The Tragic Collapse of Italy: Missing 3 World Cups in a Row 🇮🇹 | World Cup Daily #3

[00:00:00] He won the Champions League with PSG. He was voted the best player at Euro 2020. He has 82 caps for Italy. He's one of the best goalkeepers on the planet. And he has never qualified for a single minute at the World Cup. His name is Gianluigi Donnarumma. And this summer, he will be watching at home again. And that is what Italy's collapse looks like.

[00:00:31] Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Food and Review World Cup Daily Episode 3. Today I'm joined with Homer, who is an Italian football aficionado, if I would like to say so myself, and Nathan. Nice to see you guys here. Quick reminder, ladies and gentlemen, if you are a Patreon supporter, this episode is already in your feed at the moment we finish recording. You will get access to our prediction leagues and the sweeps in our Discord, so please do join in, join in the Patreon.

[00:00:57] Today, Italy. Four times World Cup champions, a recent Euro winner, three consecutive World Cups missed. We're going deep on how one of the great footballing nations on earth got here. The results, the fallout, the reasons. Let's go.

[00:01:12] Let me paint a picture. 31st of March, 2026. Recently, Italy were playing against Bosnia and Herzegovina in the World Cup playoff final. A 48-team World Cup. The biggest ever stage. 16 European spots available. And Italy still needed a playoff.

[00:01:30] Just to have a chance. They take the lead. Looking comfortable. And then Bastoni gets a red card. Down to 10 men. Bosnia equalize. Extra time. Penalties. Bosnia score. All of theirs. Italy missed two. And just like that, the third time in a row, Italy are going home.

[00:01:52] Nathan, Homer. I think I've just done a big preamble on how depressing it is not to see Italy in a World Cup. Because personally, I think it's a personal connection with Italy. In 1994, on my first ever World Cup, I remember Badger missing that penalty kick. And it's just that blue just stayed in my head. Not seeing Italy in a World Cup, it just feels weird. So, what about you guys? Homer, I'll start with you. You're a big Italian football fan. This must be gutting for you, isn't it?

[00:02:19] It's massively disappointing. I feel if the World Cup was on, then any team that I wanted to see win it would be Italy. Which is surprising, given that Scotland has qualified. But I'd rather Italy there. It's just a mess of a situation. And it's been one that's going on since, well, Badger was in charge 16 years ago.

[00:02:42] He had a manifesto to fix it. And all football, off-the-pitch football and politics and everything that involves that has just came together. There's one big melting pot that's created this situation that just sucks for Italian football and football fans in general. Yeah, I completely agree. Nate, do you have any special affiliation with Italy at all? Or do you don't really care? Are you happy that we're not part of the World Cup after beating England in the Euros?

[00:03:12] I think most football fans will have some sort of soft spot for Italy in a way. You know, Shaq, you showed your age there. I remember 94. I'm not old enough to remember 94. But I did grow up in the time where AC Milan and Inter Milan were dominant. You had Fiorentina or even sort of teams like this, Roma, all going through. So always had a bit of a soft spot for Italian football in that way. I was in Italy when they beat France, when Zidane got his red card against Matarazzi.

[00:03:42] And I was a bit younger, obviously, at the time. But I just remember the celebrations. We were in Ligarda and all night the fireworks were going. All the horns were beeping on the road. It was just they're so passionate over there. So I've got a wee bit of a soft spot for them for that. So it is mental. You know, obviously, I like my football. I like watching all of the European leagues. And we'll touch on it. We teased it, obviously, on Monday. We'll go into it in detail today.

[00:04:08] But the downfall is just mental. I mean, we're Man United fans as a club team, aren't we, Shaq? Exactly. You know, it's kind of a bit like that. You kind of go from being, you know, winning lots. Or if you're not winning lots, you're at least competing in sort of semifinals, finals. You're there or thereabouts every year and then you just fall off a cliff. So, yeah, they've got sort of parallel lines there. So it's going to be very interesting to kind of dive deeper and deeper and kind of look at the state of Italian football and how it's led to this.

[00:04:34] I think one of the biggest things that I've noticed is that when your biggest institutions fail, like Italian pipeline kind of goes with them. AC Milan, Inter, Juventus, Roma. All these clubs went through financial mismanagement, ownership chaos, candles, short-term thinking. They were producing, like, I think one of the things in Italian football, they were producing the Donnarumas or the Verratis, even the Bastoni right now. But none of the other youngsters, like I can't remember a big youngster that actually made a big mark in the world stage.

