Italian football crisis deepens as Azzurri set to miss third World Cup in a row.
Did you know? For over two decades from the latter years of the previous century and the first seven years of this, the country with the best football in the World was Italy.
For 13 consecutive seasons between 1986 and 1999, Serie A was the undisputed number one league in the world, holding the top spot in the UEFA league coefficients.
The Golden Age of the Sette SorelleIn an era famously known as the era of the Sette Sorelle, meaning Seven Sisters, where seven Italian clubs, Juventus, AC Milan, Inter Milan, Roma, Lazio, Fiorentina, and Parma, dominated football, both financially and on the pitch.
Their dominance extended to the national team level as Italy was consistently ranked #1 by FIFA, and won two FIFA World Cup titles during this period, with triumphs in Spain in 1982 and Germany in 2006.
No team in the world could pry their best players away because you either can’t compete with them financially or the player doesn’t want to leave as they treat the club as family.
They sign the best players. Maradona, Zidane, Ronaldo, Kaka, Thierry Henry, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, and so on.
The Self-Inflicted Big Bang
Tragically, the BIG BANG that fractured their system was self-inflicted, a scandal made public in 2006: the CALCIOPOLI.
CLICK HERE TO READ ALL ABOUT CALCIOPOLI
After Juventus was sent into the lower division, the sponsors, reputation, and everything about the league died.
Inter, the only Italian team to win the Champions League since then, achieved the feat as the underdog against teams like Barcelona and Bayern Munich, which was never the case in the past.
A Systemic Collapse
Their status continued to plummet, as did the quality of talent on parade. Domestically, the league became an insular battleground, Italians against Italians, stunting growth as player development systems failed to prepare youngsters for the rigors of the modern game.
The clubs have fallen years behind their counterparts from other countries, evident in their early exits from the UEFA Champions League, with the likes of Bodo/Glimt and Galatasaray hustling Inter and Juventus out the door.
Recently, the newly adopted Decreto Crescita (Growth Decree) helped provide significant tax breaks for clubs signing players from abroad, making it cheaper to buy a foreign veteran than to promote an Italian youngster.
This has also seen them lose their structures because their best players now prefer to move abroad.
Imagine AC Milan losing Sandro Tonali to Newcastle and Gianluigi Donnarumma to PSG, Arsenal beating Juventus to Riccardo Calafiori, Jorginho moving to England and never returning to Italy, Marco Verratti, and the likes, all leaving for clubs abroad, this is the current state of Italian football.
Their failure against Bosnia and Herzegovina makes them the second-ever former world champions to miss out on three consecutive World Cup tournaments after Uruguay since 1986.
It was the heavy, aging legs against Sweden eight years ago in 2018, shocking against North Macedonia four years later in 2022, but what excuse do we have for the unrecognizable Azzuri in another toothless display against Bosnia in 2026?
A Reality Too Scary to Ignore
This is the reality for the four-time world champions, and it is scary, because they can easily become history, after all the first-ever country to win the global showpiece, Uruguay, is one already.
Despite all the efforts put in place to not bottle this one, it only took one man losing his head and it’s all undone.
For Alessandro Bastoni, this may be Karma (for his dive to get Pierre Kalulu sent off vs. Juventus), but what about the other players, the coaching staff, and the just less than 59 million Italians, who have dreamt of North America, but will now endure over a decade of no World Cup appearance?
The Fallout and the Road Ahead
Italian Calcio is fading right in our eyes, and unfortunately, not those who dread this the most can even stop it. This may be more severe than the Calciopoli of 2006.
It is a cruel irony; even those who don’t share this sentiment are finding it hard not to weep for the state of Italian football.
Gabriele Gravina has resigned as president of the Football Federation FIGC, Gianluigi Buffon has also left his role as the national team’s head of delegation, and head coach Gennaro Gattuso has also announced his departure.
However, if these moves solved their crisis, wouldn’t they have been out of it long ago? It is everyone trying to save their faces rather than help solve the crisis, but their decisions are understandable in a country like Italy.
Forgiveness is far from the fans. Before his red card, Bastoni was already being booed by his own fans for his case with Pierre Kalulu, so it’s not like they’ll let go of their anger if these stakeholders decide to hold on to their positions.
As their crisis deepens, it is imperative that the FIGC return to the drawing board, and try to fix the issues at club levels, before moving to the national team because this nightmare has surpassed being a phase, it is threatening to stay, forever.
Kehinde-Hassan Afolabi
