Italy fail to reach Russia 2018: Where do they go from here?

Italy failed to reach Russia 2018 after a testy two-legged affair against Sweden. Where do the Azzurri go from here?

A World Cup without Italy is like serving cookies without milk. In this case, a better analogy would be pasta without the tomato sauce. It’s an ingredient that makes the overall experience more enjoyable. To think, tomatoes may be the food of choice that Italians will want to hurl at national team players come this weekend’s Serie A matches.

The steady decline of Serie A over the past two decades — winning the 2006 World Cup not withstanding — and the inability of Italian clubs to achieve success at the European club level all culminated with the Azzurri‘s poor performance in this World Cup qualifying cycle. In other words, this was inevitable.

Italy last missed out on the World Cup in 1958. While a regular at the tournament, Italy have not been immune to embarrassing defeats. Losses to North Korea in 1966 and South Korea in 2002 are still recalled with horror. The Azzurri have also tasted their fair share of success in the form of four World Cups.

Nonetheless, Italy are in good company. Chile, the defending Copa America champions, Cameroon, the defending Africa Cup of Nations winner, the Netherlands, a three-time World Cup finalist, and the United States, who had qualified for the last seven straight tournaments, will all be missing from Russia 2018. You could host a mini-tournament of countries who failed to qualify.

Russia 2018 is poorer for not having Italy at the World Cup, after Sweden got the best of them over two legs in a playoff home-and-away series that was both testy and nervous.

As Paddy Agnew wrote in World Soccer: “Most unforgivable was the fact that Italian theatrics and protests climaxed at the very moment just after half time when Italy seemed to be in control of the game and when Sweden, after almost an hour of football, were looking very unlikely to score a goal. Italy fell foul of their own theatrics, conceded a poor goal and, in the process, gave themselves a mountain to climb [Monday] tonight.”

There will be recriminations over the refereeing and whether Italy should have been given a penalty kick in the second leg. Instead, the time now is to reflect and rebuild.

Get a better coach

Giampiero Ventura was never up to the task. He didn’t have what it takes to guide a group that needed lots of guidance. He never coached a big club and that inexperience often showed. He was the wrong man for this team from the start and it slowly showed as qualifying wore on and results mattered.

Ventura’s stubbornness to play a 3-5-2 tactical formation that excluded the team’s best player — Napoli winger Lorenzo Insigne — proved a major flaw. That inability to be flexible and adapt to a situation or opponent was on full display over the last few months and especially in the two playoff games against Sweden.

It looks as if former Bayern Munich manager Carlo Ancelotti is waiting in the wings. Whoever takes over for this beleaguered program will need to show leadership when times grow bleak. Ventura never did that despite the many chances he was given.

Replace the old guard

Failing to qualify for a World Cup means starting over. The old guard will fade away. The legacy of players like goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon is dented, however unfairly, after this most-recent failure. His heroics at the 2006 World Cup, which Italy won on penalties against France in the final, remain a distant memory. The same goes for midfielder Daniele De Rossi, who was also a member of that 2006 side, and defender Andrea Barzagli.

While Serie A may be loaded with foreign talent, there is plenty of young Italian talent out there. In that regard, the future is not bleak. What’s bleak are the country’s prospects of cultivating that talent. It starts at the federation level all the way down to the lower leagues. The reality is that Italy have not produced a talent on par with some of the world’s best players since Francesco Totti. Strikers such as Ciro Immobile, while talented, were not up to the task.

As mentioned, there is talent out there. Insigne and Italo-Brazilian midfielder Jorginho are phenomenal players. The tactics being used at Napoli are revolutionary, but none of that was evident on the national team.

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Change philosophy

This goes back to Italy’s inability to adapt. Instead of playing a physical game, Ventura and the players complained that Sweden were too rough and that the referee had not made the right calls. The Italian response, while they dominated possession, was to flop around on the ground hoping to get calls. It’s the type of behavior that certainly got Italy’s tough defenders of the past, such as Claudio Gentile and Franco Baresi, scratching their heads.

Italy have always played great defensively. When the defense let it down, the attack failed to even get the goal needed to snatch a win from the jaws of defeat. The great David Copperfield-type escape Italy have come to be known for never materialized. Sweden, hardly world beaters, showed that a little organization and a few flying elbows was enough to rattle these fragile Azzurri players. This was a team that needed to be crafty and creative. They were neither. 

As mentioned, Ventura was married to a tactical formation. Insigne never saw the field in the second leg against Sweden. To have such a talented attacking option, a player with both verve and ability to create goals, on your bench as the team struggled in the final third was a crime. A manager of the caliber of Antonio Conte, who coached Italy with some success at the 2016 European Championship, would have fared much better. This is a team that never really believed it could reach Russia. It is now a team in desperate need of starting over.