[00:05:04] And there's no long-term ambition. The other thing as well, I think, Roma, I would love to take your take on this and get your take on this, is the coaching situation. Even top Italian coaches, Allegri, Sarri, Conte, they're not operating at the level of, say, Guardiola or Klopp. They're still playing the rigid, uninspiring football, in the case of my opinion. And they keep circling through the same clubs. And I think, correct me if I'm wrong, Ranieri has coached half the Serie A clubs at this point. It's like a merry-go-round, literally going nowhere. Same ideas going around and running in circle.

[00:05:33] Your thoughts? With the circle thing, with Allegri now leaving Milan and going to Napoli, he's pretty much got the trifecta completed. There's a page on extra Twitter where they will tick off each manager as they go from club to club.

[00:05:54] And as you said, most of the big managers, Belletti, Conte, Allegri, Sarri, they've all managed the same clubs. They've managed Inter, AC, Juve, Roma, Napoli, Lazio. There is a lack of good managers coming through. This, like I said, Baggio, back in 2010, created a 900-page manifesto where he believed that they could create a new Italy,

[00:06:21] which was one for the modern game and one that would give them a pipeline. And one of his big things was Italian football, they favor tactics over technique. So from a young age, everybody's drilled the tactics of how to play the Italian way, where technique doesn't really come in there. He wanted to change the way coaches were developed at youth level. He wanted to change how scouting and networking was all done.

[00:06:49] He wanted to build, I think it was like 100 or 150 youth facilities that were nationalized. They weren't owned by clubs. They were owned by the national team or the national association. And they would set a discipline and a way that Italian football would be. And he was just met by the same old heads saying that this is the Italian way and that this wouldn't work for Italy. And he quit in 2014, around that time. And he's been proven right.

[00:07:19] It hasn't kicked on. You're saying that they have developed great players. But one of the biggest problems with that is they don't create any attacking players. There's no real great attacking players anymore. They can create a great goalkeeper like Donnarumma. You've got Ficario. I know he's not had a great season at Tottenham. But before he went to Tottenham, he was highly rated. But before him, before him, Paliugia, Zoff. They always create great goalkeepers. Defenders.

[00:07:48] Maldini, Berese. You've got Bistone, Killini. But you can list off so many great defenders. Then it comes to the holder mids. Tonali's great. You've got Baratti recently. All the way back, like De Rossi. They even get to so pure low. But they have no attacking players that are good enough. There's Moses Kane. He's okay, but he's not world class. You've got Retuige. Retuige's not Italian.

[00:08:18] He was Argentinian. He'd never played in Italy. He'd never played in Italy until he got called up. He was called up in the March. And then come the summer, he moved to Genoa. But he'd never played in Italy. He knew nothing of the Italian way or the Italian set-up. So the biggest problem is that, like Badger says, it's all about the tactics. And it's how to stay in shape. And it's how to defend as a unit. There's no creativity. There's no flair. There's no guile.

[00:08:48] There's nothing that will win them again. The way is just set up. Nick the goal. And see it out, basically. And football's moved on. It can work in some periods. But as we've seen over how many qualifications? Three, four now. It's just not good enough to get to a World Cup. And even if they got to the World Cup, I don't even think it would be good enough to get to a group stage at the moment.

[00:09:11] So football-wise, they have to really, really change the way that everything's working. That Pio at Inter is probably the greatest youth talent that they've got at the moment. They thought Kamada might be great, but he came through at AC. He's went to Lecce. I think he scored one goal. So it's just a horrible situation that they need to really, really resolve. That's true.

[00:09:40] And Nick, going to you, Moises Keane. I think the home and bottom are Keane. Moises Keane. If he is the best striker you have on your squad, this is the great rally. This is the Baccio, the Del Piero, the Tortis, that kind of caliber of player. And now Keane is your best striker. Or maybe it's Kamaka. Is Kamaka the best striker? It's Keane. How is the drop-off? Like, I just can't. And he's quite right. There's no attackers that Italy's produced.

[00:10:07] I think Luca Doni is probably the last big attacker that Italy's produced. Yeah, I mean, home has made a lot of really good points there. One of the things when I was doing a wee bit of research is they've got a lot – if any of you are football manager fans, they've got a lot of football manager wonder kids that have come through over the last few years. And in my head, it's almost like some of these players are maybe overhyped too soon. So even go back to Balotelli. I know when he first came on the scene, he was outstanding. But Balotelli was meant to be a generational talent.

