Paolo runs my favorite pizza joint. Neapolitan style. Hand-tossed. Wood-fired. Proper buffalo mozzarella. The best margherita this size of the Atlantic. He is the owner. And he is the chef.
Paolo is also a die-hard Napoli fan. And a die-hard Italy fan.
Paolo was not a happy camper tonight. The pizza was still great though!
For the third tournament running, Italy will not be at this summer’s World Cup. It’s a remarkable situation. Before 2014, they had missed just two tournaments altogether: the one
in 1958 and the inaugural one in 1930, which they didn’t even enter. But the four-time champions have somehow managed to fail to qualify yet again, even with the massively expanded field, this time losing on penalties to Bosnia & Herzegovina at the final hurdle in the qualifying playoffs.
Bosnia and five others (Sweden, Czech Republic, Turkey, DR Congo, and Iraq) booked their places in the summer’s main event on Tuesday night. The complete field of 48 is now set, so now we know which teams we’ll be watching on television since no one can actually afford to go to the games themselves.
There were no Chelsea players involved in any of these games that actually mattered, but there were plenty involved in games that did not. And that’s a bit annoying, especially in the case of someone like Moisés Caicedo, who played the full-90 in Ecuador’s 1-1 draw against the Netherlands. Jorrel Hato also featured in the game, but only for the last 20 minutes or so. Still more than Marc Cucurella, who thankfully did not play in Spain’s scoreless draw against Egypt.
But Enzo Fernández also got yet another start, and went almost 75 minutes in Argentina’s 5-0 laugher over Zambia. I guess he’ll rest when he gets to Madrid for good. And it was a full-90 Mamadou Sarr as well, one of our remaining fully fit defenders, as Senegal beat The Gambia, 3-1.
It was a slightly more reasonable situation for Pedro Neto, playing just the first half of Portugal’s 2-0 win over an increasingly worrisome USA team. Ex-Chelsea twice over João Félix came on for Neto and would get their second to start a fresh round of speculation over Mauricio Pochettino’s future (Poch now suddenly more willing to stay since Spurs are hiring Roberto De Zerbi).
And speaking of former Chelsea managers, Carlo Ancelotti saw his Brazil team dispatch Croatia with two late goals, 3-1, while Thomas Tuchel watched England do a whole lot of nothing in their 1-0 defeat against Japan at Wembley. On the plus side, Cole Palmer got the start from Tommy T … though his most notable contribution was turning the ball over to start the sequence that eventually led to the game’s only goal.
It was a happier occasion for João Pedro, getting the start for Brazil, even if only his replacement on 67 minutes got on the scoresheet: Igor Thiago scoring a penalty won by fellow substitute Endrick, who would also set up Brazil’s third just a couple minutes later. This match was 1-0 heading into the final five minutes before Croatia equalized and then Endrick made his mark. Andrey Santos also featured for the last quarter of an hour, winning his sixth cap.
