How Are We Even Supposed To Remember This Italy Team?

Written by Lachlan Sherriff

Ah, Italy. One of the most beautiful countries in the world, boasting famous landmarks, delicious food, and of course, football. Football is a sport that runs through every Italians blood, winning four World Cups and always being one of the more dominant teams in the world. And that’s why it came as such a suprise when Italy lost to Sweden in the 2018 World Cup qualifiers. The Italians played in a two legged tie against the Swedes, and lost 1-0 away before drawing 0-0 at the San Siro, despite having 27 shots to four. And while it was a huge surprise at the time, it’s not that hard to see why Italy lost this match. Numerous players who played against Sweden are now either retired or not good enough to get in today’s Italy team, including Gianlugi Buffon, Andre Barzagli, Matteo Darmian, Daniele De Rossi, Marco Parolo, Antonio Candreva and Manolo Gabbiadini. It was just an Italian burnout, the end of an era. They just needed a revamp, and they got it. Roberto Mancini was brought in to manage the team, and Italy went through the Euro qualifiers in a breeze, picking up thirty from thirty points. Come the EUROS, which had been postponed to 2021 due to Covid, Italy were ready, They won all three group games without conceding a goal, and then managed to beat Austria, Belgium and Spain to reach the final. Italy then defeated England on their own ground to win the final, and the entire world found out the same thing. Italy was back. And with the Qatar World Cup only eighteen months away, it wasn’t hard to imagine Italy carrying the momentum and winning their fifth World Cup. But now shockingly, Italy aren’t going to the 2022 World Cup. Now we all knew this was a possibility when they got matched up in the same group as Portugal. But losing to a country smaller than Rome was unexpected, to say the least. And it leaves the most recent Italian generation in a weird position, with two failed World Cup attempts but a continental cup in between. So you’ve got to wonder that when we think back on these results in ten, twenty and fifty years time, how we’ll we even remember this Italy team?

In 2006 Italy won the World Cup against France. This game is most remembered for being the final game of Zinedine Zidane’s career, when he scored a magical penalty and then got sent off for headbutting Italy’s goalscorer, Marco Matterazi. But that 2006 Italy team was a great side who boasted talent including Gianluigi Buffon, Fabio Cannavaro, Gennaru Gattuso, Andrea Pirlo and Francesco Totti. It’s not hard to see why Italy won the World Cup in 2006. But believe it or not, that’s the last time Italy won a knockout match in the World Cup, meaning we’ll now go on two decades. So I want to take a look into every tournament Italy has played in since 2006, and see what’s gone right and wrong for the Blues over the last sixteen years.

Euro 2008 was always going to be difficult for the Italians. They drew themselves into Group C with the Netherlands, France and Romania. Not much could have gone worse in the first two games. In their first game, the Italians got humiliated by a strong Netherlands side who were only two years off a World Cup final. Italian fans could only watch in dismay as eleven of their sixteen shots were off target, while the much more clinical Dutch side scored three times, as the Italians were dealt a 3-0 loss. But it got worse. In game two against the weakest team in the group, Romania, Italy conceded first off an Adrian Mutu strike. Christian Panucci equalized a minute later, and Buffon came up with a huge penalty save, but Italy still dropped two points in a 1-1 draw. This made the match against France a must-win. Things were tense but after Franck Ribery had to leave early due to injury, Italy capitalized and an Andrea Pirlo penalty and a Daniele De Rossi goal gave Italy their first win of the Euros and put them in the knockouts. Things didn’t get easier in the quarter finals, as the reigning World Cup winners had to play the future World Cup winners in Spain. The match was a goalless draw, and Iker Casillas became the hero for Spain as Italy went home after the first knockout match. Now to be fair Italy got an unlucky draw in the Euros, but it was still disappointing. It was only getting worse.

The 2010 World Cup in South Africa was terrible from Italy. No excuses. They were given an easy draw having to play Slovakia, Paraguay and New Zealand. It all went wrong. Game one was against Paraguay, and seven minutes of play defined the entire World Cup for Italy. In the 39th minute Altarin Alcatraz shocked the world as his header gave Paraguay a 1-0 lead. When half time arrived, Italy’s Gianlugi Buffon, who was arguably the best goalkeeper in the world at the time, was told that he wouldn’t be able to continue the match. Buffon had suffered a back injury, a herniated disc injury to be precise. Buffon wouldn’t play in the 2010 World Cup again, and Italy’s new starting goalkeeper was Federico Marchetti, who had just finished 16th in the Serie A with Cagliari and conceded 58 goals, a far cry from Buffon, who had played in the UCL the season prior. Marchetti did well in his first half of the World Cup, keeping a clean sheet, and Daniele De Rossi scored for Italy at the other end. Italy drew to Paraguay 1-1, but the next game was against New Zealand. Surely, Italy wouldn’t drop points to New Zealand.

