Italy missed the World Cup because of complacency

The technical reason for Italy not being in the 2018 World Cup is obvious: The four-time winners did not record the results necessary during qualification to advance to the final field of 32. They scuffed their way to a second-place finish in their qualifying group, then looked utterly listless and shaken against Sweden in a playoff game that could have earned them a spot. But Italy’s deepening woes go back much further than the latest cycle of World Cup qualifying, and they can all be summed up with one word: complacency

For too long, Italy has tried to essentially coast on its past and reputation. Multiple managers, even the highly regarded Antonio Conte, have done little to change the pattern: The team still leans on the defensive trio of Leonardo Bonucci, Giorgio Chiellini, and Andrea Barzagli, still hasn’t found good enough options in midfield, and is still putting together stale and uncreative attacks.

Even after the 2006 World Cup winners were long gone and the Euro 2012 runners-up had grown old and slow, Italy kept going with tactics that had previously worked — and no longer were working. Italy’s leaders — from national team management on up, and even to an extent including the way many of their bigger clubs are run in Serie A — kept on acting as though a status quo approach was working, even though the most casual of observers could see in reality it was not.

A major contributing cause to Italy’s absence from Russia is a player development problem, where fewer and fewer international-quality players are coming through teams in Serie A or even the lower divisions. It is largely the result of a style throughout the country that prefers veteran players to younger talents.

Even the good younger players who could have broken up the incredible same-ness of Italy’s squads have gone ignored for inexplicable reasons: Lorenzo Insigne, Jorginho, Ciro Immobile, Alessio Romagnoli, Giacomo Bonaventura, and too many others went largely or even completely overlooked by national team leadership for years, long after they proved they were at a level of quality and capability that would have helped the Azzurri in areas they were desperate for.

Winning their qualifying group was always going to be a tall task for Italy, given they were drawn in the same group as Spain. But numerous poor results — like a bizarre draw with Macedonia and getting absolutely humbled by a Spain side that hadn’t played at its best in some time — set off warning sirens for many Italian fans, especially when the same underperforming players kept getting into the squad and lineup while in-form players who could help were left out.

Such confounding lineup choices were amplified in the playoff against Sweden when out-of-form players like Marco Parolo, Daniele De Rossi, and Manolo Gabbiadini were favored over Federico Bernardeschi, Roberto Gagliardini, and even the white-hot Lorenzo Insigne. All of those latter players offered improvements over the players preferred by since-departed manager Giampiero Ventura, both in terms of form and matchup. But Ventura had his guys and rarely shook up his idea of how Italy should play, just like far too many of his predecessors.

Now, after years of increasingly mediocre results, Italy finally has a manager in Roberto Mancini who seems to be willing to look elsewhere in the Italian talent pool and force some change. But that change is much too little, much too late for Italy’s 2018 World Cup hopes. They’ll be watching the tournament from home instead of playing in Russia, and they have only their own complacency to blame.