{"id":579133,"date":"2026-04-01T19:07:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T19:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/579133\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T19:07:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T19:07:10","slug":"italys-latest-world-cup-failure-no-longer-feels-like-the-end-but-the-same-sad-song-on-repeat-italy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/579133\/","title":{"rendered":"Italy\u2019s latest World Cup failure no longer feels like \u2018The End\u2019 but the same sad song on repeat | Italy"},"content":{"rendered":"

The decline of Italy\u2019s footballing expectations can be read in the headlines that greeted their third consecutive failure to qualify for a men\u2019s World Cup<\/a>. When the Azzurri lost their playoff against Sweden in November 2017, La Gazzetta dello Sport defined it as \u201cThe End\u201d and an \u201cApocalypse\u201d. After defeat by North Macedonia in 2022, Il Corriere dello Sport saw a country sinking \u201cInto Hell\u201d.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday both newspapers led coverage of elimination by Bosnia and Herzegovina<\/a> with a simpler, perhaps sadder, \u201cTutti A Casa\u201d \u2013 Everybody Go Home. What else is there left to say?<\/a> Italians understood long ago that 2018 was not some aberration but the continuation of a trend, their team having failed to reach the tournament\u2019s knockout stage in 2010 or 2014.<\/p>\n

After the first of those disappointments there was acknowledgment of a need to change gear. In August 2010, weeks after Italy<\/a> finished bottom of a group featuring Paraguay, Slovakia and New Zealand, Arrigo Sacchi was appointed as coordinator of the national youth teams and Roberto Baggio as the president of the Italian Football Federation\u2019s technical sector \u2013 a body charged with studying and disseminating best practices for coaching and player development.<\/p>\n

La Gazzetta dello Sport and Il Giornale have offered their post-mortem on Italy\u2019s latest World Cup nightmare. Photograph: Pierre Teyssot\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

Sacchi, a two-time European Cup winner as manager of Milan, who also led Italy to the World Cup final in 1994, pressed Italian clubs to invest in their academies while also trying to shift the focus in younger age groups away from results and tactical rigidity to give individuals more space to have fun and hone their instincts.<\/p>\n

Baggio, one of Italy\u2019s greatest footballers, worked with about 50 collaborators to put together a 900-page document titled \u201cRenewing the future\u201d, which proposed an ambitious overhaul of the federation\u2019s talent development paths \u2013 reportedly including a standardisation of coaching methods, a more structured scouting network and a shared digital database for measuring players\u2019 progress.<\/p>\n

He presented it in December 2011, then resigned in January 2013, lamenting that the project had been \u201cliterally dead\u201d for a year. \u201cI don\u2019t like to sit on the sofa while I could be doing other things,\u201d said Baggio. Sacchi, too, would stand down in 2014, though he cited stress.<\/p>\n

It is tempting to wonder how things might have been different if Baggio\u2019s ideas were implemented, but we can never know. Changes were made to the structure of the national youth sides in this period \u2013 even if they fell short of his vision \u2013 and have borne some fruit. Italy won the under-19 European Championship in 2023 and the under-17s in 2024.<\/p>\n

Italy fans show their dismay after Italy miss out on a place at this summer\u2019s World Cup finals. Photograph: Tiziana Fabi\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

The frustration, as so often for Italian football, is that modernisation always arrives later, and more painstakingly, than it should. The senior national team\u2019s decline has been mirrored by worsening results for Serie A clubs in European competition, which can be explained in significant part by a failure to keep up with commercial revenues of continental rivals.<\/p>\n

There are many strands to that story, but an obvious one is the fact most Italian teams continue to play in communally owned, often outdated, stadiums. Again, we can point to progress \u2013 Milan and Inter reached agreement to buy their San Siro home last year and intend to build a new arena on the same grounds. Fiorentina had to settle for a long-term leasehold of their Stadio Artemio Franchi, but that has at least allowed them to start renovating.<\/p>\n

Yet it has taken many years, and failed proposals under different ownership groups, for those clubs to reach this point. Other projects in different cities have foundered.<\/p>\n

Italy\u2019s players agonise over their penalty shootout defeat. Photograph: Emmanuele Mastrodonato\/IPA Sport\/ipa-agency.net\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

Each of these stories has its own details and nuance. The same goes for what happens on the pitch. It would be easy to paint a picture today of Italian football as irredeemably broken, no longer capable of fielding competitive teams in either international or club competitions. The only Serie A side to reach the last 16 of the Champions League this season, Atalanta, were thrashed 10-2 by Bayern Munich over two legs.<\/p>\n

And yet we might also remember that Inter reached the Champions League final<\/a> in two of the past three years. Three core members of that team \u2013 Nicol\u00f2 Barella, Alessandro Bastoni and Federico Dimarco \u2013 started for Italy against Bosnia and Herzegovina. So did Riccardo Calafiori and Gianluigi Donnarumma, regulars for Premier League title contenders, and Sandro Tonali, who has thrived at Newcastle.<\/p>\n

Two things can be true at once: that Italian football\u2019s standards have fallen a long way since their last World Cup win<\/a>, in 2006, and that the nation\u2019s talent pool is still strong enough that they should expect to qualify. To portray their failure to do so, again, as the inevitable result of falling standards absolves responsible parties of avoidable mistakes.<\/p>\n

Italy\u2019s talent pool is still strong enough they should expect to qualify for the World Cup finals. Photograph: Matteo Ciambelli\/Reuters<\/p>\n

Was Gennaro Gattuso, who had largely fallen short of expectations across nine club management roles, really the right man to put in charge when Italy sacked Luciano Spalletti<\/a> last June? Should the latter have gone sooner, before the start of this qualifying campaign, after underwhelming performances and uncomfortable interactions with the media at Euro 2024<\/a>?<\/p>\n

When Italy failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup, the then president of the Italian football federation, Carlo Tavecchio, resigned. His successor, Gabriele Gravina, did not follow suit after Italy\u2019s loss to North Macedonia four years ago, and said on Tuesday that he would wait for the governing body\u2019s board to offer opinions when they meet next week. In the meantime, he said he had asked Gattuso to continue.<\/p>\n

Change for change\u2019s sake is rarely the answer. Moving on from Gravina would not solve Italian football\u2019s problems any more than saying goodbye to Tavecchio did.<\/p>\n

At the same time, there is nothing more futile that doing the same things over and over while expecting a different result. We will never know whether Baggio\u2019s 2011 proposals could have led to different outcomes, but the current approach is certainly not working. Perhaps the saddest part of Italy\u2019s latest failure is that it no longer feels like The End, but only the same sad song playing on repeat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The decline of Italy\u2019s footballing expectations can be read in the headlines that greeted their third consecutive failure…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":579134,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-579133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=579133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579133\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/579134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=579133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=579133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=579133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}