Italy and an unusually large number of widescreen humiliations

For a nation with four World Cup wins on the résumé, Italy have suffered an unusually large number of widescreen humiliations at the greatest tournament of all. At Mexico 70, they conceded the most famous goal in World Cup history, Carlos Alberto setting the seal on the joint-largest, and certainly most iconic, spanking in a final. Four years earlier, a loss to North Korea led to their getting pelted by tomatoes upon arrival back home, protest registered via the medium of pizza topping. In 1950, they opted to travel to Brazil by boat having been spooked by Superga, then stank the place out and flew home anyway. Diego Maradona ran rings around them, on and off the pitch, at their own party in 1990. Roberto Baggio’s penalty is still climbing over LA. And in 2014 they only narrowly managed to beat Mr Roy’s England. The litany of gaffes, fiascos and faux pas is seemingly endless.

To be fair, in the grand karmic scheme of things, the Marco Tardelli celebration alone cancels out all of those historical negatives in one fell swoop. Never mind the four titles. However, the current crop are beginning to ask a little too much spiritual lifting of Marco. Last night in the qualifying play-offs, the Azzurri took 936 shots against North Macedonia, though not very many of them were on target. What happened next was inevitable. Aleksandar Trajkovski sent an injury-time pearler into the bottom left corner, and suddenly everyone was staring at Jorginho, wondering why he couldn’t have stopped jigging around like a harlequin in those group games against Switzerland and slotted at least one of his penalties. Oh Jorginho! There’s a time and a place for the Commedia dell’arte!

The shock result, which we all sort of knew was coming, means Italy