'The disappointment is too much for me to speak about my future for now,' Mancini told Rai.
Italy head coach Roberto Mancini looked on as his side were dumped out of the Fifa World Cup by North Macedonia. Picture: Alberto PIZZOLI / AFP.
However performance levels have dropped since those balmy nights and after throwing away automatic qualification in November Italy were dumped out in humiliating fashion in Palermo in a fraught play-off semi-final. “We had two shots and won the game. We won like Italians against the Italians,” said Blagoja Milevski, whose side will have Napoli’s Eljif Elmas back from suspension for their trip to Porto.Mancini’s side were loudly booed off after a defeat which means Italy will have to wait until at least 2026 to see its national team at a World Cup.
“It’s difficult to talk about a match in which we had 40 shots and they had one or two,” Mancini told reporters later.Italy as predicted dominated the play but as has been the case in recent matches struggled to break down a resolute away side and when presented with chances were not clinical enough to take them.
Berardi looked Italy’s biggest threat and went close three times in the space of five second-half minutes, first hitting a weak shot at Dimitrievski before curling another one just wide seconds later.