Italy Has Failed to Qualify for Three Straight World Cups. Are the Country’s Immigration Policies to Blame?

The nighttime Italy defeated France successful the 2006 World Cup final, Mario de Rossi was studying astatine a tiny assemblage successful Puglia. Though helium had exams the adjacent day, helium inactive ventured retired into a piazza afterward and celebrated precocious into the night. He showed up to his exams bleary-eyed, and wearing his Azzurri shirt. With 4 World Cup titles, Italy had, astatine that point, much than immoderate different European country. “Back then, we were astatine the halfway of the shot world,” de Rossi, present a forty-year-old shot cause who specializes successful subordinate planetary transfers, told me. “And to deliberation that from determination a diminution began that present feels astir irreversible.”

At the adjacent 2 World Cups, successful 2010 and 2014, Italy didn’t unrecorded up to its reputation, getting bounced successful the radical stage. Then, starring up to the 2018 World Cup, the unthinkable happened: Italy failed to adjacent qualify, a nationalist ungraded that seemed to people the nadir of Italian football, until 4 years later, erstwhile the nationalist squad fell abbreviated of qualifying again.

Going into the 2026 World Cup qualifying process, nary erstwhile champion had ever failed to suffice 3 consecutive times. And portion Italy’s longtime European shot rivals—France, Spain, England, Germany, Portugal, Belgium, and the Netherlands—all played good early, easy making it through, Italy struggled, leaving the squad to scrabble successful a playoff tourney with smaller countries similar Northern Ireland and Bosnia and Herzegovina. After a brace of losses to Norway, Italy’s past accidental for a World Cup bid came connected March 31st, successful a winner-take-all crippled successful Zenica against Bosnia and Herzegovina, a thirty-four-year-old state with a colonisation astir a twentieth the size of Italy’s, and conscionable 1 erstwhile World Cup appearance. After an aboriginal extremity by the Italian guardant Moise Kean provided a play of optimism, Bosnia and Herzegovina tied the people successful the seventy-ninth minute, past snatched triumph successful punishment kicks, sending the location assemblage into jubilation. On the different broadside of the Adriatic Sea, a reckoning awaited.

After the match, de Rossi described his telephone buzzing with “calls and a batch of substance exchanges with colleagues, radical moving successful the shot industry, nine executives, and besides conscionable friends.” All crossed Italy, connected tv and podcasts, astatine meal tables and barroom counters, successful radical chats and connection boards, a furious statement unfurled successful the hunt for answers to the agonizing mystery: How did Italy’s storied shot programme autumn truthful acold down the remainder of Europe’s?

Theories abound. Some blasted outdated coaching tactics that prioritize caution implicit extremity scoring. Some accidental young radical successful Italy aren’t arsenic funny successful shot arsenic erstwhile generations were. Some blasted clubs successful the country’s apical home league, Serie A, for filling their lineups with overseas players, portion Italian prospects languish connected the bench. To de Rossi, the occupation is rooted successful an contented that fewer successful the shot satellite person discussed publicly: Italy’s excavation of eligible young players is shrinking due to the fact that of racist migration policies. “Everyone turns their heads astir due to the fact that they don’t privation to look,” helium said. “They don’t cognize that the satellite has changed.”

While apical European shot rosters similar France’s and Spain’s bespeak caller migration patterns successful Europe, Italy’s squad remains astir wholly white. That disposable favoritism has go harder to place amid the team’s struggles. Daniela Conti, a argumentation manager for the advocacy enactment Italian Association of Sport For All, said the team’s homogeneity reflects laws and practices that person excluded a ample swath of “the young radical who unrecorded successful our country,” adding that “football reflects precisely what’s happened successful society.”

Italy has the oldest colonisation successful Europe, with a median property that has risen from astir forty-one successful 2004 to forty-nine successful 2024, 4 years older than the European Union average. This means that those younger than 15 marque up an ever-shrinking information of Italy’s population. Moreover, compared to adjacent countries that person counteracted the economical effects of aging populations with caller immigrants and their children, Italy has acceptable much hurdles connected the way to citizenship for those without autochthonal ancestry, adjacent if they are calved successful the country. A deficiency of citizenship, of course, means that you are ineligible to play for the nationalist team. And the radical who person tally the nationalist shot strategy person seemed determined to bounds their options adjacent further: Arrigo Sacchi, who oversaw the nationalist team’s youth-development programme from 2010 to 2014, said successful 2015 that “Italy has present mislaid each dignity and pride” due to the fact that determination are “too galore players of colour successful our younker sectors”; Carlo Tavecchio, the president of Italy’s shot federation from 2014 to 2017, was banned from holding immoderate FIFA roles for six months for saying that Black players were “eating bananas” earlier joining Serie A.

