Italy’s World Cup dream still alive but it’s Home Nations heartbreak
The Totally Football Show with James Richardson
The Athletic
4.5 • 4.4K Ratings
🗓️ 27 March 2026
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jimbo has a stellar cast of James Horncastle, Tom Williams, Colin Millar and Matt Davies-Adams to react to the World Cup play-off semi-finals.
It’s a heartbreaking night for the home nations with Wales and the Republic of Ireland eliminated on penalties. And a brave young Northern Ireland side are beaten 2-0 in Bergamo by Italy. Are the Azzurri finally set to qualify for another World Cup?
Jack Lang’s in Mexico to tell us about the inter-confederation play-offs, where he watched Jamaica edge past New Caledonia to set up a final against DR Congo.
And the big domestic news is that Mo Salah will be leaving Liverpool at the end of the season. Should we all be a bit more moved?
Produced by Charlie Jones and Xavi Bird
RUNNING ORDER:
• PART 1: World Cup round-up - that Guler pass (01.00)
• PART 2a: Path A - Wales out, Italy through (06.00)
• PART 2b: Republic of Ireland knocked out on penalties (30.00)
• PART 2c: The rest of UEFA qualifying (35.00)
• PART 3: New Caledonia 0-1 Jamaica with Jack Lang (41.00)
• PART 4: Salah leaving Liverpool (48.00)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Athletic FC |
| 0:03.3 | Totally Football Show. |
| 0:11.2 | Today, going all out to get all in on the last World Cup places |
| 0:14.8 | from Istanbul to Bergamo, Cardiff to Guadalajara. |
| 0:18.3 | The latest on Italy, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Wales and Czech's notes New Caledonia, |
| 0:23.0 | shootout news, broken-hearted blues, and much more, including a so-long to Mosala in this |
| 0:29.2 | Totally Football Show. Friday 27 to March, a little bit later than usual because of Thursday night things, but joined here by a top top line up. |
| 0:50.3 | Matt Davis Adams with us. Hello, Matt. Hi, James. Also, Colin Miller. Good morning, Colin. |
| 0:56.0 | Good morning, Jims. And on the way, we've got James Horncastle and Bergamo, Jack Lang, |
| 1:01.6 | exotically in Mexico, and Tom Williams in a bit of a mope. So that's all to come. Matt, I know |
| 1:08.5 | you're excited because you're going to be hosting Monday. |
| 1:27.3 | Yeah, really looking forward to it. A great night of action last night. Shame it was kind of all on at the same time, but I certainly enjoyed the game I watched until the very end of it. What was that game, Matt? That was Wales against Bosnia, in which I have somewhat of a vested interest, and it didn't go the way I was hoping it to. |
| 1:28.2 | All right. |
| 1:29.4 | Colin, where, well, |
| 1:27.8 | your vested interest lay in Bergamo, of course. We'll be hearing |
| 1:34.4 | about that game very, very shortly. I don't know if you caught up with any of the other action |
| 1:38.4 | overnight, though. There was 22 teams essentially tried to jammy their way in through the |
| 1:42.8 | tradesman's entrance to the World Cup |
| 1:45.0 | this summer. Yeah, I agree with Matt that one of the, one of the frustrations with this |
| 1:51.6 | playoff format, I think, is that all the games sort of coincide. And you can only choose really one |
| 1:56.6 | match to watch. I did try to multi-screen last night as well, but you can never really do that effectively, can you? And |
| 2:02.5 | we sit through so much |
... |
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