[00:10:37] You've got Immobile, who was supposedly phenomenal and never really hit that elite bracket. Pio, again, Esposito at Inter. He's been around since he was, what, 16 on football manager? He was one of those players that you'd always buy. Go back to El Sharaoui. I know he had one or two – was it when he was at AC Milan originally? Had a couple of excellent years. Never kicked on. Even we go back to, again, United by us. Kiko Macheda.

[00:11:04] He came through for six months and you thought, this guy is going to be a 40-50 goal a season striker almost. So whether it's the structure in terms of how Italians are set up, like I was saying, in terms of you're very solid. But then the creativity is lacking so the strikers aren't getting fed the ball. They're not getting the opportunities to showcase their talents. Is it that the pressure's on them? Balotelli is an interesting character. So, like, he has talent, no doubt.

[00:11:32] But maybe the weight of him coming through being like, this is the guy. Is that something that's kind of contributed to his almost downfall? Because, you know, it was almost set up as if to say, like, even Immobile and such. And there was – oh, there's a striker that's evaded me. He was a big target man. He's still playing now. But he was supposed to – United were linked to him a few years ago. I'll do a little bit of check on him. But there was a striker that was banging – Belotti.

[00:11:59] He was another one who was supposed to be, like, an incredible, like, box player. Did he know? Yeah, absolutely. He was firing him in for, like, a season. So whether it's the weight of Italy on your shoulders where it's basically we've not quite got the attacking flair. So you have to score the goals. Probably the best sort of talent doesn't even get a game for Liverpool who've had – you know, in my view, it's been a phenomenal season because they've been, like, below average, which is wonderful.

[00:12:25] But realistically, I mean, Chiesa Juventus was an absolute dream player. I was quite gutted that he went to Liverpool because I thought, this guy, he's got everything. And he looks like, you know, a typical Italian player. But again, that's not kicked on. I'm not even sure if he's even made the squad because his minutes have been limited over the last two years. Obviously, Slott didn't fancy him for whatever reason. The league maybe didn't suit him. But if you cast your mind back, you're right. It's the sort of midfield and the defence is what you'd always think of.

[00:12:55] And goalkeepers because, obviously, even the likes of Buffon. Buffon's going to be, you know, one of the all-time greats. Donnarum was on that trajectory. I mean, I remember watching his debut in the Milan Derby when he was 16. And you just saw this mountain of a guy. Most people at 16, you know, you're a stick. You kind of shrivel under that intense atmosphere. And the guy was a man at 16. He was an absolute monster. And he had an absolutely insane game. So as soon as you saw that, you thought, no, he's got the temperament. He's going to do something.

[00:13:22] But you are limited to your attackers. Even going back through the years, I'd say, like, you know, Totti and Zagy are the ones that spring to mind as being like their pinnacles. You've always had the Vialis. You've got Chiesa that's there now. But there's not the sort of standouts that you would have. Your Perlos, your Benucci's, your Maldini's and Ness's and such like. So I think it shows the mindset of Italian football. The setup of Italian football is very rigid. It's very, it's very, like, it's almost like you're going in.

[00:13:52] If you're a bottom half of a table in the Premier League, you go in because you'll soak up the pressure. You'll be very disciplined. And then you'll get a goal. And then you'll say, it's almost like what Arsenal did in the Champions League final on Saturday. They disciplined very, very good defensively. Got the goal early on and literally just went, here, you can have three quarters of the ball. We don't care. We're defensively solid. Obviously, it didn't work for Arsenal, which is, again, I'm very happy about. But it's the same sort of principle that seems to be applied to Italian football in a whole.

[00:14:23] Absolutely. I think you hit the nail on the head. And I really want to take, I'm just taking a step back as well from a macro level. I just really, I'm not trying to bring geopolitics in the middle. I just want to bring this point in, which is really interesting through my research, is the fact that Italy's football decline kind of mirrors Italy's broader national stagnation as well. Like two decades, like there haven't really been, and there's not been, there's been political instability, cultural drift. Italy doesn't make great cars, great movies, music. None of that's happening. And you can sort of feel that on the pitch as well.

[00:14:52] There's no personality like the players like Maldini, the Pirlos, the big, you know, the people that made football look effortless, like Cannavaro, Gattuso, all these kind of people. They're not, those kind of big stalwarts are not taking the footballing nation at a whole. And I think that's, you can see it on the pitch, and you can see that's a result as to what's happening with their missing the qualification for the World Cup.

