Twitter erupts as Italy fail to qualify for 2022 FIFA World Cup

In what will go down as one of international football's most memorable moments, North Macedonia have knocked European Champions Italy out of qualifying for the 2022 FIFA World Cup .

North Macedonia will play Portugal in the final of their UEFA Playoffs for the FIFA World Cup in Qatar after beating an Italy side that had won the European Championship last summer.

Yet they fell to a North Macedonia who went into the tie as huge underdogs, seemingly just proud to have made it as far as they had.

Aleksandar Trajkovski's fine finish deep into added time shocked the world and the reactions of fans, legends and journalists on Twitter can be seen below:

What has happened to Italy as they fail to qualify for the FIFA World Cup 2022?

The demoralizing defeat on Thursday night means Italy will miss out on a place at the FIFA World Cup for a second time in a row.

Despite their impressive rise that coincided with winning UEFA Euro 2020, Roberto Mancini's side have been a shadow of their trophy-winning team.

They mustered 32 shots in the defeat, only managing to hit the target on five occasions. The Italians looked stressed as they couldn't find the vital goal.

They completely dominated the affair from the get-go but their lack of firepower led to a moment that will go down in international football history.

For all of Italy's good play, they seemingly fold once they've made it to the final third.

Despite not losing a game in their qualification group, they have lacked that killer instinct to put sides to bed and that flaw has come back to haunt them in the most extreme of circumstances.

Huge questions will be asked of Roberto Mancini on how he has managed to guide a team to the European Championships and then fail to qualify for the FIFA World Cup just eight months on.

The Portuguese side romped to victory over Turkey in an entertaining affair with goals from Otávio Edmilson da Silva Monteiro and Diogo Jota before the break seemingly putting them in full control.

But Burak Yilmaz's strike in the 65th minute made things interesting and he could have further thrown Portugal's lead into tatters when Turkey won a penalty in the 85th minute.

Yilmaz, however, would blaze over before Matheus Nunes wrapped things up for Portugal, who will now face North Macedonia.

The story was there to be written for Cristiano Ronaldo's Portugal to take on Italy with a heavyweight not making it to the FIFA World Cup.

But that story needn’t occur as the Italians crash out in a demoralizing fashion.

About the author

Matthew is a European and international football journalist at Sportskeeda who has been covering news, rumors and match reports for close to 3 years. Learning creative writing from University of Essex, he combined his skills and passion for football take up writing for the sport professionally.

Matthew always strives to go beyond a story and offer unique and lesser-known insights, while maintaining an unbiased tone in his articles. His reporting exploits at the company have helped him gain a humungous readership of 25 million, with one of his articles raking in a whopping 724,000 reads.

A Manchester United fan since childhood, Matthew admired Sir Alex Ferguson for his loyalty and brave coaching style. His favorite footballer is Thierry Henry, believing the Frenchman to be uniquely talented and charismatic. An ardent Three Lions fan, England's penalty shootout win over Colombia in 2018 is his favorite FIFA World Cup moment of all time, and he believes that Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappe will have a Ballon d’Or duopoly after Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.

He also follows his local EFL League Two clubs AFC Wimbledon and Sutton United, and spends his free time watching and writing about professional wrestling. He also likes to work out, watch movies and go for night outs.

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