Nicky Bandini

Midfielder has again been Napoli’s star but ageing squad has taken club backwards and Conte’s future is uncertain Was this the end of the Serie A title race? On a weekend when the last two teams pursuing them both slipped up, Inter delivered another statement victory, recovering from two goals down to win 4-3 away to a Como side who had been playing some of the best football in the division. When the final whistle went, manager Christian Chivu celebrated like a man who knew exactly what it meant, hugging an assistant so hard he lifted them off the floor. Inter were nine points clear now in first place, with six games to go. But when the cameras arrived for post-game interviews, he played coy.

Targeted after Italy’s failure and for his dive in the Derby d’Italia, Alessandro Bastoni returned to form against Roma Italy were too afraid to play a World Cup qualifying playoff at San Siro, hosting their semi-final against Northern Ireland in Bergamo instead. Gennaro Gattuso explained it as a choice to protect his players, noting that the nation’s biggest football stadium was home to two rival clubs – Milan and Internazionale – and suggesting this dynamic might lead fans there to turn more quickly on players who struggled. Instead, on Sunday, it was San Siro that offered comfort to one who has become the scapegoat for yet another collective failure. Italy made it past Northern Ireland only to lose to Bosnia on penalties in Zenica. Alessandro Bastoni’s first-half red card, at a time when his country were winning 1-0, was a pivotal moment in the game and perhaps his entire career.

Roberto Baggio proposed an overhaul of talent pathway in 2011 but it was never acted on and the national team’s approach now is just not working The decline of Italy’s footballing expectations can be read in the headlines that greeted their third consecutive failure to qualify for a men’s World Cup. When the Azzurri lost their playoff against Sweden in November 2017, La Gazzetta dello Sport defined it as “The End” and an “Apocalypse”. After defeat by North Macedonia in 2022, Il Corriere dello Sport saw a country sinking “Into Hell”. On Wednesday both newspapers led coverage of elimination by Bosnia and Herzegovina with a simpler, perhaps sadder, “Tutti A Casa” – Everybody Go Home. What else is there left to say? Italians understood long ago that 2018 was not some aberration but the continuation of a trend, their team having failed to reach the tournament’s knockout stage in 2010 or 2014.