Paolo Di Canio revealed that he’s ‘angry with all of Italian football’ following the World Cup play-off loss to North Macedonia.
The Azzurri suffered a disastrous 1-0 defeat at the Stadio Renzo Barbera last night, meaning they’ll miss out on the upcoming World Cup in Qatar, a horrific situation following last year’s Euro 2020 glory.
Speaking to Sky Sports Italia, Di Canio reacted to the loss against North Macedonia and expressed his anger with Italian football as a whole.
“Last night I was very calm on the sofa, maybe too much so. I had a feeling it would end up like this, I saw it immediately. Seeing the images again makes me even more angry. There was too much frenzy and nervousness, even Mancini from the first minute was only pointing out the player’s mistake.
“He was worried, it was not the attitude that reflected the words before the game, when he talked about winning the World Cup. After the game last night I had the disappointment of those who expected it.
“I was convinced that the omelette would’ve been made, there was too much anxiety and Macedonia impressed in defence, then went and got the goal in attack. The goal came from a player who has quality, but he was not pressed. Everyone let him do it. After the calm, however, I got angry, I’m angry with the whole of Italian football.”
He then suggested that Italy’s success at the European Championship last year was significantly luckier than previously expected.
“I don’t want to belittle what Italy did, they made us proud. I used to mock my English friends. Then after Euro 2020, when people went back to talking about football, everyone thought a cycle had been opened, highlighting what we had achieved. But I was never convinced.
“In my heart I said that we were also lucky, with Spain on penalties, with England the same, and with Austria if Arnautovic’s kneecap hadn’t been offside we would have gone out. I don’t want to belittle, I repeat, but we don’t have excellence.
“Yesterday Berardi made a lot of mistakes, I don’t want to put the blame on him, but he suffered in the game. It’s one thing to play with the Sassuolo shirt, it’s another to wear the national team’s shirt.”
Italy now have a couple of years to overhaul the entire footballing system, with the next major competition being Euro 2024 in Germany. It will be a bitter Christmas for the Azzurri, who’ll have to watch the World Cup in Qatar from the sidelines.
North Macedonia will now face Portugal in a final play-off match to decide which team will qualify for the upcoming World Cup.
#DiCanio a sorpresa: «l’Europeo vinto frutto del caso, l’#Italia è quella di ieri» https://t.co/LZQzY0FggO
— LazioNews24.com (@LazioNews_24) March 25, 2022
It just goes to show how stupid Italian coaches are when it comes to player selection over the years. Di Canio himself never even got a call up as a player. Mancini is 100% to blame for this failure.
Arnautovic’s kneecap?
Pretty sure Arnautovic was offside by a few body widths.
We were not lucky at the Euros at all. We were not great against Austria, but were still the better side. We were excellent against Belgium, and would have won more comfortably had we not conceded the penalty just before half time. Spain did outplay us, yet we created almost as many chances as they did, and let’s not forget that Spinazzola’s injury took some of the zest out of our game. After a dodgy start against England, we controlled the game pretty much after 5 minutes. The only good thing England did after opening the scoring was closing us down and defending. The only thing missing for us was again, a center forward.
Immobile was useless in the final. When he was subbed at half-time I thought that would be the last of him in an Italy shirt, that Mancini had finally got the message. Sadly I was much mistaken.
Well said Brandon and Bruno.
Carletto, Di Canio was never good enough to play for Italy back in those days. There were always better players to choose ahead of him. Just because he played well in the EPL at the time when it was the 3rd best league in the world and still developing, doesn’t mean he was going to displace other players better than him in the Nazionale.
Italy was going so well in qualifiers, just playing Euro and focusing on that too much lost focus from the qualifiers. 4 consecutive draws in the last four matches- Bulgaria, Northern Ireland, Switzerland -two times spoilt all the momentum of the qualifications.
Well i’m Scottish so don’t have much bias either way but i don’t think Italy were “lucky” in the European Championship last year. Every team that has ever won any major tournament probably had a little bit of good luck along the way. I can’t imagine many teams winning tournaments with bad luck! But Italy were clearly the best team in the competition and deserved their title. Di Canio has never seemed that balanced or rational to me. A bit of a hothead who speaks before he thinks. He’s entertaining but should never be taken too seriously.
Allan, totally agree
@ Bruno – To you and anybody else who says that Spain outplayed us; Do you know anything about the way Spain play? With your comments I think not!
Despite the close score, Italy thoroughly outplayed England.. This dude has no idea what he’s talking about… In every tournament there are very close game.. in 2006, we narrowly defeated USA and Australia… we still won, or does he think that was a fluke too? Ma va…