“Didn’t find anyone”
Newspaper mocks Italian national team
March 26, 2026 – 2:07 p.mReading time: 2 minutes
Italy will play Northern Ireland in the World Cup playoffs. A defeat would mean the third missed World Cup in a row. The concern is great.
“It’s forbidden to lose” for them Italian national team this Thursday. Northern Ireland will be visiting Bergamo in the semi-finals of the World Cup playoffs. Only whoever wins this game will make it to the final and meet the winner of the game between Wales and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The winner of this game gets to go to the World Cup.
For Italy it would be the first World Cup participation since 2014. The sports newspaper “Corriere dello Sport” took this as an opportunity to take a swipe at their own team with their front page. This Thursday you can see many cheering Italian children cheering on the team in the stands. The accompanying comment from the editor-in-chief: “The image on the front page was created by an AI: We didn’t find any young people who were so excited to cheer on the national team.” A reference to the fact that a whole generation of Italian children have never seen their team at a World Cup.
The seriousness of the situation has definitely reached the “Squadra Azzurra”. Italy’s national coach Gennaro Gattuso is at least putting a lot of pressure on himself. “This is definitely the most important game of my career,” he said before the game. He needs sleeping pills, says Gattuso, otherwise he would lie awake all night “like a bat” because of the pressure.
But: “I’m prepared,” said the 48-year-old, who once instilled fear in his opponents at AC Milan and in the national team: “I don’t think about what happens if things go badly. I want to think positively, think big, we’ll do our best.”
You can follow the game between Italy and Northern Ireland and all other games in the European World Cup playoffs today on t-online in the live ticker.
