Italy are World Cup royalty. Only five-time winners Brazil have been crowned champions on more occasions than the Azzurri (four). And yet it’s now 20 years since Italy last lifted the trophy. Worse still, they’ve failed to qualify for the past two tournaments, meaning there’s an entire generation that have never seen their country even play in a World Cup.
One would be tempted to go all Helen Lovejoy on it and plead, ‘Won’t somebody please think of the children?!’ But the players already are. “We know full well that we are responsible for all those kids out there and the entire Italian football movement,”
They’re also just one win away from ending Italy’s very much self-inflicted international exile, with the Azzurri having beaten Northern Ireland 2-0 in Bergamo last Thursday to set up a play-off final against Bosnia and Herzegovina on Tuesday.
So, how are Locatelli & Co. shaping up ahead of a game of monumental importance for not only the national team, but calcio in general? Are Italy well-placed to bring an end to their World Cup woe? Or do they actually risk even more misery?
Spalletti the savior…
Remarkable as it may seem, there was actually a genuine doubt over whether Italy would even make it into the play-offs. When Luciano Spalletti stepped down last summer, the national team was in total disarray.
Spalletti was supposed to have been the Azzurri’s savior. He had stepped into the considerable void left by Roberto Mancini after the Euro 2020 winner sensationally quit in August 2023 and was universally regarded as the ideal replacement, having only just led Napoli to a first Serie A title since the days of Diego Maradona.
However, while Spalletti sufficiently steadied the ship to secure a spot at Euro 2024, the tournament was a disaster for Italy, and particularly the coach. It may have been clear beforehand that Spalletti’s squad was short on quality, but he made several puzzling tactical and personnel decisions in Germany.
The net result was the weakest European Championship title defence since Greece in 2008, with the Azzurri, who had needed a 98th-minute equaliser against Croatia just to get out of the group stage, bowing out after an embarrassingly lame loss to Switzerland.
Spalletti, thus, needed a strong start to the 2026 World Cup qualification campaign. Instead, they suffered a shocking setback that brought a premature end to his tenure.
‘Our fans don’t deserve this’
On June 6 of last year, Italy were beaten 3-0 by Norway in Oslo — and the final scoreline actually flattered the visitors. Spalletti’s side were absolutely atrocious from start to finish, utterly devoid of quality and character.
“I have no words,”
Spalletti unsurprisingly concurred. “We need to find something more,” he conceded. “Otherwise, something has got to change.”
Inevitably, that something was the coach, with the decision taken after the Norway debacle to dispense with Spalletti — but only after allowing him to remain in charge for the 2-0 win over Moldova three days later in a bid to limit the disruption.
By that point, though, the team’s qualification prospects looked bleak — particularly as there was a worrying shortage of strong candidates to succeed Spalletti at the helm.
The Gattuso gamble
Claudio Ranieri was the popular choice, but the beloved Premier League champion refused to go back on his decision to take up an advisory role at hometown club Roma after calling time on his coaching career at the end of the 2024-25 season, while Scudetto winner Stefano Pioli preferred to take charge of Fiorentina instead.
As a result, the Italian football federation (FIGC) warmed to the idea of trying to tap into the spirit of 2006 by hiring a member of Marcello Lippi’s World Cup winners. Daniele De Rossi and Fabio Cannavaro were both considered but president Gabriele Gravina instead opted for Gattuso, the former midfielder with a chequered coaching history.
“He has the qualities, the determination and above all the desire to achieve something great for the Azzurri and our country,”
“I wouldn’t make the mistake of reducing his commitment to mere enthusiasm, though. There’s much more to it. A great spirit of sacrifice, tremendous professionalism and an extraordinary level of preparation. What struck me from the very beginning was his willingness to put ‘us’ ahead of ‘I’.
“But we are confident of Rino’s technical qualities. There is concrete evidence of his abilities, and I am convinced he will be a man of results. He knows Italian football very well, including the players’ mentality and the pressure from the media, having experienced intense environments such as Napoli and Milan. Personally, I have always appreciated his work with young players.
