World Cup 2026: Italy fighting to avoid another ‘apocalyptic’ qualification failure
Italy won the European Championship in 2021 but has not played in a World Cup final since beating England in 2014 before failing to progress beyond the group stage, losing to Costa Rica and Uruguay.
The 2026 World Cup qualifying campaign couldn’t get off to a worse start.
A 3-0 defeat in the first leg against Norway, in which Manchester City’s Erling Haaland scored one of the goals, led to manager Luciano Spalletti publicly announcing his own sacking two days later, but he still took responsibility for the 2-0 home win against Moldova.
From then on, Italy began to close the gap, with Norway flawlessly winning their first seven qualifying matches and scoring 33 goals in the process, including 14 for Haaland.
Italy have turned to Gennaro Gattuso, the former combative midfielder who helped AC Milan win the Champions League twice and Italy’s last World Cup trophy in 2006.
Despite managing AC Milan and then winning the Coppa Italia with Napoli, he left without taking charge of a game during his 23-day spell at Fiorentina, spending only seven months at Valencia and five months at Marseille.
He was last appointed to Croatian club Hajduk Split and many thought it was a mistake for him to become Italy manager.
Italian football journalist Mina Rzouki told the Euro Leagues podcast: “When I heard Gattuso was next, it felt like it showed Italy’s massive collapse.”
“Just before the Italian team won the World Cup, there were so many clips circulating on social media that you were talking about Paolo Maldini. [Fabio] Cannavaro, [Alessandro] Nesta, [Francesco] Totti, [Alessandro] Del Piero and it was just an embarrassment of riches.
“When you look at Italy over the last few seasons, even though they won the Euros, there was just a decline; but the one thing you could count on was that Italy created these great coaches. But none of these great coaches were called upon or succeeded. Spalletti was not successful.”
Horncastle added: “The players had their backs against the wall after losing to Norway in June and now the approach being imposed on Italy by the Italian media is ‘you need to win all your remaining games and score lots of goals’.”
“Italy had a great coach in Luciano Spalletti, but for whatever reason, things didn’t work out. Gattuso is a coach who is more famous for his press conferences than the football he puts on the field.”
