North Macedonia's Late Goal Creates A Dark Record For Italy At The 2022 World Cup, Verratti: It's A Nightmare!

The Italian national team was eliminated from the 2022 World Cup after losing to North Macedonia in the play-offs. (Photo: Twitter @Azzurri)

JAKARTA - The Italian national team will not enliven the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Surprisingly, Gli Azzurri was eliminated in the play-offs.

The Italian national team must recognize the superiority of North Macedonia with a narrow score of 0-1. North Macedonia's late goal made Roberto Mancini's men carve a dark record.

This is the first time that Italy has not taken part in two consecutive editions!

Italian player, Marco Verratti, called this a nightmare for his country. He admitted that he could not understand why this defeat could happen.

"I think we dominated the game and we should have won," Verratti told RAI Sport.

"We could have done better. This is football. It's just hard to explain. It's a nightmare."

Italy actually performed better than North Macedonia. This can be seen from the match statistics. Gli Azzurri recorded 70 percent possession of the ball. They had four shots on goal and nine shots off the mark.

While Macedonia only fired two shots on goal. Unfortunately, one of them scored a goal in the 92nd minute. The goal scored by Aleksandar Trajkovski made Gli Azzurri have to bite their fingers.