{"id":270889,"date":"2025-11-19T03:26:04","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T03:26:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/270889\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T03:26:04","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T03:26:04","slug":"2026-world-cup-who-can-northern-ireland-face-in-the-play-offs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/270889\/","title":{"rendered":"2026 World Cup: Who can Northern Ireland face in the play-offs?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">World ranking: Ninth World Cup qualifying group: Second behind Norway Last World Cup: 2014<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Given their history and status in international football, it&#8217;s incredible to think that Italy have not featured at a World Cup since 2014 in Brazil. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Yet, the four-time champions are at risk of missing out on a third global tournament in a row as they finished second in Group I behind Erling Haaland&#8217;s Norway, who automatically qualified for the finals. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Their campaign was bookended by two defeats by Norway, including a dismal 4-1 loss in Milan to end their campaign last week.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But despite their form, the Italians will still be the team everyone wants to avoid in the play-offs, and they are the highest-ranked team by a considerable margin.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Northern Ireland last played Italy in 2021, and actually played a role in them sitting out the Qatar World Cup as a goalless draw in Belfast saw Roberto Mancini&#8217;s side miss out on top spot and automatic qualification, and they were stunned by North Macedonia in the play-offs. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Domenico Berardi and Ciro Immobile scored in a 2-0 win in the return fixture in that campaign, which opened Group D that March.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"World ranking: Ninth World Cup qualifying group: Second behind Norway Last World Cup: 2014 Given their history and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":270890,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-270889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}