Italy and the World Cup: The curse continues
The Athletic FC Podcast
The Athletic
4.0 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 1 April 2026
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The 48-team line-up for the World Cup has now been determined, after a night of drama in the play-offs.
And for the third successive tournament, Italy miss out…
So what now for the four-time champions?
Host: Ayo Akinwolere
Guests: Felipe Cardenas, Carl Anka
Executive Producer: Adey Moorhead
Producers: Mike Stavrou, Nick Thomson
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Athletic FC |
| 0:03.1 | Welcome to the Athletic FC podcast with me, Ayo Akinwalere. |
| 0:08.8 | Well, the 48 team lineup for the World Cup has been determined |
| 0:12.5 | after a night of drama in the playoffs. |
| 0:15.4 | And for the third successive tournament, Italy will miss out. |
| 0:19.8 | So what now for the four-time champions? |
| 0:24.9 | Joining us for this one, we've got Felipe Cardenas, who's in America for us. We've also got |
| 0:29.4 | Karl Anka as well. All right, jeds, the final six teams secured their path to the World Cup last |
| 0:35.6 | night. Those teams are Sweden, Turkey, Czech Republic, Bosnia, Hezegovina, Dior Congo and Iraq. |
| 0:43.6 | But we have to start with Italy. |
| 0:46.5 | They failed to qualify for both the 2018 and 2022 tournaments and things didn't get much better in Bosnia. |
| 0:53.7 | So here's James Horncastle, who's reporting from Zeneca with his thoughts. |
| 0:57.7 | Esmir Barakhtarovic can send Bosnia and Herzegovina to the World Cup. |
| 1:03.8 | And he does. |
| 1:05.0 | It got underneath Donoruma. |
| 1:07.4 | The Italian curse continues. |
| 1:10.1 | Bosnia and Herzegovina will play in the FIFA World Cup. |
| 1:14.6 | Genaro Gattuzzo was close to tears throughout his post-match media duties here in Zenitha. |
| 1:22.6 | He had spoken about having an entire nation on his back, |
| 1:26.6 | particularly generations of young Italians, kids, |
| 1:31.6 | teenagers, who had never seen their team at a World Cup. And he felt that burden dearly |
| 1:37.7 | and thinking about what it would be like to carry Italy over the line and get them to a first World Cup in 12 years. |
... |
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