Euro Leagues: Italy World Cup fallout & Bosnia delight

0:00Alistair Bruce-Ball:This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

0:30Alistair Bruce-Ball:travel dollars work harder. Follow Smart Travel on your favourite podcast app.

1:00Alistair Bruce-Ball:the BBC app. Find out more at bbc.com slash unlimited.

1:13Alistair Bruce-Ball:Welcome to EuroLeagues. With me this evening, I have Guillaume Balaguet, Rafa Honigstein and the one panellist probably not massively looking forward to the next hour, Mina Rizuki and that is because, Mina, I mean, I don't even need to say it to our EuroLeague's audience very, very sadly, Italy, third World Cup finals in a row, they are not going to be there. How have you coped? You know, when we signed on to Zoom, Raf just kept doing one, two, three with his hands. And I didn't understand it for a while until I got it. So needless to say, it seems to be a lot of fun for everybody else but can I say that I'm not that surprised?

2:02Alistair Bruce-Ball:Not surprised No, okay It's not fun It's sad Yeah It's very sad It's not the same I woke up with OIT I mean I don't know now we're getting used to it Yeah Yeah I mean seriously Giba a lot of people would say that but do you feel the occasion really misses something without the four times champions? Absolutely. Capable of winning when you don't expect it, with big personalities, a lot of passion, and a country that lives and dies for football. Now there is a generation of kids and teenagers that have never seen Italy in the World Cup. Sorry, I'm not laughing. I'm not really laughing. Because it's sad.

2:42It really is just terrible. And I miss our mental blockage historically was with Italy. We broke it, but still see this as our real derby. Not France, not England, even though these are the teams that we're meeting lately. But Italy, that's the big game for us.

3:02Alistair Bruce-Ball:Rafa, this has never happened to Germany, has it? Never failed to qualify. I know they've not been at a couple of tournaments, but have never failed to qualify for a World Cup. I know, sorry. I know, I know. I prepared a song for Mina.

3:26If Raf's allowed the opportunity to bully me, I am telling you he will take and grab that opportunity and just run with it for the next hour.

3:34Alistair Bruce-Ball:Deary me, Raf. Mina said she wasn't surprised. We'll go into it in detail in a second. Are you surprised? A little bit. I mean, I saw Bosnia in their group doing really well. Austria needed a really late goal to equalize. Bosnia nearly qualified as the winners in that group. And especially at home, they're incredibly difficult to play against. And it wasn't a surprise in this much that Bosnia were the better side. You know, this was not fluke result where you have one big team battering the other team and suddenly there's this weird football moments where they attack and they concede a goal. And Bosnia had 30 shots on goal.

4:1630, 3-0. Yes, of course, Italy had one man down, but still, that was a really strong performance. And Italy, I mean, where do you start? They should never be in that position to begin with. They shouldn't be in playoffs. They shouldn't be in a situation where they haven't even gone beyond a group stage since 2006. I mean, Guillaume says it's not the same, but even when they're in the World Cup, they're not really in the World Cup. They got knocked out in the group stage the last two times.

4:42Alistair Bruce-Ball:The last team they beat, Rafa, I think was England in 2014 in a group game, but didn't make the knockout stages. Last knockout game they won was the World Cup final in 2006. And I say that despite all the bent and all that, I say that as an Italophile. I mean, I love Italy as a country. Of course, I love Italian football, as most Europeans do. But at the same time, it's not really a tragedy because they've worked so hard to be in that position. Or maybe I should say they've worked so little to be in that position. It's been coming. And it's been a problem for many, many years. And every time, I think, I remember this conversation.

5:25I'm not sure if it was with Nino or James Horncastle. Four years ago, I said, you know, when will they change? Is this now a time to wake up? And there was always, no, this was just, you know, this was just an unhappy set of circumstances. We just got a little bit unlucky. and we had a few injuries and we didn't quite perform. And there doesn't seem to be that kind of awakening and real reckoning going on. And I hope that it will, because it just cannot go on for another 12 years.

5:52Alistair Bruce-Ball:We will do the other big stories from the World Cup playoffs. We've got the full line-up of countries now. So just before we dig deep into Italy here, the six teams who've booked their spots in the 48-team tournament this week, Bosnia and Herzegovina beating Italy on penalties. Czechia did the same against Denmark, beat them on penalties. Turkey ending Kosovo's dream of a first World Cup. And Turkey are back for the first time at a World Cup since reaching the semifinals in 2002. We'll chat a little bit about Graham Potter's Sweden, who beat Poland 3-2. So Sweden qualified despite not winning a single game in their qualifying group.

6:29Alistair Bruce-Ball:They got the playoff place thanks to their performance in the most recent edition of the Nations League. And then there were the intercontinental playoffs as well. So DR Congo qualified for the first time as DR Congo. They played at the 1974 World Cup as Zaire. They beat Jamaica in Guadalajara this week. And Iraq are also through their first World Cup since 1986. They beat Bolivia to qualify. So as we've just been discussing 20 years ago, Italy were winning their fourth World Cup title. But after that defeat on penalties to Bosnia on Tuesday night, and we'll hear from Asmere Begovic shortly. Italy, Mina, sadly, will be watching from home for the third World Cup in a row.

