World Cup Wıthout ITALY Again
World cups are a festival for countries, it’s a football festival. World Cups are special because they are held every 4 years, World Cups are different because it is open to anything because it is a tournament and favorites don’t always win. World cups are special because nations from all over the world compete against each other. This tournament is not just a simple football tournament, it is an international competition. A competition without war, weapons, bombs, and immortality.
There have been countries and footballers who have left their mark on this great feast over the years. Each tournament produced one or more star players. In addition, some football players became more famous and their quality increased. For example, Pele and Brazil in 1958, Maradona and Argentina in 1986, Zidane and France in 1998, Ronaldo and Brazil in 2002, Buffon and Italy in 2006, Iniesta and Spain in 2010, and finally Mbappe in 2018, and The French national team were among the unforgettable. In general, Brazil, Germany, France, Italy, and Argentina are shown as the most successful and dominant teams of the tournament. One of these 5 teams could not go to the tournament in 2018 and surprised all football fans, and later declared that they returned by winning Euro 2020. But the misfortune happened again in 2018 and that team did not qualify for the 2022 World Cup. We’re talking about Italy.
Italy has been one of the most special and favorite teams in World Cups throughout history. They won the tournament they hosted in 1934, the tournament in France in 1938, the World Cup in 1982, and the tournament in Germany in 2006. They were also a finalist in 1970, a semi-finalist in 1978, and a World third in 1990. In addition to these incredible statistics, they gave football lovers incredible moments. Eliminated by Sweden in 2018, Italy was eliminated by North Macedonia in 2022 and remained out of the tournament. It is really sad for football that a football country like Italy cannot go to the world cup. With its incredibly passionate and dominant tournament performance in Euro 2020, Italy, which beat England and became champion in London, experienced a very sudden underperformance in just 8–9 months. The fact that Italy, which was shown as the favorite for the World Cup after Euro 2020, was excluded from the tournament surprised almost everyone. I care about Italy in this sense because there are some facts that make Italy very special in terms of football. For example, passion. I’m talking about the passion of football players who sing the national anthem with incredible passion before every match during Euro 2020. Passion is one of the things that make the World Cup special.
Perhaps one of the best definitions is former Italian national football player Demetrio Albertini. Albertini says: “A World Cup without Italy was unimaginable for my generation.” These words sum up the disappointment of the Italian national team, which has lifted the World Cup 4 times in the past, to fail to qualify for the 2022 World Cup. For the first time since 1958, Italy did not take part in the 2018 World Cup. Those under the age of 60 experienced the “World Cup without Italy” for the first time. It was a bad experience for both football fans and Italians that this situation, which created a feeling of emptiness and deep nostalgia for Italians, happened again in 2022. So much so that Italians are a place where Italy does not exist. Instead of watching the world cup, they preferred to watch the old world cups with Italy. In 2018, almost the whole world was watching the matches played in Russia, while the Italians were watching the World Cup final, which they beat France in 2006. La 7 channel was broadcast on 14 June. The 2006 World Cup final, which he broadcast, was watched by approximately 1 million people.
This is actually proof that the Italian people see the World Cup as something more than football. Finally, after the Macedonian match, the headline of La Gazzetta dello Sport, one of the biggest newspapers in the country, “We are outside the world” and the article titled “Wembley’s heroes are returning home”, referring to Euro 2020, shows us the disappointment of the Italians. As a result, we will have to experience a world cup without Italy. It may not be a problem for those who do not like Italy, but for Italian football fans like me, the world cup without Italy will be quite boring.
