FIFA World Cup 2026 | It's heartbreak for Italy yet again

It's a tragic irony that four-time champions will go at least 16 years without even playing a match at globe's ultimate showpiece event.

When it comes to Italian football, for the millions of fans across the world watching the Beautiful Game, the sight of Dino Zoff lifting the FIFA World Cup in 1982 and Fabio Cannavaro doing an encore in 2006 comes to the mind quickly.

For the connoisseurs of the Beautiful Game, names like Paolo Rossi, Franco Baresi, Roberto Baggio Alessandro del Piero, Gianluigi Buffon, Andrea Pirlo are all household figures.

But on Tuesday (March 31) night, the whole world was struggling to come to terms with the reality as the Azzuris failed to qualify for the FIFA World Cup for the third time in a row.

Italy's triumph in the Euro 2020 looks like a thing of the distant past as Gennaro Gattuso's team went down on penalties to Bosnia and Hercegovina in the qualification play-off tie at Zenica.

Gattuso was emotional and apologetic ​as his side's World Cup nightmare continued with the four-time winners failing to reach the quadrennial extravaganza to be co-hosted by USA, Mexico and Canada from June 11 to July 19.

"It's difficult to digest," rued Gattuso, who was part of Cannavaro's 2006 World Cup-winning squad.

As the Azzurris left the Bilino Polje Stadium with drooping shoulders and some in tears, it looked as though a familiar sense of disbelief and despair have set in among among the Azzurris.

It many ways, it reminded us of the infamous penalty kick by Baggio in the 1994 World Cup in USA.

It took Italy 12 years to erase image of a crestfallen Baggio remaining on the spot for a long time with his head bowed, a moment, which in football lore is referred to as 'the man who died standing.'

However, things are going from bad to worse for Italy as they earned the dubious distinction of being the the first World Cup winners to miss three consecutive editions of the tournament.

Before their fall from grace, the only other World Cup that Italy did not qualify for was in 1958.

To understand what football means to Italy, one should listen to what their former manager Roberto Mancini once told this journalist.

At the Global Football Summit in Paris in 2014, Mancini said he was shocked when he received stipend for coaching a team for the first time as for him football was all about life and money was secondary.

Football and motorsports runs in the genes of every Italian and no wonder Baggio and Valentino Rossi are the country's sports icons.

Italy's World Cup struggles began in 2010 where they failed to advance past the group stage a fate, which they suffered again in 2014.

The fall has been steep and the reasons are quite obvious. The quality of Serie A has gone down and marquee players go in search of greener pastures like Premier League and La Liga. Italy is yet to exorcise the ghosts of the match-fixing scandal that had a cascading impact on the domestic league.

"It's too easy to say what's working and what's not working. The fact is that Italy has failed to qualify for three World Cups. We're having a tough time achieving our goals, both with the national team and with our clubs," added Gattuso.

The defeat to Bosnia added more misery for Italy's once-proud national team after being eliminated by Sweden and North Macedonia, respectively, in the qualifying play-offs for the last two World Cups.

It is a tragic irony that the 1934, 1938, 1982 and 2006 champions will go at least 16 years without even playing a match at globe's ultimate showpiece event.

It is also sad to see that an entire generation would have no memory of the last time Italy played in the World Cup.