The cost of losing the plot

Pep Guardiola declined the job. Andrea Pirlo, his predecessor's choice, has departed after a backlash over links to a Russian betting firm. The Italian Football Federation now finds itself in further disarray, as the BBC reported this week, having failed to qualify for the World Cup for a third consecutive time. The sequence is not coincidental. It is the visible sign of an institution in structural collapse.

What the international press sees in these events is not merely sporting failure—other nations have endured that—but a loss of institutional coherence. A federation that cannot retain a manager without controversy, that cannot attract a world-class coach without that coach refusing, that cannot qualify for football's premier tournament, has ceased to function as a credible body. The betting firm scandal is not the cause of the crisis. It is a symptom. It reveals an organisation so weakened that it cannot vet its own leadership or manage the reputational consequences of its choices.

Italy's football culture remains formidable. The talent exists. The infrastructure exists. What has fractured is the chain of decision-making and accountability that turns talent into results. The world watches and sees not a country that cannot play football, but a country that cannot govern the institutions that organise it. That distinction matters. It speaks to something larger than sport.