“He immediately wanted to send very clear messages, overflowing with enthusiasm. He told me right away that nobody wins alone. We win together, we go to the World Cup together.”
That remains to be seen, but Gattuso has at least put them in a position to qualify for the first time since 2014.
‘So much love for the shirt’
Given Italy’s group-stage campaign started and finished with devastating three-goal defeats to Norway, one could argue that the team hasn’t really improved on Gattuso’s watch. By the coach’s own admission, in fact, his team capitulated during the second half of November’s 4-1 loss at San Siro as soon as Erling Haaland & Co. started to apply some serious pressure.
However, while it very much remains to be seen if Italy can compete with international football’s top teams, progress has definitely been made since last June. The two games against Israel illustrate the point.
Italy were worryingly open and error-prone in the crazy 5-4 win in Debrecen, but much more solid and sure of themselves while securing a 3-0 victory in the return clash in Udine last October.
The most obvious difference between Gattuso’s Italy and that of Spalletti is the sense of unity. Key midfielder Sandro Tonali said after the win over Northern Ireland that the players have been
“The coach has so much love for the Azzurri shirt,”
Keeping calm
Gattuso clearly isn’t all drive and determination, though. He made some very shrewd decisions before and during the game against the Northern Irish.
Even the choice of venue was inspired, with Gattuso playing a pivotal role in the decision to stage the semi-final at the New Balance Arena in Bergamo — rather than the much larger Stadio Giuseppe Meazza at San Siro — because he rightly believed that the crowd wouldn’t be as quick to turn on his team.
“If there had been 70,000 in the stands, trust me, a good 30 percent would’ve started jeering at half-time,”
Gattuso also deserved credit for remaining as composed as the crowd. The first half was, as he conceded himself, “a struggle” — not least because of the importance of the occasion. Kean openly admitted afterwards that he felt the weight of the World Cup on his shoulders until he sealed victory with the second goal of the evening, while Tonali acknowledged that there had been a lot of tension within the team before he broke the deadlock in the 56th minute.
“There was some nervousness at the start of the second half,”
Again, Gattuso had been key in that regard, reminding his troops during the interval that there was no need for frustration. “You didn’t think it was going to be easy, did you?” he asked during his half-time team talk. Gattuso had also made an important tactical tweak by telling Locatelli to move forward rather than continuing to sit so deep.
“I had the feeling on the pitch that I could help the team more from there,”
‘Heart and soul’
As Locatelli admitted, though, there is still work to do. “We haven’t taken a weight off our shoulders yet,”
On the plus side, beating Wales in Cardiff would have been a tougher challenge than overcoming Bosnia and Herzegovina in Zenica — which is why several members of Gattuso’s squad were seen celebrating the Balkans’ shootout success on Thursday.
Sergej Barbarez’s side sit all the way down in
What’s more, all of the pressure is on the Azzurri. Italian football is in a bad place right now. As well as the national team missing two World Cups for the first time ever,
However, there is cautious optimism surrounding this crucial last step towards some sort of redemption. Tonali is showing why a plethora of Premier League clubs want to sign him this summer, Inter’s equally in-demand defender Alessandro Bastoni made a timely return from injury last week, and Italy also just have a stronger side than the Bosnians in general.
However, they also have a coach that has managed to restore some faith in the Azzurri after successive World Cup play-off defeats.
They unquestionably had better players in the previous losses to Sweden and North Macedonia but, as
A similar show of effort is essential in Zenica because they’re not just going up against Bosnia and Herzegovina, they’ll also be battling the very same “demons” Tonali said they saw ahead of the semi-final. “I’m not saying we were scared,”
There can be no excuses, though. “There’s no option but to win,” Tonali said. They owe it to themselves. To their coach. To the entire Italian football movement. And, perhaps most importantly of all, the poor children desperate to know what it feels like to watch their country compete in a World Cup.
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