“The Wizard” Forest brings Italy back into the World Cup with one of his signature quips
Mago Forest, brilliant as always, was one of the stars of the evening in Milan, where the exciting lineups for the new season of Sky and Now were unveiled. The longtime host of *Il Gialappa Show*, who took the stage alongside host Fabio Caressa, immediately brought up the national soccer team. “I’d like to congratulate them because they haven’t lost a single game in this World Cup. Let’s hope they keep it up,” he began, drawing laughter from the entire audience at the Teatro Lirico Giorgio Gaber, the venue for the event. It was a humorous way to play down what is, in reality, a sporting tragedy for the entire Italian soccer community.
The Sicilian artist’s joke takes on even greater symbolic significance when one considers the long odyssey that preceded this 2026 World Cup. Italy, eliminated in the qualifying round after a loss in Bosnia, had clung for weeks to the dream of a wild-card spot in place of Iran, whose participation in the World Cup had been called into question by a series of geopolitical tensions. Even figures from the entertainment world had weighed in on the matter: Carlo Verdone, a die-hard Roma fan, had dashed any hopes for the Azzurri with blunt words: “I don’t like certain things: we have to be sportsmen; Iran should go to the World Cup. Italy lost in Bosnia; that chapter is closed, and we’ll start over with a new coach and a new mindset.”
Fabio Caressa, the very host who shared the stage with Forest at the Sky presentation event, had expressed a similar view. The journalist had called some celebratory videos related to the possibility of a repêchage “shameful,” strongly reiterating that “the chance of being repêchaged, at the moment, is zero” and adding a deeper reflection: “Iran being out of the World Cup would mean that the war continues, that sports lose their meaning of bringing people together even in times of difficulty. This is an important matter, far more important than the national team’s potential repêchage.”
On the Sky front, the Milan event also served to highlight a very rich sports season for the platform. Among the most notable developments, Beppe Bergomi—a legend of Inter and the national team—commented on the sidelines of the event on the Balogun case, one of the most talked-about incidents of this 2026 World Cup. “In a game where we pay attention to everything—even a one-centimeter offside—we want everything to be perfect: as a player, I didn’t think that was a red-card offense,” explained “Lo Zio.” “If I can rectify a decision that wasn’t fair on the field and file an appeal, I don’t find that scandalous. Interference from presidents, though—that’s another story,” he concluded, referring to the controversy surrounding Donald Trump’s phone call to Gianni Infantino.
The presentation of the Sky and Now schedules, however, gave fans reasons to be excited about the future. The new season of “Casa dello Sport” will feature over 15,000 hours of live coverage and more than 3,000 events, ranging from soccer to motorsports, from tennis to basketball, with Wimbledon already underway and exclusively covered through 2030, and the U.S. Open coming up in late August. Among the most anticipated new developments, Italian Formula 1 champion Kimi Antonelli will serve as Sky’s lead ambassador alongside Alessandro Del Piero, while a Sky Original documentary film dedicated to Giampiero Boniperti—one of the most iconic figures in Juventus’ history—is on the way.
