{"id":23821,"date":"2026-06-11T09:05:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T09:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/23821\/"},"modified":"2026-06-11T09:05:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T09:05:08","slug":"italys-shame-the-azzurri-four-time-world-cup-winners-are-watching-the-2026-edition-on-tv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/23821\/","title":{"rendered":"Italy\u2019s shame: The Azzurri, four-time World Cup winners, are watching the 2026 edition on TV"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Italy’s Pio Esposito after missing a penalty during the World Cup qualifying playoff final against Bosnia and Herzegovina in Zenica, Bosnia on March 31.Fabio Ferrari\/The Associated Press<\/p>\n

On July 10, 2006, Italy staged the biggest outdoor celebration in its history. Some 500,000 soccer fans flooded into the Circus Maximus \u2013 the ancient chariot racetrack in the heart of Rome \u2013 to cheer Italy\u2019s stunning victory over France the day before in the World Cup final in Berlin. The crowd was delirious with happiness and pride when the team, known as the Azzurri (the Blues), arrived in open-top buses. Fabio Cannavaro, team captain and defensive genius, who had earned the nickname \u201cThe Berlin Wall,\u201d was hailed as a god. <\/p>\n

The Circus Maximus party went on all day and all night. The 620-metre-long arena, whose Roman-era capacity was about 250,000, became a sea of Italian flags lit up by fireworks. Italy had added its fourth World Cup to its national trophy case, a showing outclassed only by Brazil, with five wins. The Azzurri had once again achieved hero status in the world\u2019s most popular sport, and every Italian seemed assured that a team so formidably talented would win again and again.<\/p>\n

We moved to Rome the following year and lived close to the Circus Maximus. Everyone in the neighbourhood remembered the celebration as one of the most exciting days in their lives. Today, those same people don\u2019t talk much about the Azzurri except in hushed tones, as if the team were the equivalent of an embarrassing old uncle. Italy not only failed to qualify for the 2026 World Cup, whose three-country tournament \u2212 Canada, the U.S. and Mexico \u2013 opens Thursday, it also failed to qualify for the 2022 and 2018 editions. One miss is a mistake; three, a habit.<\/p>\n

Italy sheds tears after missing out on World Cup again<\/a><\/p>\n

To pile embarrassment on embarrassment, Italy was knocked out of contention this year by Bosnia-Herzegovina, which many Italians couldn\u2019t find on a map. In 2022, it was eliminated by North Macedonia, which a wag soccer nut friend of mine said \u201cwasn\u2019t even a country\u201d (it is, but the former Yugoslav territory didn\u2019t officially get its current name until 2019).<\/p>\n

An entire generation has grown up never having seen an Italian World Cup team in action, let alone reach the final. Italians are no longer shocked by the hero-to-zero status. They have become used to the Azzurri\u2019s collapse to allegedly far lesser teams. Which is not to mean they will accept it any longer. <\/p>\n

The latest miss probably will trigger an overhaul of the national team, specifically its coaching, talent-spotting and youth-development systems, which are clearly a mess. When Italy fell to Bosnia-Herzegovina on March 31 in a penalty shootout, Italians did not hold back on the abuse. <\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Italy was knocked out by Bosnia and Herzegovina, which many Italians couldn\u2019t find on a map, writes Eric Reguly.ELVIS BARUKCIC\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Andrea Abodi, the Minister of Sport in Giorgia Meloni\u2019s government, said Italian football had to be rebuilt \u201cfrom the ground up\u201d and called for the ouster of Gabriele Gravina, the president of FIGC, the Italian football association (he duly bolted). Former prime minister Matteo Renzi called Italy\u2019s World Cup no-show \u201ca sign that Italian football has failed.\u201d Newspaper headlines called it a \u201csporting tragedy,\u201d a \u201cdisgrace\u201d and a \u201cdisaster.\u201d<\/p>\n

At one point, the Italy debacle turned into a farce. In April, Paolo Zampolli, an Italian-American who is Donald Trump\u2019s special envoy for global partnerships, suggested that Italy replace Iran in the tournament. He framed it as a contingency plan in case Iranian players could not secure entry to the U.S. because of the American-Israeli war against Iran. Abodi rejected the idea. \u201cQualification is on the pitch,\u201d he said. (In the end, the Iranian players were given visas, though more than a dozen Iranian soccer officials were denied entry.) <\/p>\n

Italian soccer has a lot of problems. The lavish revenues, budgets and brand values of Europe\u2019s richest clubs (Real Madrid, Barcelona and Manchester United among them) mean they can easily outbid Italy\u2019s Serie A, the country\u2019s top league, for player talent. Italian stadiums are generally old and no longer fit for purpose, even if a few of them, like Milan\u2019s San Siro and Naples\u2019 Diego Armando Maradona stadiums, are considered historical treasures. Classic Italian on-pitch soccer strategy emphasizes three-man defence over attacking flair that produces goals and pleases crowds.<\/p>\n

The main problem is player development. Italian soccer academies are considered inferior to those in Spain or France. The under-21s typically do not get much game time when they reach Serie A; the coaches tend to stick with the older, proven players instead of risking the neophytes, though the neophytes sometimes have superstar potential. Lamine Yamal, Barcelona\u2019s 18-year-old prodigy, comes to mind. Italian soccer seems to have no determined, well-financed plan to overcome the youth-development crisis.<\/p>\n

Soccer is typically a low-scoring game in which a single, lucky goal can often turn a mediocre team into a winner. The Azzurri could get lucky and make the 2030 World Cup (which, in FIFA\u2019s endless lunge for complexity and expense, will be played in six countries on three continents). But the odds favour a fourth miss unless the Italian soccer system is overhauled fast. Tourists see the Circus Maximus as a historical ruin; Italians see it as the spot where the Azzurri peaked and burnt out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Italy’s Pio Esposito after missing a penalty during the World Cup qualifying playoff…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23822,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4293,4283,4294,1188,4276,1557,147,4275,4288,4289,4285,4277,4274,1131,4292,1294,4287,201,4305,4278,4279,3297,5,4284,1815,1333,4295,4281,4300,4301,4303,4298,4302,4296,4299,4280,3867,4291,356,4290,4297,3869,1138,614,4286,4282,243,4304],"class_list":["post-23821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-italy","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-italy","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23821","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=23821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23821\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}