Italy have avoided Wales; they simply cannot afford to slip up now

frafiomatale (78)in #sports • yesterday

_{Image created with Leonardo.ai}

This is the English version of the post L'Italia evita il Galles, ora non può proprio sbagliare, originally published in Italian in the ITALY community.

In a short tournament, such as the Champions League or the Coppa Italia, as well as in all competitions where only a limited number of matches are played, the chances of success are largely tied to unpredictable factors, such as form, injuries, refereeing decisions, and so on.

Over the course of a full league season, these factors tend to have a smaller impact (unless we are talking about Serie A, but that is another story). In shorter competitions, however, even a single detail or episode can make the difference between victory and defeat, between a trophy in the cabinet and one slipping through your fingers.

So just imagine how much the “fate” factor can influence a mini-path of two matches, like the playoff for qualification to the next World Cup, in which our national team is currently involved after a disastrous qualifying group that saw them lose 1-7 on aggregate against Norway.

Italy did its duty last night in Bergamo, beating the modest Northern Irish side 2-0, a team mostly composed of players competing in the English Championship. Gattuso’s men never really risked conceding, but the effort required to break down the opposition says a lot about the actual quality of the Italian squad at this specific moment in time.

However, the best news of the evening was perhaps not the goals from Tonali and Kean, which secured qualification for the next round, but the result from Cardiff, where unexpectedly Bosnia managed to defeat the home side Wales on penalties.

A goal by the forty-year-old striker and former Serie A player Edin Dzeko, scored in the final minutes of the match, allowed the Bosnians to equalize after the hosts had taken the lead and push the game into extra time.

Wales missed several clear chances both at 1-0 and during extra time, and as often happens, once it came down to penalties, the team with the clearer mindset prevailed.

So instead of facing the seventy thousand “red dragons” in Cardiff, Italy will now have to secure its World Cup spot in the small Bilino Polje stadium in Zenica, with a capacity of just fifteen thousand. In short, a much less intimidating setting for the Azzurri, who could even be supported by a few thousand traveling fans given the relatively short distance.

Beyond the atmosphere, even from a technical standpoint, the upcoming opponents (currently ranked 74th in the FIFA rankings) appear, at least on paper, more manageable than Wales, who sit around 30th place and possess a few higher-level individual players.

In short, luck may have given Italy a slightly easier path toward the United States. However, given the recent failures of Italian football, it would be impossible to underestimate the trip to Bosnia, which could either bring Italy back to the World Cup after twelve years or definitively sink it.

In either case, people will talk about a “rebirth,” but the truth is that in neither scenario would that really be accurate.