For the first time since 1958 the Italian National football team has failed to qualify for the World Cup. After the poor show Italy gave us on the Scandinavian's home turf, everyone expected the four-time world champions to walk all over Sweden at home, but the match lacked goals and entertainment in general. The stale-mate match saw Sweden qualify to the World Cup finals taking place in Russia next summer, whilst Italy's path to glory came to a sudden stop.
The Italians never had it easy being drawn into the same group as former back-to-back Euro-World Cup winners Spain for the qualifying rounds, but anybody with any slight familiarization with the sport know that Italy are top dogs.
Italian manager Gian Piero Ventura has been sacked following the match, but the most tragic tales that resulted from this were the early retirements of Italian goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon and midfielder Daniele De Rossi. The combined appearances of these two Italian icons tally up to a whopping two hundred and ninety five total caps for Gli Azzurri.
Both Italian stars reacted very distinctly to the loss of this historically meaningful match up between the two countries. De Rossi was furious with the result, and can be seen mouthing the words 'Che cazzo entro io?' as seen in this video.
On the other hand, Buffon gave a heart-breaking post-match interview which can be seen here. We see him as passionate as ever, unfortunately in shambles. One does not need to possess knowledge of the Italian language to understand the message he communicates in the video. Being a former Italy supporter myself, as well as having the utmost respect for arguably the best goalkeeper in the world, it pains me to watch this veteran of in such a state.
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