Italy then dropped points to New Zealand.

Gold Coast United forward Shane Smeltz scored in the seventh minute after a free kick. Speaking of Gold Coast United, I wrote an article about them a month ago. Check it out after this.

But back to the game. New Zealand, who were playing in their first World Cup since 1982, had just scored past the reigning World Cup champions. The Italians were bailed out with a penalty from Vincento Iaquinta, which many people consider came from a dive. But even with the penalty, Italy were held to a second 1-1 draw. But while Italy were doing bad, Slovakia were doing worse. Slovakia also drew to New Zealand, but lost to Paraguay 2-0. If Italy beat Slovakia they would still advance to the knockouts.

They did not beat Slovakia.

Robert Vittek scored the first two goals of the match, and Slovakia had a 2-0 lead with fifteen minutes left. Antonio Di Natale gave Italy hope with a goal, but Kamil Kopunek sealed the game with an 89th minute winner. A last minute goal from Fabio Quagliarella wasn’t enough. Italy lost 3-2 and had fallen victim of the champions curse, finishing dead last.

Euro 2012 needed to be a resurgence for Italy. After a disappointing six years, the Italians had to find some sort of form to re-establish themselves. And to be fair to them, they did. They were given a draw of Spain, Croatia and Ireland. The big match against Spain went fine, Italy fought hard for a 1-1 draw, a respectable result against the reigning World Cup winners. In the next game however, Italy again drew 1-1 to Croatia, which, once again, made Italy need to win the last game to advance. Luckily for Azzuri, their last game was against the Republic of Ireland, and no one was losing to Republic of Ireland.

They were terrible.

Italy saw the game out with a 2-0 win and the next two games that followed were two of the most famous in recent Italian history.

The quarter final match against England was massive. Two passionate fan bases had packed into the 70,000 seat stadium, while 20 million people were watching on TV.

And yet Andrea Pirlo played like he was in his own backyard.

The Italian midfielder had 131 passes, which was 87 more than Ashley Cole, who completed the most passes for the Three Lions. Pirlo also had more passes than all four of England’s midfielders. Combined.

Now keep in mind Pirlo was 33 when this match took place, but he wouldn’t slow down. This led to England parking the bus for their life and allowed Pirlo to do whatever he wanted in the middle of the pitch as long as he didn’t hurt them in the final third. The game ended 0-0 and many consider it the most one-sided 0-0 in history.

Onto the penalty shoot-out.

Similar to the one at Wembley nine years later, England took the lead throughout the shoot-out. But England and penalty shootouts? They don’t go well together. Ashley Cole and Ashley Young both missed pens as England lost 4-2. Oh yeah, and Pirlo took the coolest penalty I’ve ever seen. I mean watch it.

Nothing else to say.

The semi-final against Germany was once again controlled by one player. Not Pirlo this time, but instead 21 year old striker Mario Balotelli. Now anyone who watched Mario knew that having him on your team came with fireworks - pun intended. Former teammate James Milner said that there were two versions of Balotelli. But if it was 2012, and you got the good Balotelli? Good luck stopping him.

Balotelli opened the scoring with a header, and then doubled it with a shot that broke the net and gave us one of the best memes of the early 2010s. Mesut Ozil scored a penalty in the 92nd minute but it wasn’t enough, Italy were moving onto the final. And after two massive wins you thought the Blues could carry some momentum into the final, which would be against Spain. This was predicted to be a tight match.

It wasn’t.

Spain had Italy’s number that day. The high intensity pressing team played their tiki-taka football out of the water, and ended up winning 4-0, with goals from David Silva, Jordi Alba, Fernando Torres and Juan Mata. After two incredible games, Pirlo was reduced as playing against high intensity football wasn't his strength, and it’s because of this game that many fans rank him slightly lower than Spain’s two great midfielders, Xavi and Andres Iniesta. But despite the disappointment in the final, Italy had shown fight in an international tournament for the first time in six years, and it led to many people’s expectations being high for the 2014 World Cup.

