After a pretty even first half Belgium is shredding the US. Not what you want to see in the run up for the WC.
European World Cup Qualifiers are over…
Turkiye, Sweden, Czechia and Bosnia and Herzegovina advance (the last two on penalties).
Italy misses its third straight World Cup!
I know there are two more qualification games to be played today (Iraq/Bolivia and Jamaica/DR Congo); I think those are the last spots to be determined for the World Cup?
I guess we should change the increasingly outdated title of this thread, maybe 
Well, Italy didn’t qualify in 2022 just like this year, so in that way time has stood still…
I have reasons to support stopping football history in 2022, so I second the motion.
Many times I have thought about asking a mod to update the title, but it turns out I kinda like its retro feel.
Agreed. It’s even better that the title was updated once to keep it current and that was 4 years ago.
Agreed too.
Yes and no: nobody knows what will happen to/whith Iran. And whoever has to (and will be delighted to) step in their place, should they not play. Be it because the USA does not let them in, or Iran does not let them out in their name, or any mess in between. And as far as I know, there has not been a definitive decision yet, or has it?
The later the decision is taken, the more room for corruption I see.
One thing is clear: it won’t be Italy. 
Sure? Cite?
Ich sage nur: FIFA & President Ineptstein.
Unless, as some were wondering in Twitter, Trump let’s them in in exchange for the use of the Sicilian air bases…
The Guardian writes Italy is in an even thighter spot than we thought: they don’t qualify for a World Cup since before the iPod was invented, but they might not host a European Cup either (where they would at least automatically qualify as host nation) because their stadiums are among the “worst in Europe”:
So why did they get UEFA’s ok to host the 2032 EURO in the first place? Did their campaign promise big renovations and newly built stadiums, but nothing of that materialized so far?
ETA: I just read the Guardian article, and my hunch seems to be true.
Yes, inefficiency, corruption, and gerontocracy seem so very Italian.
Then on the other side, they never qualify for the World Cup anymore, but they won the European Cup in London in 2021. Maybe a Covid side effect, I had forgotten about that.
Do you by chance remember the collapsed bridge in Genoa? The collapse was a big fuck up that killed 43 people, and most probably caused by mismanagement through corruption, but they only needed about two years to rebuild the bridge. So they can do it if it’s urgent. I remember it so well because it has been held up high so often in Germany a la “We need 20 years to build a new airport or railway station, while even the Italians can build a bridge in two years”…
Here’s the case:
I remember that very well, it was horrifying. I did not know they had rebuilt it so quickly. I hope they did a good job of that, a repeat of the collapse would be more than embarassing (link to YouTube, 42").
That was because England is cursed.
Writes the Hand-of-God-Worshipper! 
It’s OK, serves them right. For whatever they did (algo habrán hecho… again)
God Himself may have had something to do with the curse in fact, He had returned to His throne a few months before that final.
One of ESPN’s writers speculated yesterday that Italy’s collapse was due to coaching misfires, some bad luck in games and the emphasis on tactics and defense at all levels of the developmental system instead of focusing on skills development and attacking.
That’s pretty general but it’s all entirely possible. I’ve never seen anything quite like this.