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Macedonia's goal in the 92nd minute reverberated like a rumble of death from north to south throughout Italy.
Eight years in a row without a World Cup.
A sad feat never seen in the history of Italian football.
No one could imagine that the team that had lifted the last European Championship with a total, happy and effective game would fall to poor North Macedonia at home and would lose, for the second time in a row, the highest football competition.
One of the few events, for greater national drama, that manages to unite a country almost always in internal dispute and in need like never before, after a harsh pandemic, of a moment of communion.
The elimination against Sweden four years ago was very tough.
But it was full of elements on the field of play that allowed it to be explained.
ITAItaly
0
Gianluigi Donnarumma, Florenzi, Emerson, Alessandro Bastoni, Gianluca Mancini (Chiellini, min. 89), Barella (Sandro Tonali, min. 76), Verratti, Jorginho, Berardi (João Pedro, min. 88), Insigne (Giacomo Raspadori, min. . 63) and Immobile (Lorenzo Pellegrini, min. 76)
MAC North Macedonia
1
Dimitrievski, Musliu, Velkovski (Ristevski, min. 85), Alioski, Ristovski, Churlinov, Ademi (Askovski, min. 58), Boban Nikolov (Spirovski, min. 58), A. Trajkovski, Enis Bardhi and Milan Ristovski (Bojan Miovski , minute 71)
Goals
0-1 min.
91: A. Trajkovski.
Yellow cards Velkovski (min. 79)
The match was incredible: sterile and desperate for the
Azzurra
fans .
But most of the last matches played were like that.
Even so, no one in Italy could understand the reasons for a resounding fall.
The team had Roberto Mancini on the bench, a good coach at the head of a young squad and with an unusual quality in recent generations.
It is true that the regulations were a bit strange, that there were two seeds in the same group, the country lamented before the game without really thinking that it could be relevant.
But it didn't even matter, because the Nazionale didn't even make it to the second round.
No one could have imagined, not even during a match in which Italy dominated, that the catastrophe would come again in Palermo.
The elimination took all of Italy by surprise.
The country was not prepared to revive the drama.
In the bars of Rome there was no final atmosphere, as happened with Sweden four years ago.
The game hadn't even been publicized as a matter of life and death like it was on that occasion.
The supposed final was supposed to be next Tuesday with Portugal, not an underestimated match in Palermo against a team considered by the whole country to be third.
But Italy, gripped by the memory of elimination against Sweden, were a nervous wreck unable to overcome recent history.
Four years ago a unique tragedy took place: the national team had not been left out of a World Cup since 1958. This Thursday it managed to overcome it and mark the pages of its history in red.
The elimination of Italy deepens a sports crisis that is born in the ranks of the youth teams and devastates Serie A, a championship that can no longer compete with the major European leagues.
The mirage of the last European Championship, almost everyone agrees, did more damage than could be foreseen, masking an endemic problem that has not been resolved.
The captain, Giorgio Chiellini, certified the drama: “We missed the goal, something important.
We have made mistakes from September to today and we have paid for them.
There are many young boys and we have to rebuild the team to play the European Championship and this blessed World Cup again in four years”.
Italy will now have to do accounts with its present.
The first, and most obvious, now seems the resignation of his coach.
“It is the biggest disappointment of my career.
But I'll think about my future later.
All the luck of the Eurocopa has been bad luck in this period", lamented the technician.
A tragic regeneration of a batch of players that was just beginning to emerge will have to be considered.
But he will also have to analyze his future and allow himself to dream only of stepping on the pitch of a World Cup again in 2026. It will be 20 years after lifting the last trophy in Berlin and having played only six games in a World Cup.
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