Italy, successful 2003, established a authorities agency, the National Office Against Racial Discrimination, to analyse allegations of racism successful institutions similar the shot federation. Its manager general, Mattia Peradotto, pushed backmost erstwhile I suggested that racism has played a relation successful the shot team’s struggles, and said it was the archetypal clip he’d heard anyone notation the possibility. “It’s benignant of unusual to me, this theory,” Peradotto told me. “I don’t spot that having a roster that is little divers tin beryllium related to structural racism. I don’t spot a nexus betwixt these 2 things.” He besides said that it was unfair to comparison Italy’s radical diverseness with different European countries, specified arsenic France and England, that had much extended assemblage occupations spurring earlier waves of immigration. He noted that Italy’s inferior teams person much players of non-European descent than ever before, and that helium attributed this inclination to authorities concern successful sports facilities “in the marginalized blocks of cities.” He besides pointed retired that Kean, a prima subordinate connected the team, is the kid of immigrants from Côte d’Ivoire.

But, successful the crippled against Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kean, who scored Italy’s lone goal, was the sole nonwhite Italian subordinate to instrumentality the field. He besides led the squad successful goals done the qualifying tournament, adjacent aft missing fractional the games with an injury. One of the matches helium missed was against Norway, which bushed Italy 4–1. Two players of African descent took the transportation for Norway, Europe’s northernmost country, portion Italy, astatine the gateway to the Mediterranean Sea, with a colonisation 10 times bigger, fielded none.

Riccardo Bia had been optimistic this year. The sports bureau helium runs with his begetter represents much than a 100 Italian shot players, including 1 connected the nationalist team, and helium believed that his state had capable endowment to gain 1 of the forty-eight spots for the World Cup. “Big delusion,” helium told maine recently.

When helium contemplated the problem, his caput turned to a Serie A lucifer helium had attended past year, A.C. Milan against Bologna, the last crippled successful the Coppa Italia tournament. Of the twenty-two athletes that started for the 2 teams, helium noticed, conscionable 3 were Italian. “We person excessively galore overseas players successful Serie A,” helium said. “The lone mode to save” the nationalist squad would beryllium “to obligate the clubs to play the young Italian players.” Bia was disquieted astir a vicious cycle, imagining a young instrumentality who “probably doesn’t cognize the names” of the players connected their favourite team, helium said. “I’m frightened the caller procreation volition suffer that passionateness astir football.”

This thought seems to beryllium the accepted contented successful Italy these days, communal connected investigation programs, successful paper columns, and connected net forums. Peradotto, the manager wide of the authorities bureau that investigates racism, told maine that “not having Italian players” successful the apical Italian clubs has “led to having a little competitory nationalist team.”

It’s an aged assertion that traces to the earliest years of Italy’s shot dominance. After taking powerfulness successful 1922, Benito Mussolini prioritized strengthening the nationalist shot system, recognizing its worth successful forging a unifying individuality for a state that had existed lone six decades and was losing arsenic galore arsenic 3 100 1000 emigrants a year. Italy’s nationalist squad was mediocre astatine the time, failing to medal astatine the Olympics successful 1920 and 1924. Mussolini’s authorities built caller stadiums, established a caller league, Serie A, that barred overseas players, and successfully bid to big the second-ever World Cup, successful 1934. Mussolini utilized the tourney to showcase a nationalist translation embodied successful the shot team’s ascent. Italy won that World Cup, and the adjacent one, successful 1938, on with the 1936 Olympic golden medal.

After the Second World War, Italy opened up Serie A to overseas players. But, pursuing a drawstring of disappointing national-team performances, including failing to suffice for the 1958 World Cup and shocking losses to some the Soviet Union and North Korea astatine the 1966 edition, the league reinstated the ban. At the pursuing World Cup, successful 1970, Italy reached the final, and past successful 1982 Italy won its 3rd World Cup. That decade, Serie A loosened its prohibition connected foreigners, mounting quotas that allowed 3 overseas players per nine by 1988. Seven years later, a tribunal ruled that the restrictions couldn’t use to players from European Union countries, ushering successful a question of planetary endowment that hasn’t slowed. “There are excessively galore foreigners,” de Rossi said, “because presently the foreigners playing successful Italy are amended than Italians.”

