Italy\u2019s failure to qualify for the World Cup is astonishing. It\u2019s an indictment on the current players, the staff, the FIGC, and calcio as a whole that FIFA\u2019s 12th-place nation can\u2019t make a 48-team tournament. The accusatory eulogies are pouring in and will probably continue for a couple months as the Azzurri apparatus releases stale statements without making any significant changes to a sporting structure that is plainly and painfully inadequate to keep pace with the nation\u2019s expectations for the third successive cycle.<\/p>\n
Lost in these lamentations, of course, is Moise Kean\u2019s historic goalscoring record. The Fiorentina forward has now scored in 6 straight games for his country. The streak begins with his brace in Dortmund in last year\u2019s Nations League quarterfinal defeat to Germany and has continued through World Cup qualifiers against Estonia, Israel, Northern Ireland, and now Bosnia and Herzegovina.<\/p>\n
For the record, Kean\u2019s the only one of those 4 who accomplished the feat in competitive matches only rather than sprinkling in some strikes in friendlies. Italy\u2019s played 11 games since that streak began (Kean\u2019s missed 5 of them with injury), the Azzurri have scored 29 goals. Moise has 8 of them, accounting for 28% of the goal output. If you restrict it to games he\u2019s actually played in, that jumps to a staggering 42%. Every time his country has needed him, Kean\u2019s come up nails. Mateo Retegui, Francesco Pio Esposito, Gianluca Scamacca, and Italy\u2019s other strikers are all talented, sure, but the Moose is better than all of them and deserves a chance to lead his nation on the biggest stage.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
Although the most pea-brained observers will criticize him for missing a golden opportunity to put the Azzurri up 2-0, his opener was fantastic and should\u2019ve been enough. Indeed, Rino Gattuso\u2019s decision to remove Kean\u2019s searing pace for the brawn of Esposito will doubtless be called into question, as the Viola striker would have offered a greater threat as Bosnia and Herzegovina hurled bodies forward in search of an equalizer.<\/p>\n
Kean\u2019s also the perfect example of what\u2019s gone wrong for Italy from a youth development standpoint. He was a prodigy, Juventus\u2019 youngest-ever player at 16 and the first guy born in the 2000s to make an appearance for in one of the top-4 European leagues. Juve\u2019s sweaty, stupid obsession with Cristiano Ronaldo meant the Bianconeri sold 19-year-old Kean to Everton, where he predictably failed to settle and bounced around before ending up in Florence and reigniting his career last year.<\/p>\n
The inability to foster such an obvious talent domestically is all too common on the peninsula and a huge part of why, in Italy\u2019s most important game in 4 years, Gattuso ended up with the likes of Federico Gatti, Bryan Cristante, Leonardo Spinazzola, and Davide Frattesi on the pitch. The contrast with successful nations of similar population, GDP, and history\u2014Germany, England, France, Spain\u2014is stark. Those federations have, in the past 10 years, looked inward and created actionable plans to improve. The FIGC, meanwhile, acts like it\u2019s still 1982 and Paolo Rossi is coming to the rescue.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s all academic at this point. Hypothetical. Meaningless. Italy\u2019s out and Kean\u2019s out with the rest of them. Maybe he\u2019ll get a chance in 2030\u2019s Morocco\/Spain\/Portugal World Cup. He\u2019ll be 30 then, still young enough to star for a rebuilt national team. Maybe he\u2019ll have lost a bit of his jaw-dropping pace but the talent won\u2019t dry up. It\u2019s a shame that Moise will have to wait despite doing everything in his power to drag these bozos to the next level. The least we can do is appreciate his excellence even as we mourn Italy\u2019s colossal failure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Italy\u2019s failure to qualify for the World Cup is astonishing. It\u2019s an indictment on the current players, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1807,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,1528,1648,787,1650,156,176,1649,171,419,41,693,39,784,95,5,170,989,1646,179,144,1647,148,964],"class_list":{"0":"post-1806","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-italy","8":"tag-bosnia-and-herzegovina","9":"tag-bryan-cristante","10":"tag-cristiano-ronaldo","11":"tag-davide-frattesi","12":"tag-dortmund","13":"tag-england","14":"tag-esposito","15":"tag-everton","16":"tag-federico-gatti","17":"tag-fiorentina","18":"tag-france","19":"tag-francesco-pio-esposito","20":"tag-germany","21":"tag-gianluca-scamacca","22":"tag-italian-national-team","23":"tag-italy","24":"tag-juventus","25":"tag-leonardo-spinazzola","26":"tag-luigi-riva","27":"tag-mateo-retegui","28":"tag-moise-kean","29":"tag-roberto-bettega","30":"tag-spain","31":"tag-world-cup-qualifiers"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}