The four-time world champions have now gone 12 years without appearing at football’s biggest tournament, and face at least another four. The team lost a painful penalty shootout against Bosnia-Herzegovina and miss the World Cup for a third consecutive time.
Italian football has plumbed new depths. In a damp stadium in Zenica on Tuesday night, Italy were eliminated from the 2026 World Cup play-offs on penalties by Bosnia-Herzegovina. They are the first former champions in the history of the tournament to miss three consecutive editions. The score finished 1-1 after extra time, before Bosnia prevailed 4-1 on penalties in front of a raucous home crowd to book their place in North America.
Italy’s last World Cup appearance was in Brazil in 2014. They will not play in another until 2030 at the earliest meaning the four-time champions will have been absent from football’s premier tournament for at least 16 consecutive years.
“We still don’t believe it,” said Italy defender Leonardo Spinazzola, “that we’re out and that it happened in this way. It’s upsetting for everyone. For us, for our families, and for all the kids who have never seen Italy at a World Cup.” The children he was referring to are not a metaphor. A generation of Italian football fans has now grown up knowing Italy as a team that used to win World Cups rather than one that plays in them.
The Match
Italy, managed by Gennaro Gattuso, began well enough. Moise Kean put them ahead in the 15th minute after a goalkeeping error by Bosnia’s Nikola Vasilj, and for a quarter of an hour the plan appeared to be functioning.
Then Alessandro Bastoni was sent off.
The centre-back received a straight red card in the 41st minute for a last-man foul on Amar Memic, a decision that fundamentally altered the contest. From that moment Italy were playing not to win but to survive and for 38 minutes they managed it, nursing their lead into the final ten minutes with ten men.
It ended in the 79th minute. A header from Edin Dzeko was parried by Gianluigi Donnarumma and Haris Tabakovic turned in the rebound. The goal, scored by a 33-year-old who plays his club football in Germany, encapsulated everything about the evening: Italy unable to hold on, Bosnia finding a way.
Extra time produced nothing. Then came the penalties, and with them the final humiliation. Substitute Pio Esposito fired over the bar. Bryan Cristante struck the post. Bosnia converted all four of theirs, with Esmir Bajraktarević stepping up to convert the decisive kick and send his teammates into wild celebration. Bosnia are going to the World Cup. Italy are going home.
The record that shames a nation
The context makes the result even harder to absorb. Bosnia-Herzegovina are ranked 66th in the world by FIFA — 54 places below Italy. They are a nation of fewer than four million people, without a major tournament tradition, whose domestic league is not among Europe’s elite. This should have been a game Italy won.
Instead, it is the third time in succession that Italy have failed at the play-off stage. Sweden ended their 2018 hopes. North Macedonia, then ranked 67th in the world, produced one of the great World Cup upsets to eliminate them in 2022. Now Bosnia completes the set.
No former champion has ever missed three consecutive World Cups. Italy are now, historically, in a category of one, and not one that brings any pride.
None of Italy’s current squad has appeared in a World Cup finals. That statistic, quietly devastating, says more about the depth of the crisis than any tactical analysis. For many of these players, Tuesday night in Zenica may represent their only chance at qualification.
Gattuso and Gravina under fire
A tearful Gattuso addressed the cameras after the final whistle. “I want to personally apologise since we didn’t make it,” he said. “These lads didn’t deserve this, for the effort, the love, the determination.” He declined to discuss his future.
That future was already being discussed loudly around him. FIGC president Gabriele Gravina, who faces immediate and intense calls for his own resignation, confirmed he had asked both Gattuso and delegation chief and former Italy captain Gianluigi Buffon to remain in their posts for now. He announced a Federal Council meeting the following week to conduct formal evaluations of what had gone wrong.
“We realise we’re in a huge crisis,” Gravina said. It was, under the circumstances, an understatement, but also a rarity, a senior football official saying out loud what Italian football has spent several years struggling to admit.
The Reaction
Italian newspapers were not interested in understatement. Corriere della Sera went with “Total disaster.” Il Messaggero called it “A nightmare without end.” La Gazzetta dello Sport — Italy’s bible of sport, printed on its famous pink paper — ran with “Italy’s third World Cup flop.” The mood across the country was one not just of disappointment but of genuine bewilderment that a footballing culture as rich and storied as Italy’s has arrived at this point.
Bosnia will head to the 2026 World Cup in Group B alongside co-hosts Canada, Switzerland and Qatar, with their opening fixture scheduled for 12 June in Toronto. Their fans will watch their team on the biggest stage in the sport for the first time. Italy’s fans will watch from their sofas, as they have done since 2014.
Italy’s next opportunity to qualify for the World Cup will be in 2030. By then, it will have been 16 years. By then, some of the kids who have never seen Italy at a World Cup will themselves be old enough to play for the national team.
That, perhaps more than any result or resignation or Federal Council review, is the true measure of the catastrophe Italian football now faces.
