Italy-Norway: a victory to charge up and polemic with FIFA

San Siro packed for Italy-Norway. At stake is not a direct pass to the World Cup. In fact, it belongs the to Haaland and his teammates. The’hypothesis of winning 9-0 (the result needed to overcome the Norwegians in the standings) is pure utopia. However, there is a strong desire for the national team to win this’last game and redress the 0-3 suffered in the first leg challenge. That defeat, with Spalletti still on the bench, made these World Cup qualifiers an uphill climb for the Azzurri.

Gattuso expects a strong performance from his team so as to hook Norway on 21 points and load up further ahead of the play-offs in March, a compulsory step to detach the pass for the next World Cup.

In addition, by beating Haaland’s Norway, Italy would have more “material” to make FIFA understand that the current regulations for qualifying for the World Cup finals are wrong. Should the play-offs go wrong, the national team, should it join Norway on 21 points, would be left out because of one loss in all the qualifiers.

The current regulation, set on goal difference, has not convinced many. They also do not like the’idea that only 16 European national teams are entitled to the World Cup. Enlargement to 48 national teams has not benefited European soccer and, specifically, is weighing heavily on’Italy.