Fans and pundits react to Italy’s 0-0 draw against Northern Ireland, which forces the Azzurri to qualify for the World Cup through the play-offs. But who is to blame? Join the debate on Football Italia’s liveblog.
Roberto Mancini’s side were held to a 0-0 draw in Belfast last night, while Switzerland beat Bulgaria 4-0, emerging as the Group C winners, booking their place for Qatar 2022.
Italy will have to go through the play-offs to qualify for next year’s World Cup. The play-offs will take place in March and have a new formula. There will be three groups of four teams each which play one semi-final and a Final. Only three countries qualify for the World Cup from the play-offs.
World Cup play-offs: how they work, when they take place and Italy’s possible opponents
There are six seeded teams, including Italy, Portugal and Sweden. There will be two seeded teams in each group and they can’t meet in the semis. Therefore, Cristiano Ronaldo or Zlatan Ibrahimovic won’t face the Azzurri in the first game of the play-offs.
The old World Cup shadows are emerging for the Azzurri. Four years ago, Italy were eliminated at the hands of Sweden with Gian Piero Ventura in charge. The play-off formula was different and possibly more accessible than the current one.
Nobody has forgotten what happened at that time and Twitter is literally exploding with comments remembering the 2017 World Cup qualifying campaign and pinning the blame on Mancini or players.
Among them, there’s Jorginho, who missed two penalties in two games against the Swiss.
The victory at UEFA Euro 2020 seems far away now. Who do you think is the main responsible for Italy’s fiasco? Send us your thoughts on the liveblog.
Is anybody surprised? If you are you don’t know your Italian football history. Let me refresh your memory then: ‘82!world champs fail to qualify for euro ‘84, ‘06 world champs perform like crap in ‘10, ‘14 and don’t even make ‘18. After we won the euros in the summer I knew this was going to happen. We won’t make the WC folks. Just want to save you four torturous months of futile hope.
i don’t understand continuing to call up belotti who has been off form for months, and not calling up destro who is on form
Not a bad result last night we needed a 3-0 win over a well organised team. Tall order for any team. I think Mancini isn’t trying out new players giving people automatic first team starts I.e. insigne..good player but drop him if off form at half time then bring in berna raspa etc…this gives players incentive to perform better….need a young world class CBand Striker…think euros papered over a few cracks…need to score goals..a must..
Destro is hurt.
What other league besides England is filled with 65% foreign players?
Logic stands to reason that if you aren’t playing at a high level, you will suck.
Let’s pick half the starting 11 of Italy from Udinese. Oh wait, we can’t because 2 Sunday’s ago they only fielded 1 Italian — the GK.
How the flying fuck can an NT be good when you have no club teams to draw them from?
Ya not surprised at all to be honest and they will not make it 100% especially if they draw Portugal in one of those 3 “streams”. Pretty pathetic that guys had so much energy in euro qualifiers and euros and pressed teams so hard and now they just look like crap .
Also back in the day there was larger pool of Italian players to chose from. I believe Lippi had over 60% of Italian serie A Players all playing for top clubs dominating European competitions. By 17 that had gone down to 33%……!!
Also the old Italian side always had core of players from either Juve or Milan.
Today hardly any of our young players play for the big sides, even teams like Atalanta hardly feature any Italian players. Furthermore would any of the current crop of players get anywhere near a all time Italian side, maybe Verratti at a push? We just don’t produce the World class players of the past. Yes we won Euros and it was fantastic achievement that you can’t take away from these players but was just an anomaly, like Greece 04? Our record since 06 has been awful.
I don’t think you can put the blame entirely on foreign players either there’s lots of foreign players in the premiership but England still produce a lot good young players. Is it grass roots? Not enough investment? There obviously a problem that hasn’t been resolved since 06. And if don’t deal with it we’ll end as second rate footballing nation.
Please can the people who review these comments before posting stop allowing language like that used above.
The only thing I am glad for is that Ventura is not the coach of this team otherwise we are doomed ! Missing 1 PK (thank you Jorginho) put them in this position ……now give Kean a chance as CF come March !!
Injuries to key players and missed opportunities cost them 1st place.
Just one of two Jorginho PKs vs the Swiss would have been enough to win the group.
Players were not sharp for the qualifiers in September. It was just 2 weeks into the Serie A season. How many Italian players were not at their clubs training for the start of the season because they had Euro duties?
No one dominated Italy. They had greater possession and shots on goal in all games during the qualifiers. It’s unfortunate more goals didn’t go in.
I’m not worried. I’m kind of looking forward to watching Italy play 2 key games. I’m also hoping they meet Sweden in the 2nd game.
Only loss recently was vs Spain at the Nation’s league semi final. They played 1 man down for 1/2 the game, all because of some ref made a poor call. They beat Belgium, the highest ranked team in Europe, 2-1 for 3rd place. It could have easily been the final.
Who’s to blame? No one. We have a great coach, a great goalie and a great team. People in other countries would kill to have a team like this. Just hope for the best.
@Peter. Mr Holier-than-thou. Mr language sanitizer… Perhaps FI can arrange a safe space for you away from such beastly language. I hope that this traumatic experience will not cause you any psychological damage going forward.
You can’t win without scoring. You can play not to lose but in competitions that do not go to PKs you *need* to score. This team’s set up has not yet accounted for the lack of a strong forward group (that scores – clinically). We have no one. Previous winning Azzurri teams had clear finishers (Toni, Inzaghi, Gillardino, Del Piero, Vieri, Totti, on and on – players who score consistently at the international level). This team does not. We need Mancini to devise a strategy that mitigates this area of severe weakness. Until that happens we are rolling the dice with every game. We should never have this many draws against this caliber of opposition. It is extremely frustrating for us tifosi.
If any NT was offered a choice of either winning the European championship or having to qualify for the WC through the playoffs, is there a single NT that would choose the latter? Bearing in mind, of the UEFA countries that have already qualified, 5 have never won the Euros, including Belgium, England and Switzerland. I’d say Italy got the better deal. Just putting the current situation into perspective.
Mamma mia here we go again!
Knowing these guys they will fail to make the World Cup again but win the euro again in 2024 . They don’t have that aggressive press we saw in group stage and euro qualifiers . They were winning games 3-0 , now just getting a goal is like trying to find water in a desert.
Get Gio Simeone as passport!
How would you like to be England? All of the tournaments they have been in and 1 rusty cup. They would switch places with Italy in a second. I am 57 and i have seen Italy win 2 world cups and 1 Euro. Not to mention the many finals that they have been in. Yes I am disappointed but they will turn it around.