Italy’s repechage to the World Cup, amidst chaos and uncertainties there'is who makes his judgment
The 2026 World Cup has not yet begun, but it is already one of the most talked about in history. Controversy had begun as early as the announcement of the triple venue (United States, Canada and Mexico) and the new 48-team format, but it has escalated in recent months given an incandescent geopolitical picture that continues to generate uncertainties, including one that closely concerns Italy: the remote but still alive possibility of a last-minute repechage.
Reigniting the debate in the last few hours have been the words of Victor Hugo Morales, the historic voice of South American soccer (his “Cosmic Barrilete” with which he dubbed Diego Armando Maradona after the “Goal of the Century” against England at the 1986 World Cup was very famous), who spoke at the microphones of Radio CRC. A very harsh judgment, which photographs a widespread malaise towards a tournament perceived more and more as a commercial product and less and less as a sporting event.
“I don’t like the World Cup that will be played in a few months,” he said. “It seems to me to be a real marketing operation where matches are going to be played in three different countries including the United States, where there is a great distance between one city and another, there are 48 teams competing and the first part of it is just to feed the soccer store. I don’t like it that way, it’s just marketing.
Morales didn’t stop there, also pointing his finger at the political and international context: “Playing in Mexico, Canada and the United States because marketing dictates it is not good for me, I don’t like the fact that there are 48 teams and that it’s being played at a time when Trump is president of the United States, with a very tense international climate and a conflict going on. I will only follow this World Cup professionally, without that love I have for the sport.”
Making the picture complex is the situation of Iran and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Team Melli’s participation is now almost certain but the local federation has had to move through no small bureaucratic maze, also displacing the U.S. government with its decision to move its base to Mexico. The Congolese national team, on the other hand, is grappling with restrictions related to the Ebola virus outbreak and is forced into a sort of sanitary “bubble” in Belgium, from which it will emerge practically close to the first match.
The Azzurri, in this situation, remain at the window. No one at the sports-political level is harboring illusions, but the possibility of a repechage linked to a possible forfeit, even at the last minute, of Iran or the Democratic Republic of Congo, cannot yet be definitively ruled out. The rules provide margins for extraordinary intervention in the event of geopolitical or health emergencies, and Italy, by ranking and pedigree, would be among the top candidates.