[00:15:15] And I think the 2020 Euros was Mancini bringing the stalwarts, like the Chiellini, the Vannucci's back, and making them perform like one last time and bring something out for the country. And that's probably just, that was a one step too far when they got, they won it. But after that, it just declined rapidly. They also won it because, unfortunately for England, they had a manager that was very good at making morale good, but tactically he got that final incredibly wrong.

[00:15:45] That final was, I know I'm quite biased, but that final was England's to win. But unfortunately they got the goal and they just completely backed off. And I think whilst Italy did very, very well, and Italy did what Italy do, we know what Italy are like. But I think that if he'd come up against even that England side with a better manager, although I do, I love Gareth Southgate, I think he's brought the feel-good back to England at that time. I do think that they also rode the look, which teams need to.

[00:16:15] If you're going to win a tournament, you need to ride your look sometimes. So it was at 2004, Greece. Greece scored for one goal a game and literally did that kind of thing where they tried to hit on the counter and they soaked up the pressure. So it can work in cup competitions because sometimes it doesn't need the best technical squad to win these type of things. It needs organisation, it needs bravery, it needs desire, it needs commitment. And again, like you said, you go through those traits,

[00:16:44] you don't really associate that with the current Italy squad. You associate that with your Bonucci's, your Chiellini's, your Perlos. I mean, Gattuso probably embodies everything of that as one player. I mean, he was an absolute machine. He was an animal. You don't have... If I set a team up today against Italy, I'm not sitting quaking in my boots saying, even if we're technically better, they're going to bully us. They're going to batter us. They'll get in our face. You just think they're a little bit weaker than we are.

[00:17:12] You know, we can win pretty much on every single level, which to me, like watching Italian football is almost unheard of until this downfall. Yeah, it's really... It's sad to say. Homer, any thoughts? So as you were saying about the whole geopolitical side of it, that is... I did say to start out with football, that is another key factor. Obviously, the economy in Italy has been bad since 2008. So, with bad economy,

[00:17:41] they've had bad takeovers. Like with AC, their takeover was really atrocious. The one thing that I've noticed, a few Italian commentators of football, journalists have said that where other nations have really embraced immigration and what that can bring to a nation, Italy is still very stagnant in the whole Italian way. So when you look at the England squad, you have people like Mark Gehe,

[00:18:10] Rhys James, Rashford. I'm trying to think of players that might have came from a national and Italy. Their family would have moved over. Obviously, Laminya Mao is obviously of an African heritage. You look at the French squad, they have a lot of players that are of an African heritage. And you can probably look at most nations. They'll have a few players. The Germany national team have a few African heritage,

[00:18:38] a few American army kids as well. All these nations seem to adapt and they bring in. Italy have really struggled and failed from that aspect of really gasping from migration. The economy has been dead, so there's no money to put in anything either. They're struggling to keep their main infrastructure going, never mind.

[00:19:06] Obviously, boosting up what their footballing portfolio is. Like I said, it's just a whole mess, just everywhere in football for Italy. But like you said about the stalwarts going into the last Euro one, they did. They went in with the old guys, the stalwarts, the guys that could get a job done, but there was no future planning there. So we played the Bonucci's, the Chiellini's, the old guys, the De Rossi's.

[00:19:35] But then there was no future planning. So the younger guys, like who would have been probably a Tonali then, try thinking, who would have been a good, probably a Barade, a Dominic Barade. These guys never got that embedding and really future-proofing the national team. So then you come to now, when like I said, you've got some decent players. You do have Tenale. You've got, obviously, Bustoni, you've got Donnarumma. But a few of them just haven't,

[00:20:05] other guys haven't kicked on, like Gianluca Mancini, Di Lorenzo, Barade, Belletti. They just haven't kicked on. They're just, bad moves. Kieser, he's had two, three bad ACL injuries. So his thing was being an explosive winger, having that pace to knock it by a guy and go and get it. He's not had that for a few years and he struggled to adapt. So it's just bad moves, bad injuries,

[00:20:36] bad planning, bad foresight. It's just, like I said, everything's just coming together. It's one big massive melting pot that's just a mess. And it's how you've, it's going to take years to just slowly, it's like, I'm trying to think of a way to describe it, like a Jenga thing, a Jenga block. When you're building the Jenga block, theirs is just still a mess on the floor and they maybe get one or two wee bits on, but they're badly balanced, badly balancing the building blocks that it falls from, it gets to like two or three levels up.

