After their play-off heartbreak for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, Italy face another nerve-wracking route to the finals.<\/p>\n
No former winner of the World Cup has missed out on the finals three times in a row. Italy must do it the hard way if they are to avoid an unwanted piece of history.<\/p>\n
The Azzurri host Northern Ireland – a tie they will be favourites to win – in Bergamo on 26 March, and the winner of that semi-final will visit Wales or Bosnia-Herzegovina in their bid to qualify for the finals, where they would join co-hosts Canada, Switzerland and Qatar in Group B. <\/p>\n
“It won’t be easy, not at all,” sad Verri, who added there is an issue “with the speed of the game” in Italy.<\/p>\n
“I don’t think Northern Ireland are a better side than Italy, but it will not be easy with their speed and determination, and it would not be easy against Wales or Bosnia.<\/p>\n
“We definitely have the quality to go through, but we have to be careful in a one-off game.”<\/p>\n
For Gattuso, the play-off could also define whether he is the long-term option for one of Europe’s heavyweights. <\/p>\n
Lose and “it could be time to rethink again”, but win and he could be the “hero” who brought Italy back to the biggest stage.<\/p>\n
“Italy have four World Cups, so there is still an expectation to be competitive in every game,” Verri said.<\/p>\n
“People cannot be happy with the situation and how it is, but it’s not with Gattuso. <\/p>\n
“If he doesn’t qualify then it might be tricky for him, but if we qualify we would be very happy and Gattuso would be much beloved in the country.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After their play-off heartbreak for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, Italy face another nerve-wracking route to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":540344,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-540343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}