Why was Italy eliminated from the World Cup for the second time in a row?

Italy, four times world champion, certified this Thursday its second consecutive failure in the intention to qualify for the World Cup. The ‘azzurra’ lost 0-1 with North Macedonia and was left out of the great event of national team football. The weight of the defeat has deeply penetrated the soul of the country of the boot, which will complete eight years in November without attending the World Cup.

The failure of Italy

In Italy, the closer look emphasizes that dominance against North Macedonia was inconsequential. The statistics are accurate: Italy had 66% of the possession of the ball, shot 32 times on goal, had 16 corner kicks and did not score a single goal. His rival, the modest team that has never been to a World Cup, only had four shots, no corner charges and scored one goal.

The president of Serie A, Lorenzo Casini, declared that the “failure” of the Italian team not to go to the World Cup for the second time in a row is that of all of Italian football and considered that “it should lead everyone to serious reflection and profound system change”.

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The recently appointed president of the Italian football league looks to the future after the ‘Azzurra’ disaster and believes that the moment must be seized to change the foundations of Italian football.

“The lack of qualification for the final phase of the World Cup is a failure for all of Italian football that should lead everyone to serious reflection and a profound change in our system,” Casini said in statements picked up by the local media.

The Italian coach Arrigo Sacchi moves along the same lines, assuring that not all the fault lies with the players, but rather with the bases of a football that he described as “backward” and that “has no new ideas”.

“We haven’t won anything in Europe since 2010, after Mourinho’s Inter Champions League. The national team in the European Championship was a wonderful exception to which we should all be grateful because it gave us a trophy won with merit and good play. We continue to buy foreigners for our clubs, and even the youth sectors are full of boys from abroad”, explained Sacchi in an interview with ‘La Gazzetta dello Sport’.

“I hope he doesn’t try to solve everything by throwing out the coach. The problem is more serious, much more serious. Italian football suffers from cultural backwardness, there are no new ideas. Other nations are evolving and we have stayed at 60 years. I will say it clearly : the players and the coach are the least guilty of this situation. Here the problem is ‘institutional'”, added the former ‘rossonero’ coach.

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*With EFE