Italy’s repechage to World Cup, Azzurri’s post stuns half the world: "Did they repechage you?"

The 2026 World Cup is about to begin, and it will be the most inclusive in history with as many as 48 national teams competing for the title, including incredible outsiders such as Curaçao, Cape Verde and Jordan. Paradoxically, however, four-time world champions Italy, again eliminated in the playoffs for the third consecutive time, will not be there. That’s a shame for the Azzurri, who on Wednesday played the first of two “friendlies of shame” with another unqualified national team, Luxembourg.

Before the match, the Azzurri’s X profile published a post that immediately went viral on social media and provoked ironic reactions from half the world. “En route” (“on the road”) wrote Italy’s official profile, accompanying photos of the players at the airport departing for Luxembourg.

Immediate mocking and teasing comments under the post arrived from all over the world, referring to the national team’s absence from the World Cup in North America. “On the road to where?” “In which group are you?”, “Go be ball pickers”, “It’s embarrassing to be Italian for 15 years now. Bosnia went to the World Cup. Bosnia,” “Someone should remind Italy that it did not qualify for the World Cup in the last 3 editions,” “Did they repechage you?”

The last comment refers to the repechage issue, which is now definitely closed. Italy was first among the non-qualifying national teams in the FIFA rankings and could have benefited from a possible forfeit by Iran, according to Article 6.7 of the FIFA regulations. ‘Team Melli’s’ situation remains in the balance due to diplomatic tensions between Iran and the United States, with visas for U.S. soil not yet issued despite all three Group G matches being played in the United States. In the end, however, a solution was found by moving the team’s base camp to Mexico.

Paolo Zampolli, the Trump administration’s special envoy and main sponsor of the blue cause, also had to raise the white flag. “My dream and that of many was to have Italy with us. I had suggested to the president and to Gianni Infantino that, in case Iran did not come for whatever reason, Italy could be brought back. Unfortunately, things did not turn out that way,” he admitted.