The death of Italian football? Calcio might never recover from third World Cup 'apocalypse'

Just like many Italians, Fabio Capello struggled to sleep on Tuesday night. He just could not quite get his head around the fact that Italy had lost another World Cup play-off. 

“We are talking about a four-time world champion," the coaching icon told Marca. "This is a sporting tragedy, a disgrace. It is one of the worst things to have happened to Italian football in its recent history."

It wasn't remotely surprising, though. Italy may have won their semi-final clash with Northern Ireland quite comfortably in the end, but nobody was under any illusions about the strength of Gennaro Gattuso's squad. This was not a vintage Azzurri line-up - as underlined by the fact that they had been hammered 4-1 at home by Norway just last November.

Of course, they still should have had sufficient quality to defeat Bosnia - and they probably would have done had it not been for Alessandro Bastoni's stupid sending-off, which arrived four minutes before the break with the visitors 1-0 up thanks to Moise Kean's early goal.

However, while big calls went against Italy on the night, nobody really dared to make excuses for another self-inflicted defeat. As Stefano Agresti wrote in the Gazzetta dello Sport, “The truth is that Bosnia were stronger, and we are tired of thinking about how to improve: technique, speeches. The third Apocalypse is the worst.

"In Zenica, [the officials] gave us some reasons to protest. Not Bastoni’s sending-off, which was clear, but rather the failure to show a red card to (Tarik) Muharemovic. But come on, we are Italy. Can we really cling to such small details when facing the 71st-ranked national team in the world? We threw the match away ourselves."

Consequently, Gattuso's position was immediately called into question. He had done reasonably well to take over a team left in total disarray after Luciano Spalletti's shockingly poor tenure, but Gattuso had admitted himself last November that his position would be untenable if he failed to get Italy to the World Cup.

"I'll take credit if I manage to achieve the goal; otherwise I'll go and live far away from Italy," he told reporters. "I'm already a bit far away [he resides in Marbella], but I'll go even farther. The consequence [of failure] is that, I'm aware of it."

It, thus, seems highly likely Gattuso's contract will not be renewed before it expires in June.

It is worth noting, though, that Gattuso retains the support of the players and several influential figures within the Italian game, with Franco Baresi, for example, arguing that the World Cup winner "is certainly among the least responsible for this defeat". Indeed, Italian Football Federation (FIGC) president Gabriele Gravina is widely regarded as the main culprit, given this is the second World Cup failure on his watch.

"I thank the team and the coach for the commitment they showed, but it’s evident that Italian football needs to be rebuilt, and this process must start with a renewal of the FIGC leadership," Italy’s Minister for Sport, Andrea Abodi, said in a statement released on Wednesday morning.

At the time of writing, Gravina has yet to stand down, but the pressure on him is mounting - even though he was only re-elected to his role last year with 98.68 percent of the vote. Lazio president Claudio Lotito has gone so far as to launch a petition in the Italian Senate calling for the FIGC chief to resign, while Gravina did his hopes of survival no good at all by describing other sports as "amateur" compared to the "professional" world of football.

Gravina, though, clearly has no intention of being either pushed - or rushed - out the door. He's set to speak about the calcio crisis with representatives from Serie A, Serie B, Serie C, the amateur leagues, and the coaches’ and players’ associations in Rome on Thursday afternoon, and has called a Federal Council meeting for next week.

"That is when there will be evaluations," Gravina said. "I understand that people will call for my resignation, but there is a suitable situation to do that. Next week we will make much deeper reflections on the situation, because the questions you ask require the right place to respond.

"The FIGC has to decide how to choose and build its team. We can only do what we can with what we have at our disposal in the league."

There is some merit in Gravina's argument that the Azzurri are hindered by the fact that only 33% of the players currently plying their trade in Serie A are eligible for the national team. It's a point that Gattuso has also made on several occasions, and one supported by Demetrio Albertini.

"The problem is that we have some good players, but not enough," the former Italy international told Tuttosport. "Generally, the national team coach has limited selection options, and, on top of that, some players have more Italy appearances than they do games played in European club competitions.

"It’s useless to beat around the bush; we are less prepared for a certain type of international match. This is why Gattuso wanted to recall [Marco] Verratti, one who has played so many games at this level. That said, obviously, it doesn’t mean we don’t have the quality to win this play-off.

"Euro 2020 was a deserved win, but it didn’t address the underlying problem: there aren’t enough Italian players in Serie A. I’ve heard the FIGC has announced a new technical project for youth football. But I hope that concrete actions are taken and that it doesn’t remain just empty proclamations."

And Albertini's fear is one shared by nearly every Italian.

It's painfully obvious at this stage that Italian football has a plethora of problems - as illustrated by the fact that the uncommonly well-run Atalanta were the only Serie A side to make the last 16 of this season's Champions League. 

The seemingly never-ending bureaucracy blocking the construction of long-overdue modern arenas has driven a succession of club presidents to distraction, and it now seems as if the city of Milan won't host any games at Euro 2032, given the planned redevelopment of San Siro was wrapped up in red tape for such a long time that nobody knows when the project will actually be completed.

The sad state of the stadiums in Serie A is also a contributing factor to the negative perception of the Italian game, which is now viewed as something of a retirement league because so many of its biggest names are well past their prime. And that's not likely to change any time soon due to the inability of Serie A sides to compete for the top talent in the transfer market.

The majority of clubs do not own the stadiums they play in, denying them millions in matchday revenue, while the league makes nothing like the same money from the sale of TV rights because Italian football has become such an unattractive product. The net result is a vicious cycle of regression that looks impossible to reverse without a real revolution. Unfortunately, radical reform has been repeatedly rejected in Italy.

After the disastrous World Cup defence back in 2010, the FIGC tasked the great Roberto Baggio with coming up with a plan to overhaul Italian football. The following year, he presented the federation with a 900-page report based on the expert analysis of more than 50 collaborators. As well as championing the importance of technique over tactics at under-age level, Baggio advocated the creation of a school near Coverciano (Italian football's HQ).

"The important thing was that we wanted to educate people to be people first and footballers second,” Baggio told the New York Times last year. "Not everyone will become a player, but everyone will be a person. That was the basis."

The FIGC ignored the vast majority of Baggio's proposals and he eventually resigned in disgust in January 2013. "I haven’t been allowed to fulfil the role I was given and I'm not willing to move on from the fact that my 900-page report, presented in November 2011, remained a dead letter," the former No.10 said at the time.

The understandable concern now is that any attempts to dramatically overhaul Italian football will suffer a similarly sad fate.

As Arrigo Sacchi said, "We talk a lot, but you don't resolve problems with only words." That was in 2022. This is 2026. And nothing has changed in the interim. 

On the contrary, the situation has arguably only worsened, meaning unless action is actually taken this time, Italian football may never recover from its third apocalypse.