{"id":583372,"date":"2026-04-03T18:30:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T18:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/583372\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T18:30:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T18:30:12","slug":"not-good-for-football-mikel-arteta-admits-pain-at-italys-failure-to-qualify-for-world-cup-as-arsenal-boss-tries-to-lift-riccardo-calafiori","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/583372\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Not good for football!&#8217; &#8211; Mikel Arteta admits pain at Italy&#8217;s failure to qualify for World Cup as Arsenal boss tries to &#8216;lift&#8217; Riccardo Calafiori"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Italian national team\u2019s failure to secure a spot at the upcoming World Cup has left a mark on the Arsenal dressing room, specifically for Calafiori. Arteta acknowledged the magnitude of the situation for both the player and the sport, noting the historical weight of the Azzurri&#8217;s absence from the global stage.<\/p>\n<p>In a press conference on Friday, Arteta was asked how he will respond to Italy&#8217;s heartache. &#8220;Try to lift him. I think not only for Richy, I think for Italy, I think for football,&#8221; he replied. &#8220;A country like them, with such a passion, such a history, not to be in a World Cup, it&#8217;s tough and I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s good for football. That shows you as well, the difficulty of going through all those phases to earn the right to be in the competition.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Italian national team\u2019s failure to secure a spot at the upcoming World Cup has left a mark&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":583373,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[3361,64,63,596,2328,6189,1614,285689,85,21418],"class_list":{"0":"post-583372","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-arsenal","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-football","12":"tag-italy","13":"tag-m-arteta","14":"tag-premier-league","15":"tag-r-calafiori","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-world-cup"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583372","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=583372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583372\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/583373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}