On the 6th of December, 2013, the groups for the 2014 World Cup were drawn, and the talk of the town was Group D. It was, without a doubt, the tournament's group of death. Italy were drawn to Group D, and so were England. But that wasn’t even the Italians biggest problem. Luis Suarez had just torn up the Premier League to shreds, scoring 31 goals in 33 games, which tied Alan Shearer and Cristiano Ronaldo for most goals in an EPL season. His Uruguay were also in Group D, which meant that there were three former World Cup winners and one of them wouldn’t make the knockouts. There was also a small country named Costa Rica in the group. But they wouldn’t cause any trouble.

In Italy’s first game they played England. And you know who dominated the game?

Andrea Pirlo.

Pirlo was now 35 and was playing a match under the hot heat of Brazil, where the weather was 30 degrees. And he dominated the hell out of England. He once again had more passes than an entire English midfield and had a 96% pass accuracy in the first half, taking 69 passes. How are you going to let a 35 year old make 66 successful passes in 45 minutes? Pirlo ended the game with 103 successful passes and Italy ended the game with a 2-1 win. And to make things even better, Costa Rica had caused an upset against Uruguay, meaning that Italy had three points and their two biggest rivals had none. Everything was going smoothly.

And then Italy found out Costa Rica were the real deal.

Costa Rican legend Bryan Ruiz scored a header off the crossbar to give the North American side a 1-0 lead. It would remain the only goal of the game. Italy had their chances but got caught offside eleven times, as Mario Balotelli missed two great chances. Italy got the bad Mario Balotelli that day.

Over in Sao Paulo, Uruguay had beaten England 2-1. England were eliminated, Uruguay and Italy were fighting for second spot and Costa Rica, of all teams, had qualified. Costa Rica’s World Cup run was incredible and I plan on making a video about it one day.

Uruguay still had to play Italy. Winner advances, loser goes home, simple enough. This match is mainly remembered not for the goals or the results, but for Luis Suarez biting Giorgio Chiellini. But on the pitch, Diego Godin scored the lone goal for Uruguay as Italy lost 1-0 and failed to make it out of the group stage for the second straight year.

The Italy EURO 2016 squad was very weird. Mario Balotelli’s career had taken a terrible turn and he was now no longer good enough to make Italy’s team. The forward line now consisted of players like Eder, Graziano Pelle and Simeone Zaza, all of whom were just… meh.

But Italy came out strong in their group stage which consisted of Belgium, Sweden and Ireland. They defeated Belgium 2-0 and Sweden 1-0. They then lost to the Republic of Ireland, which was very strange, but it didn’t matter as the Azzuri still topped the group. Now guess who they’re playing in the Round of 16. Spain. The team who had humiliated them in the previous Euros, and also knocked them out in 2008. History suggested Spain would win, but Italy was hunting for serious revenge. In the 33rd minute Giorgio Chiellini scored a tap-in, and Eder also scored from close-range later in the match. Huge 2-0 win for Italy. The quarter finals didn’t get easier though, they had to play Germany. Germany played high pressing football and got themselves a goal from Arsenal star Mesut Ozil. Things were going fine for the Germans, until Jerome Boateng thought he was playing basketball and blocked an Italian cross. Leonardo Bonucci scored the penalty and the match ended at 1-1. On to a penalty shootout. Surprisingly six of the first ten penalty takers missed. The next six penalties hit the back of the net until Italy’s Matteo Darmian heartbreakingly missed. Jonas Hector scored for Germany and Italy were out.

This brings us to the modern era of Italian football, in which the Azzuri won the EUROs but missed both World Cups between them. Italy’s 2018 qualifying group for the World Cup had Albana, Israel, North Macdeonia and Leichestenstein, all teams they could beat. It also had Spain, because at this point it’s an unwritten rule that every other Italian game had to be against England, Germany or Spain. Italy only dropped seven points in ten games, but still didn’t automatically qualify. They played Sweden, couldn’t convert in front of goal and we know the rest. Italy didn’t go to Russia and manager Gian Piero Ventura was sacked. Roberto Mancini came in and the honeymoon period was superb. Ten wins from ten games with 37 goals and only four conceded in the knockouts. Come the tournament, no goals conceded in the group, and the four famous wins in the knockouts as football went Rome. So what happened in the qualifiers for the 2022 World Cup? Italy didn’t lose a game but drew against Switzerland twice, Bulgaria and Northern Ireland. And then the most recent loss to North Macedonia. The Italians had their chances but couldn’t convert, something they’ve consistently struggled with. But all in all, it is a shame that we won’t see Italy in the World Cup. They’ve got some great players so to not see them in the World Cup will feel weird, though we did survive 2018 without them. But one thing's for sure. Italy only have themselves to blame