Five-a-side soccer, no World Cup for Italy

For the second time in a row the Azzurri miss qualification

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For the second time in a row, Italy will not send its national team to the final phase of the World Cup of 5-a-side soccer: Wednesday’s defeat against Spain in Faenza, a clear 4-0 for the Iberians, in fact forces the Azzurri to end not only the round in second place, but also to finish last, and therefore out of the useful zone for the play-offs, in the ranking of the second-ranked.

Against the futsal version of the Red Furies, the miracle did not come, despite the push of the 3,500 fans who flocked to the PalaCattani: goals by Boyis, Juan Emilio, Antonio Perez and Raul Gomez extinguished all Azzurri hopes and it was useless the simultaneous knockout of Slovenia, 3-2, against the Czech Republic: as for the National 11-a-side soccer team, no World Cup for the second edition in a row.

"Today’s defeat è is tough, becauseé marks an end to this qualification path – said coach Bellarte to the official channels of the 5-a-side Football Division -. We made a path all in all in line with what we had to do, of course it could have gone better had we had the chance to participate in the play off. There is no doubt that ours è a long process, which has the goal of bringing us to compete more and more at a high level. We started well in the round, then è lacked something the rest of the way".

Uefa qualifies seven national teams for the review to be played in Uzbekistan in 2024: Spain, France, Portugal (winner of the last World Cup, played in Lithuania in 2021), Kazakhstan and Ukraine are already at the World Cup, while the last two places will be contested through playoffs by Croatia, Finland, the Netherlands and Poland.