Italyfour times world champion, was eliminated this Thursday from the 2022 Qatar World Cup. It is the second consecutive failure, since he did not qualify for Russia 2018 either.
The European champion lost 0-1 with North Macedoniaat the Renzo Barbera stadium in Palermo.
Now, North Macedonia will face on Tuesday Portugal for a quota in Qatar. The Portuguese defeated Turkey 3-1, who missed a penalty that might have equalized.
After attacking throughout the match, those led by Roberto Mancini sinned due to lack of effectiveness and North Macedonia ended up scoring the winning goal in the 90+2 minute, with striker Aleksandar Trajkovski scoring.
It is the first time in history that Italy has lost a home game in World Cup qualifying.
Italy, world champion in 1934, 1938, 1982 and 2006, had already been left out of Russia 2018 following losing the playoff once morest Sweden. Since then he had started a process to rebuild his team and that resulted in winning the European Championship last year.
However, Italy might not revalidate that in the group stage of the tie: despite finishing undefeated, with four wins and four draws, they were second in group C, behind Switzerland, and therefore were forced to play the play-off . Now, he is left out of the World Cup once more.
News in development.
SPORTS
