Gennaro Gattuso has the balls. Despite its victory in Moldova (0-2), Italy is on a poor track to qualify directly for the 2026 World Cup.
Barring a 9-0 victory against Norway on Sunday, the Nazionale will finish second in their group. A heartbreak for a team which could finish these qualifiers with 21 points out of 24 possible, and which has not lost a point since the arrival of Gattuso last June. A real threat, too, for a country traumatized by eliminations in the play-offs during the two previous editions.
The format of these “qualifiers” is quite cruel, and this is what led Gattuso to the following, quite meaningless, thought. “In my time, the second in the group qualified directly for the World Cup: in 1994, there were two African teams, and now there are eight… I won’t say more”railed the former AC Milan player.
Gattuso is (almost) wrong
Actually, there were three African teams at the 1994 World Cup (Cameroon, Morocco and Nigeria), but Gattuso is fighting the wrong fight. The former OM coach undoubtedly wants to underline the fact that Africa is one of the big winners from the move to 48 teams in the World Cup, with eight direct qualifiers this year, and a possible play-off. Europe, for its part, went from 13 qualifiers in 1994 (out of 24 participants) to 16 for 2026. Its ratio has fallen compared to the total number of nations competing, but the Old Continent is not much worse off for all that.
Basically, it is therefore incorrect to estimate that it was easier to qualify for the World Cup at that time. For the simple reason that there were fewer tickets distributed. In 1994, when Germany was automatically qualified as defending champion, there were only six qualifying groups (and therefore two qualified per group, effectively). This time, there are 12 groups, which explains why only the first qualifies, but the “big ones” are distributed in different groups, which gives a lower density. And we will also remember that Italy finished first in its qualifying group in 1994.
