Italy captain Giorgio Chiellini has backed manager Roberto Mancin i to continue as manager despite the nation’s humiliating World Cup qualifying exit.
The European champions were dumped out of the newly formed play-off setup at the semi-final stage, after they were stunned by relative minnows North Macedonia in Palermo on Thursday night. And just eight months on from their crowning moment at Wembley, questions are now being asked about the direction of the national team.
The hosts dominated the entire match, spurning chance after chance, before Aleksandar Trajkovski popped up in the second minute of injury time with an arrowed drive into Gianluigi Donnarumma’s bottom corner.
Elimination ensures the Azzurri will miss the World Cup for the second successive time, piling the pressure on Roberto Mancini, who less than a year ago looked almost untouchable. After their Euro 2020 final triumph over England, ex-Manchester City boss Mancini was handed a new bumper deal, ensuring he would be in charge until 2026.
But the Italian has now been forced to respond to speculation that his four-year stint could be coming to an end. "We will see. Now I feel too disappointed to speak about my future, we will see," Mancini told Rai Sport in the minutes after the full-time whistle. "I’m sure this team has a great future. I’m supporting these players now more than ever."
And Chiellini, who lifted the European Championship back in July, has also been forced to address rumours of his own international retirement, but made time to back the under-fire boss, hoping he will remain in charge moving forward.
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"We're hugely disappointed. We played well but a goal was missing. I'm proud of my teammates. We're devastated. I hope that Mancini will remain." Asked about his own international future, the veteran defender added: "This isn't the right time to say if I've played my last game for Italy."
North Macedonia’s historic victory means that - at Italy’s expense - they will take on the might of Portugal next week, with the carrot of a first ever appearance at a World Cup on offer. A philosophical Mancini bemoaned his side’s bad luck during the one-sided encounter and said his players deserved more than the concession of a heartbreaking, decisive goal.
"I think that if last July was the best thing I had professionally, I think this is the biggest disappointment," said Mancini. "You can't say anything. This is football. Sometimes incredible things happen and tonight it happened.
"Maybe we shouldn't have been there, but we did everything to try to win. It is difficult to comment on this match, with a goal that arrived after the 90th minute without conceding anything else.
"This is a group with great players and I'm sorry because we didn't deserve it. Now it is too early to talk about the future, we still have to digest this defeat.
"I think that the victory of the European Championship was deserved, then luck turned into total bad luck. On a human level, I can say that I love the boys more tonight than in July. It is a time of great difficulty and therefore my affection is even greater."