Bia sees a quota strategy mandating a definite fig of Italians successful Serie A arsenic 1 solution to assistance the nationalist squad get better, but helium besides described a fig of problems astatine the basal of wherefore determination are truthful fewer Italians susceptible of earning much playing clip successful the archetypal place. Youth grooming facilities, helium said, person been “a disaster” owing to a deficiency of funding. Coaches person implemented “boring” tactics, helium said, that restrict players from processing the violative skills they request to support up with the game’s evolution. He besides wondered if kids were inactive going extracurricular astatine all. His father, who played professionally for Napoli successful Serie A, told him stories astir spending his puerility kicking a shot astir connected the thoroughfare with different vicinity kids. Maybe it isn’t harmless for kids to spell extracurricular anymore, Bia said. “The times person changed.”

Bia observed Italy’s divergence from France since the 2 countries met successful the 2006 World Cup final. At the time, France was establishing itself arsenic a large force, having won its archetypal World Cup successful 1998. In the 2 decades since that title game, France has go the preëminent shot power. Amid Italy’s World Cup adust spell, France won the tourney successful 2018 and placed 2nd successful 2022, and boasts a star-filled lineup for this summer’s tournament, with a roster featuring respective players from the country’s apical nine team, Paris Saint-Germain, winners of the 2025 U.E.F.A. Champions League, a Continent-wide contention nary Italian nine has won successful sixteen years. Bia besides claimed that galore of France’s apical shot players travel from areas “where they person much immigration,” helium said. “Why? Probably due to the fact that they played successful the street. They person to effort to bring successful wealth due to the fact that they are successful a mediocre situation. When they person the opportunity, they play well. So present France has 1 of the champion nationalist teams successful the world.”

The Italian nationalist squad is inactive inspiring all-nighters. After the nonaccomplishment to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Davide Valeri, a lifelong shot instrumentality from Rome, couldn’t sleep. “I opened Instagram, past YouTube, past Twitter, and I stayed up precocious listening to podcasts and speechmaking tactical and statistical analyses,” Valeri, a sociologist studying the bequest of colonialism successful sports, told me. “The motif present successful Italy is that we mislaid due to the fact that successful Serie A determination are excessively galore overseas people, but each of this is connected to past and to citizenship.”

More than fractional of France's 2006 runner-up squad included players of African descent, and its teams since past person looked similar. Many hint their ancestry to countries that France colonized. Before modern Italy was formed, successful 1861, France had claimed territories connected astir each continent, imposed its connection and civilization astir the globe, and has since granted French citizenship to definite segments of its colonized populations. Italy occupied Somalia for astir sixty years, Eritrea for astir the same, Libya for thirty-two, and Ethiopia for five, but didn’t promote migration from those places. Unlike the migration patterns successful “France and the U.K., these are not waves of arrivals from ex-colonies,” Teresa Fiore, a Montclair State University prof who studies migration successful and retired of Italy, told me. “What distinguishes Italy from different countries is simply a consciousness of guilt. Italy doesn’t consciousness this pressure. It doesn’t request to beryllium redeemed.”

In the nineteen-eighties and nineties, radical from Africa and Asia began arriving successful Italy by the thousands. This was new. For astir of the twentieth century, much radical were leaving Italy than coming, beckoned by economical opportunities successful the Americas and elsewhere. So, successful 1992, Italy reformed its citizenship laws, ostensibly to marque it easier for its diaspora to return, but besides to sphere nationality restrictions for those without Italian ancestry. Children of immigrants calved successful Italy aren’t assured citizenship, and tin use lone wrong a twelve-month model aft turning eighteen. The shot prima Mario Balotelli, calved successful Palermo, débuted for Inter Milan erstwhile helium was seventeen, yet helium couldn’t suit up for the nationalist squad for different twelvemonth due to the fact that his parents were from Ghana. At 1 of his matches, a radical of spectators unrolled a banner that work “Black Italians don’t exist.” In 2011, aft being granted citizenship successful 2008, helium became the archetypal Black subordinate to people a extremity for Italy’s nationalist team.

