Sunday night’s 4-1 loss to Norway ended any remaining hopes Italy had of automatically qualifying for next year’s World Cup.
Indeed, the Azzurri went into the game at San Siro knowing that they needed a 9-0 win to overturn the Scandinavian side’s goal difference and take top spot in the group. However, a strong second-half performance saw Norway win all eight games, score an astonishing 37 goals, and qualify for next year’s competition.
For Italy, this marks their third consecutive appearance in the World Cup playoffs. He has lost in his last two attempts and would like to avoid the embarrassment of missing out on three consecutive tournaments.
The Azzurri are stuck in a repeating cycle of underperformance from their top players, lack of risk-taking by their manager, and injuries to veterans and young stars alike, all of which culminate in them missing out on the World Cup.
As March approaches, Gennaro Gattuso and his Italian team will need to break out of this cycle, secure a place in the main tournament and prove to the doubters that they are not dead and buried yet.
Italy’s best players must replicate club form or face drop
In the 4-1 defeat to Norway, and indeed for much of the qualifying campaign, it was some of the country’s top players who were most disappointing.
Players like Giovanni Di Lorenzo and Alessandro Bastoni looked like cheap imitations of the players who had led Napoli and Inter to success in recent years. Meanwhile, experienced midfielders Manuel Locatelli and Nicolo Barella have struggled to build any momentum in the center of the park.
When times are dark and clouds are indeed creeping over the Azzurri, we should expect our best players to step up rather than fade into the shadows. Successive Italian managers have consistently trusted in the country’s “stars” without the performance to back it up, but if Gattuso wants to usher in a new era for Italy, it certainly wouldn’t be a bad thing to take some risks with his choices.
Italy has a wealth of players who are fighting hard to get called up, including young players who have made a good impression domestically this season. However, Gattuso’s 11th match was against Norway, which was by all accounts an incomplete game, and the manager started only one player under the age of 25, Inter’s Francesco Pio Esposito.
Esposito found the back of the net and scored his first goal at San Siro. He was one of the only starters on the team who wasn’t a complete failure. The Azzurri not only have experienced players like Domenico Berardi and Riccardo Orsolini, but also a number of young players who are eager to prove themselves for the Azzurri. They’ve been doing great this season, but they haven’t gotten much attention nationally.
Some international managers have found success in merit-based selection, encouraging meritocratic national teams that compete based on performance and current status rather than history, market value or perceived “value.”
Rot to the core: Injuries and foreign dependence in Serie A hurt Italy
While it is clear that the team and coach, or the coach himself, are largely to blame for the team’s current predicament, with problems starting long before Gattuso’s arrival, there are also factors outside the control of those leading and starring the Azzurri.
First, the country faces a severe epidemic of tendon and ligament tears and tears, which continue to hinder the development of talent.
For experienced players, it takes a lot of effort to get back in shape after a serious injury, and in some cases, you may never be able to get back to the same shape.
Leonardo Spinazzola was part of the Euro 2020 (or 2021) winning team and was voted into the tournament’s squad despite suffering an Achilles tendon rupture in the quarter-final against Hungary. In fact, he recovered and eventually became a reliable squad option for Antonio Conte’s Napoli team that won the Scudetto last season, but since Euro glory the wing-back has played just eight games in four years.
Similarly, although Gattuso insists that Federico Chiesa’s continued absence was at his own request, the winger is also a talented footballer who has struggled to become the same after suffering an anterior cruciate ligament injury.
Meanwhile, more recently, Giorgio Scalvini and Giovanni Leoni, two very talented young defensive prospects, have had their development slowed or even halted by serious injuries. Scalvini injured his ACL on the final day of the 2023-24 season and will miss Euro 2024 and half of the following season. Each time he has returned since then, the centre-back has faced further complications and various injuries, with the 21-year-old having played just 10 games in Serie A since his injury.
Meanwhile, Leoni made a big-money move from Parma to Premier League champions Liverpool in the summer. However, the 18-year-old suffered a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament in his debut match against Southampton in the Carabao Cup, which will keep him out for the rest of the season.
While the short-term departure is frustrating, the long-term impact will be heartbreaking for the Azzurri. A gruesome injury sustained by one of America’s most promising players, especially at a young age, can linger for years to come, and some of these rising stars disappear before their brightest moments.
Finally, Serie A and its clubs must also take some responsibility. Italian teams are increasingly turning to foreign talent rather than developing Italians, and this poses further problems for the Azzurri. Some Serie A teams are made up almost entirely of foreign players, which in itself is not a problem, but overall it means that Italians will not be given the chance to show their abilities.
Some may want the league to create new rules limiting the number of foreign players allowed to play on a team, but this seems bureaucratically impossible.
The big teams will stress that Italian teams need to rely on talented players from abroad if they are to compete with Europe’s elite. However, this creates a catch-22 in the sense that Italy may have to handicap its domestic league if it is to benefit as a national team. And since it ultimately comes down to money, there seems little chance of curbing over-reliance on foreign players.
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