Italy humiliated by North Macedonia and miss second successive World Cup

PALERMO, Italy: Italy will miss their second World Cup in a row after slumping to a shock 1-0 playoff semi-final defeat to North Macedonia on Thursday (Mar 24).

Aleksandar Trajkovski's low drive in the second minute of stoppage time stunned the European champions in Palermo and set up a qualifying final with Portugal in Porto next Tuesday for a chance to be in Qatar in November.

Roberto Mancini's side were loudly booed off after a defeat which means that Italy will have to wait until at least 2026 to see its national team at a World Cup.

By then it will have been 12 years since the Azzurri's last participation in the world's biggest football tournament after they failed to qualify for the 2018 edition, also crashing out in the playoffs on that occasion.

"It's hard to explain, it's such a huge disappointment," Giorgio Chiellini said to RAI.

"We played well but we just failed to score the goal. We've made mistakes since September and we've paid for them. We're distraught."

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.

The hosts should have been ahead on the half-hour mark when Domenico Berardi was gifted the ball on the edge of the area by goalkeeper Stole Dimitrievski.

The Sassuolo winger, who has been in red-hot form this season for his club, took too long to shoot and hit his effort into Dimitrievski's welcoming arms.

It was wave after wave of Italy attack, but an initially vibrant crowd began to grow frustrated at their inability to carve out a clear opportunity to score, and it showed in a team which began to look desperate to make the breakthrough.

Those fans were on their