In the past 15 years oregon so, Spain went from taking successful less immigrants than Italy to accepting 3 times arsenic many. Its shot team, each achromatic erstwhile it won its archetypal World Cup, successful 2010, featured 3 players of African descent successful its starting lineup for the 2026 World Cup qualifiers, including Lamine Yamal, the eighteen-year-old prima guardant whose parents came from Morocco and Equatorial Guinea. Germany, which had akin property demographics and migration levels arsenic Italy successful 2010, took successful much than doubly arsenic galore immigrants successful the adjacent 5 years, and its median property present sits 3 years younger than Italy’s. Eight years aft losing to Italy successful the World Cup semifinals with an all-white starting lineup, Germany won the 2014 World Cup with starting lineups featuring players with migrant parents from Ghana, Tunisia, and Turkey. Its existent squad includes eleven players of African oregon Asian descent. In an interrogation with the Italian paper La Gazzetta dello Sport past month, Oliver Bierhoff, the manager of Germany’s 2014 rubric team, cited Germany and France arsenic countries that person “improved importantly acknowledgment to players who are the children of immigrants.” “The societal facet matters a batch and is indispensable successful modern football: however you are doing, wherever you privation to go, however overmuch you’re consenting to endure already astatine a young age,” helium said. “The hunger of newcomers. Everyone needs it.”

Top Italian sporting officials person decried the citizenship law’s interaction connected Italian athletics. In 2017, the president of the Italian National Olympic Committee, Giovanni Malagò, estimated that successful the erstwhile 15 years Italy had “lost 4 and a fractional cardinal imaginable athletes betwixt the ages of fourteen and nineteen.” Four years later, Malagò described the bureaucratic process for athletes applying for citizenship arsenic “a Dante-esque circle.”

Italy’s caller migrant diasporas are much disposable successful sports different than football. Alberto Tappa, the erstwhile secretary-general of the Italian Boxing Federation, publically advocated for the authorities to “take a measurement forward” and o.k. citizenship for Sirine Charaabi, a Tunisian-born boxer who arrived successful Italy earlier turning 2 and has since won world-championship medals successful 2023 and 2025. Italian track-and-field athletes calved to Senegalese oregon Nigerian immigrants person medalled successful each of the past 2 Olympics. The nationalist women’s volleyball team, which won the 2021 European Championship and finished 4th successful 2023, features players with parents from Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire. The nationalist cricket team, which competed successful its first-ever cricket T20 World Cup earlier this year, includes respective athletes of South Asian descent. The tennis prima Jasmine Paolini, a 2024 Olympic golden medallist and Wimbledon finalist, descended from a Ghanaian grandfather. “You spot grounds of this diverseness being represented successful different sports but not erstwhile it comes to the astir disposable and astir symbolically important sport,” Max Mauro, a sociologist who interviewed dozens of young shot players with migrant parents successful Italy for his publication “The Balotelli Generation,” told me. “So wherefore is shot not similar that?”

Even among athletes with citizenship, untangling the motivations down wherefore 1 subordinate gets selected implicit different is complicated. There are countless ways to warrant a player’s destiny successful either direction. John Foot, a historiographer who has written extensively astir Italian football, said helium couldn’t accidental for definite that national-team absorption held racist biases, but helium called for a person look “at the players who aren’t playing for Italy,” including astatine slightest a mates of Black players “who could person easy been selected.” He and others person named the twenty-two-year-old guardant Wilfried Gnonto, the twenty-four-year-old halfway backmost Caleb Okoli, and the twenty-three-year-old defender Destiny Udogie, who are each bully capable to play for English clubs but person received small oregon nary playing clip with the nationalist team.

In April, soon aft Italy’s disqualification, Italy’s football-federation president and national-team manager resigned. An assembly of shot officials volition prime the adjacent leader, who volition look the task of not conscionable processing homegrown players but making definite they extremity up representing the Azzurri. Valeri, the sociologist, said that he’s funny astir the prospects of Honest Ahanor, a promising Serie A defender calved successful Aversa to Nigerian immigrants. Nigeria’s nationalist team, which missed 2 consecutive World Cups aft reaching six of the erstwhile seven, has pursued him. After helium turned eighteen, successful February, and attained Italian citizenship, Italy’s elder nationalist squad called him up for friendlies against Luxembourg and Greece. Valeri wonders if immoderate young players mightiness reconsider which state volition springiness them the champion accidental to play connected the brightest stage.