eewitness
And then to Palermo. Four qualifying
draws clearly took the shine off Italian
morale, adding to the pressure going into
the play-offs. Thus, when things failed
to happen against North Macedonia,
when Italy failed to take their many
chances against a comprehensively
outplayed side, the nerves got jittery,
the sense of conviction diminished
and players like Lorenzo Insigne, Ciro
Immobile and Domenico Berardi began
to look incapable of hitting a barn door.
Emblematic was the 29th-minute
miss from Berardi. After incessant
Italian pressing, North Macedonia
goalkeeper Stole Dimitrievski mishit
a clearance straight to the Sassuolo
man, and it looked like the end for the
visitors. Berardi was totally unmarked,
inside the area and facing a totally
empty goalmouth.
For a player of his quality, a goal
should have been a mere formality. Yet
somehow, he miscued his shot and saw
it slowly trickle through to the arms of
Dimitrievski who had been given the
time to recover his position.
There were other ingredients in
this perfect storm. Italy were without
arguably their best forward (Federico
Chiesa) and their best defender
(Leonardo Bonucci) who were both
injured. Roberto Mancini also chose to
rest his other defensive pillar, Giorgio
Chiellini, over-confidently saving him
for the assumed play-off final against
Portugal five days later.
In the end, in desperation, Mancini
sent on Chiellini at the end of normal
time, expecting him to see Italy through
extra-time and maybe even the penalty
shootout. That proved irrelevant as
Aleksandar Trajkovski – a forward
who, ironically, played four seasons
for Palermo – popped up with a
92nd-minute winning goal.
Here, too, the perfect storm
continued. Not only was this just North
Macedonia’s third shot of the night in a
game where Italy logged over 30 shots
on the Macedonian goal, but Italian
goalkeeper, Gianluigi Donnarumma,
unemployed for most of the game,
seemed to be taken by surprise by
Trajkovski’s well-struck but hardly
irresistible strike.
Comparisons with Italy’s 2017
play-off elimination at the hands of
Sweden make this particular disaster
all the harder to understand.
The 2017 side, then coached by
Gian Piero Ventura, had struggled in its
qualifying group, being comprehensively
outplayed by its major rival, Spain, in a
3-0 away defeat in the crucial qualifier.
This time, Italy should and could have
won their group if they had scored just
Costly...Jorginho
reflects on his
penalty misses