To an extent, Italy was unlucky. It had 32 to shots to four. Most nights, what it did would have been enough to beat North Macedonia. But it didn’t. It lost to Aleksandar Trajkovski’s injury-time goal and so, for the second World Cup in a row, Italy has failed to qualify. But to speak merely of misfortune is slightly to miss the point. Misfortune can happen in a one-off game; the point is that Italy became vulnerable to that kind of bad luck by failing to win its group and having to take part in the playoff.
Giorgio Chiellini spoke of a “great void” and there is no doubt that this is a major embarrassment for Italy. After missing out on the 1958 World Cup, it qualified for 14 tournaments in a row, but has now missed out on the last two. Italy has not played in a World Cup knockout game since winning the World Cup in 2006. By the time the next World Cup rolls around in ’26, it will have gone 20 years in which its only victory at a World Cup was against England in ’14. Add in the fact that Serie A is in retreat, with no Italian side in the quarterfinals of the Champions League and that there has not been an Italian winner since Inter in ’11, and the picture seems bleak.
Yet Italy won the Euros last summer, reached the final in 2012 and went out on penalties in the quarterfinal in ’16. It’s too simplistic to portray this simply as a matter of decline.
