Whatever mistake still haunts you from your high school sports days, it can’t be worse than this: Two senior Italian soccer officials resigned yesterday after the men’s national team, ranked 12th in the world, fell to No. 65 Bosnia and Herzegovina in a devastating loss that shut the country out of the World Cup for the third straight time and ignited a political firestorm.
“Apocalypse,” “nightmare,” and “disaster” are how some sports journalists are describing the current state of Italian soccer. The country hasn’t qualified for the World Cup—which happens once every four years—since 2014. The government is demanding answers:
- The first item on the Italian Parliament’s Wednesday agenda was a briefing on the team’s defeat the day before.
- Facing political pressure, Italy’s soccer federation president and national team delegation chief both stepped down, with new head coach Gennaro Gattuso expected to follow soon.
Rotting: Italy is the first World Cup winner to fail to qualify three times in a row, which some attribute to underinvestment in youth soccer programs and Italian club teams’ overreliance on foreign players.
Meanwhile…Italy is embracing tennis. Six Italian men now rank among the top 75 players in the world, and the total number of players registered in clubs has grown more than sevenfold since 2001, per the Guardian.—ML