North Macedonia stunned Italy 1-0 in their World Cup playoff semi-final in Palermo on Thursday night, with Aleksandar Trajkovski scoring the winner in second-half stoppage time.
This comes just nine months after winning the Euros, Italy has suffered yet another national disgrace on the World Cup stage after missing out in 2018. Aleksandar Trajkovski’s 92nd-minute stunner proved to be the goal that sent Italy spiraling out of the qualifying playoff.
Italy had qualified for every World Cup between 1962 and 2014 before missing out in the qualifying playoff round ahead of the 2018 competition, and had only missed the World Cup once in its history before the consecutive failures. The defeat was Italy’s first World Cup qualifying loss on home soil ever after previously going 48-0-11.
However, North Marcedonia made headlines a year ago by handing Germany its first world cup qualifying defeat since 2001, breaking the 2014 world champion’s 35-match unbeaten streak in World Cup qualifiers. It was a lesson the Azzurri failed to learn from. While winning the Euros was a stroke of redemption, Italy’s murky recent World Cup record is glaring. Since winning the World Cup in 2006, Italy has gone on to fail to get out of the group stage in 2010 and 2014 before missing two tournaments outright.