Italy won the European Championship in 2021, but has not played in a World Cup finals since 2014, when it beat England but lost to Costa Rica and Uruguay and failed to advance beyond the group stage.
Their 2026 World Cup qualifying campaign couldn’t have gotten off to a worse start.
A soft 3-0 defeat in their opening match against Norway, with Manchester City’s Erling Haaland scoring one of the goals, led manager Luciano Spalletti to publicly announce his own dismissal two days later, although he was still in charge of the following 2-0 home win over Moldova.
Since then, Italy has been playing catch-up, with flawless Norway winning their first seven qualifying matches, scoring 33 goals in the process, including 14 from Haaland.
Italy turned to Gennaro Gattuso, a combative former midfielder who helped AC Milan win the Champions League twice and Italy to its last World Cup trophy in 2006.
Despite managing AC Milan and then winning the Coppa Italia with Napoli, a 23-day spell at Fiorentina saw him leave without managing a game, before only lasting seven months at Valencia and five months at Marseille.
His most recent appointment was with Croatian club Hajduk Split, and many felt that becoming Italy manager was a mistake.
“When I heard Gattuso was in line, it seemed to demonstrate Italy’s gigantic collapse,” Italian soccer journalist Mina Rzouki told the EuroLeague podcast.
“There were so many clips circulating on social media about that Italy team just before winning the World Cup and you’re talking about Paolo Maldini, [Fabio] Cannavaro, [Alessandro] Nesta, [Francesco] totti, [Alessandro] Del Piero and it was just an embarrassment of riches.
“Now, when you look at Italy in the last few seasons, even though they won the Euro, there was only one drop, but the only thing that could be trusted was that Italy created these great coaches. However, none of these great coaches were called up or were successful. Spalletti was not successful.”
Horncastle added: “The players have had their backs against the wall after losing to Norway in June and now the approach that the Italian media is imposing on Italy is ‘you have to win every game you have left and score many, many goals.’
“Italy had a great coach in Luciano Spalletti, although, for some reason, it didn’t work out. Gattuso is a coach more famous for his press conferences than for the football he has put on the field.”
