Just as it appeared that a modicum of hope had been restored, it\u2019s all doom and gloom again for Italy, which failed again to punch their ticket to the World Cup again, falling to Bosnia in a fateful night in Zenica.<\/p>\n
The Azzurri jumped to an early lead thanks to a blunder by the opposing goalie, leading to an easy Moise Kean goal. However, the tide turned as Alessandro Bastoni received a direct red card for fouling an adversary sprinting toward the box in the 42nd minute. The guests completely took over, although they needed almost half an hour to equalize, as Gianluigi Donnarumma and the rest of the defense stepped up. Instead, the strikers wasted a pair of juicy chances on counters.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
Italy held on in overtime, occasionally relieving the pressure. Bosnia were perfect in the penalty shoot-out, while Francesco Pio Esposito and Bryan Cristante missed.<\/p>\n
The Azzurri were once again ousted in the playoffs, as it happened against Sweden and North Macedonia in the past. They had finished second in the group since Norway won every fixture.<\/p>\n
Our Take on Italy<\/p>\n
This elimination doesn\u2019t have as profound a motivation as the previous two, which were rooted in a lack of talent and questionable coaching, but it doesn\u2019t sting any less. The squad botched really one game, the first one against Erling Haaland and company, which had its just repercussions<\/a>.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n The fact that the Azzurri withstood the pressure against Northern Ireland<\/a> was encouraging. However, in a single-elimination game, a brainfart, some questionable calls, and a few misses are all it takes for the nightmare to live on. The pillars are in place, the coach is the right one, as he\u2019s not superb, but the spirit was on point, and there are even some interesting up-and-comers<\/a>. Still, it doesn\u2019t mean that it\u2019s not a disaster. FIGC president Gabriele Gravina should have long been gone by now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just as it appeared that a modicum of hope had been restored, it\u2019s all doom and gloom again…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2044,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[151,1528,1785,1782,693,694,5,144,118,495,113],"class_list":["post-2043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-italy","tag-alessandro-bastoni","tag-bryan-cristante","tag-doom-and-gloom","tag-erling-haaland","tag-francesco-pio-esposito","tag-gianluigi-donnarumma","tag-italy","tag-moise-kean","tag-norway","tag-sweden","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2043","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=2043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}