrage across the country’
“The Italian catastrophe has now lost its sense of shock,” said Luigi Garlando in Gazzetta dello Sport. “Rather than being unpredictable, it seems to be the norm.” So for the first time an “entire generation will have grown up” without seeing Italy at a World Cup.
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The “influx” of overseas players that headed to Serie A in the late 1990s “came at a cost”, said the BBC, because “homegrown talents” then found “opportunities” in the top flight “increasingly hard to come by”.
The Italian league is suffering from financial problems, so as Premier League clubs “benefit from ever-increasing TV deals” and other European leagues “attract heavy investment”, Serie A has seen that type of revenue “stagnate”.
The play-off defeat “triggered outrage across the country”, said Al Jazeera, and Italy’s sports minister Andrea Abodi has called on Gabriele Gravina, president of the Italian Football Federation, to quit. “It’s clear that Italian football needs to be rebuilt from the ground up,” said Abodi. Gravina has refused to step down, but instead has “lashed out” at a “perceived lack of support” for football from the government.
‘In need of tearing down’
The problems go beyond the national team. A 98th-minute penalty earned Atalanta a place in the last 16 of the Champions League – but they are the only Italian club left in the elite European competition. The “giants” of Serie A have “fallen”, said Sky Sports.
The “lack of investment” in Serie A clubs has seen a “dip in player quality”. The top division is “relying more and more” on older players and there’s “a lack of promising Italian youth coming through”. There’s also a “lack of tactical innovation” at the “heart of Italian football”.
Even if “the state of Italian football in 2026 isn’t alarming”, there are bells “sounding anyway, right now”, said Mark White on Four Four Two. The “colosseums” of the 1990 World Cup in Italy, famous stadiums like the San Siro, Delle Alpi and Olimpico, are “either crumbling, torn down or since abandoned altogether”. Italian football itself is “in need of tearing down and starting again”.
Meanwhile, there’s “still a chance” that Italy will end up at the 2026 World Cup finals, said Give Me Sport. With “uncertainty” over whether Iran will compete at the tournament, it’s thought that Italy could be Fifa’s preferred choice to replace the Middle Eastern nation if necessary.
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