[00:21:06] So, how you fix it, God knows. Do you feel like, obviously, recent years, talk of, you know, it kind of passes by now, but the Belgium golden generation, even like what Spain are doing now. So, obviously, Belgium haven't had that success. Spain had a lot of success, realised that, you know, they were kind of getting to the other end of their sort of lifespan. It almost feels like they sacrificed a block of time. Spain's was a lot shorter, but Belgium, I remember reading an article

[00:21:35] when the golden generation came through and they literally said, we're not actually going to worry about the here and now for this national team. What we're going to do is we're going to rip it up. We're then going to start from the ground up. We're going to, this is the way we're going forward and this is what we're going to do. So, it feels a little bit now, like, Italy need to do that. And I know the last squad they announced had, like, and, you might know a lot more of the players, but, you know, I like to think I know quite a lot about football. They had so many players I'd barely even heard of. And it's a bit like, maybe this is the point

[00:22:04] where Italy need to say, right, we've missed three World Cups. We might miss the next Euros, but actually, we will then be competing for the next 20 years because we've got this structure in place. We've got these players going through. There's a clear path and progression for where we are now and what we want to achieve rather than just going, here's a plaster. Let's go and stick it over that crack. Let's get a little bit cement over here. Like, it almost feels like the whole thing needs ripped up. And you can do that without a lot of money if you get the right people in. You know, they've got some

[00:22:34] infrastructure already. So, you know, I'm obviously not a professional in that type of thing. But it just, from the outside looking in, it looks like they need to look at what Spain have done. Even kind of what France done, although they were obviously, their talent pool was mental. Yeah, exactly. Even like England with St. George's Park, like, these nations that are now, you're seeing, competing more regularly with this exceptionally high bar. Like, they've all kind of done that in their own ways. Some have taken a lot longer. Some have kind of made it, you know, a couple of years

[00:23:04] and they're right back to it. But it just feels like this is a moment where Italy really need to rip up what they're currently doing and then build again. Absolutely. Absolutely. Now, I love your point, Homer, the one that you spoke about, the integration of the immigrants that have come through. Like, we see them all across the globe, all across European countries. Italy just hasn't. I personally feel the talent that Balotelli had, he could have been, he was amazing, but the same talent, same personality, same everything, for whatever reason, if he were to be traditionally Italian, like say white,

[00:23:33] Italian, he would be a legend. He would be an apt, he's, in my eyes, he's still amazing. But he would be that next level, that Zlatan-esque player with all his quirks and everything. He was talented, mad talented fellow. And I think they missed him, Mark, where France would do it with Henry and Zidane and Mbappe, those kind of integration. They've just missed that whole thing. I think hopefully they changes in the future. And through my research, one of the things that really blew me away as well, is just, let me just put this, with Serie A, one of the most famous football leagues in the world, ranks 49 out of the 50

[00:24:03] one of the leagues for the players, for under 21 players, 49 out of 50. That means Italian clubs are playing almost no young Italians. They're not developing the next generation. They're just importing foreign talent, winning trophies, trying to win trophies at least, and leaving them behind for the national team. There's only two Italian clubs, Atlanta and Juventus, that rank in the top 50 youth academies in the world. Inter Milan, one of the biggest clubs on earth, ranks 53. And only four clubs from Syria

[00:24:33] have reserve teams. In Spain, every single La Liga club has a B team competing in the lower divisions. That's how you develop players. In Italy, a 19-year-old gets a first-team spot or sits in the stands. That's it. Most sit in the stands. That's really an indictment as to where Italy has found themselves is not doing exactly the things as you said. They haven't really taken the whole structure and revamped the whole thing. They've just gone ahead like, oh, we'll produce talent. They will just, the talent will rise. Well, it doesn't necessarily rise all the time.

[00:25:03] And it should be a good wake-up call. It should be a really good wake-up call. So, right. Listeners, that's episode three, Italy's Collapse. We just tried to summarize all our thoughts about Italy laid out in full before you go. Follow us on Instagram at Foden Review at TikTok at Foden Review Podcast. Five-star reviews on your podcast app will take you 10 seconds. It means everything to us. Send this to an Italian football fan who is hurting exactly like us. They need to hear this.

[00:25:33] Patreon supporters, you know the episode will be in your feed. Listening to it right now. The Prediction League and sweeps are open. Jump in. Let's have some fun together. Episode four is coming. It's coming. Hopefully, it should be in your ears tomorrow. We have some really interesting conversation about managers in the World Cup. So, look forward to that. Thank you, everyone.