7:10Alistair Bruce-Ball:In terms of the fallout then, Mina, let's deal with some of today's news, in fact. The president of the Football Federation, Gabriele Gravina, has resigned. He'd been in that role since 2018 and Gianluigi Buffon has also resigned from his role as head of delegation for the Italian national team. So, was that inevitable and will it make any difference? Yes, it should make a difference. And it is inevitable because I don't know how you can stay in power as the head of the Italian Football Federation when you have overseen two of the biggest failures in Italy, not qualifying in the last World Cup.

7:49I mean, he wasn't there for the first biggest failure, which was called the apocalypse. I mean, I don't know where we are now if that was the apocalypse. And he's overseen the last two. I mean, one thing you can say is he was at least there when Italy won the Euros. And as for Gianluigi Buffon, I think a lot of the times him, Bonucci, his decision, it was largely his decision, Buffon's, to bring in Gennaro Gattuso. It was almost like trying to tug at our heartstrings. You know, these were some of your great champions, the Italian national team. But how much and how experienced are they to really take on those roles and be in charge of this team at the very top level, making these decisions?

8:33So, yeah, I do think it's inevitable. Will it change much? No, because they're not the problems. Gravina, I would say, is a massive problem. But the problems are deeper than that. There is a rot at the moment in Italian football. The last time I was on this show, in fact, we were talking about the collapse of Serie A because we were discussing how Inter and Juventus had exited in the last 16 of the Champions League, sorry, rather in the playoffs. And I defended Serie A. I defended Serie A because of the fact that I thought they've been overachieving, considering their revenues, how far that they had managed to come, whether it became the Europa League or whether it's the Champions League.

9:12It's an entirely different story for the national team. We're talking about four-time world champions, level only with Germany and Europe, and obviously just behind Brazil. This is a side that was famed for their ability to never feel pressure at the highest level. I mean, Andrea Pelo famously said that they were just hanging around and playing playstation before that final in 2006 when they won the world cup this was a team that was just up to its eyeballs with talent especially in 2002 and now when we're saying big characters oh you know guillem said it's always nice because italians always have you know you think of big characters giorgio killini right bonucci do they exist anymore who are the big characters within this current side right now and if we're looking even at experience right you're thinking of tonali You're thinking of Bastoni, the best centre-back at the moment, who made that fatal error.

10:05And here's the thing. How do you look at all of this? Because you can say, in many ways, it is sometimes just delicate things. Like, what if Bastoni didn't get sent off? What if Moazekin converted his opportunity and made it 2-0? What if they were facing a great Norway side, when, like Sweden, I mean, they are in the World Cup and they didn't have that. Maybe what we're supposed to do is be relegated to the nation's league Group C, right? So there are different things that I look at. And I think to myself, you know, it was what, 30? I don't even remember the amount of shots at the time against North Macedonia.

10:45It was 32 shots, 32 shots against Macedonia, 16 corners. In every statistical measure of that game, Italy had the upper hand and they lost. And you can tell yourself it was cool. But even looking to that, they shouldn't have reached the playoffs because Jorginho had missed a thousand penalties. So should they have found themselves there? Even if they won North Macedonia, they would have had to face Portugal. So it's one of those where, you know, there's no stadiums. Everyone isn't trying to keep power. It's so corrupt at that top level. I honestly, I need an hour to go through each one.

11:19Alistair Bruce-Ball:Guillaume, where do they start then? Do you think where do they start here? It's that failure, because it can only be called a failure, it's a monster of many heads. It's a tree with many branches and we've touched on some of them. So you hear the likes of Cesc Fabregas and many others, but Cesc recently saying that he would prefer to have Italian talent in the squad, but he's been looking for it and so has the club and he cannot find it, youth talent. Well, that's dangerous when you cannot find that talent. but you can also talk about the fact that the shadow of the past and we already mentioned some of those big monsters in the past that were helping Italy win, they're not there and the shadow is far too big and perhaps they're trying to do things maybe the same way looking for, as Capello, when Capello talks and everybody listens or so many listen, he starts talking about we don't defend like in the past we don't have the personalities of the past perhaps the past should be forgotten and just kick forward to a different direction.

12:24But warnings have been there since Roberto Baccio was, what was he like, the technical director of the Federation in 2013, when he said that I haven't been allowed to work, he said. My 900-page program has remained a dead letter. 10 million euros have been allocated to help me, and I haven't received a send yet, and I'm hearing and suffering the consequences. So you're talking about somebody that's perhaps trying to change, and there's a whole structure of failure that means that you cannot fail unless you decapitate some of the people in charge.

12:56Alistair Bruce-Ball:Yeah. Can they look outside of Italy, do you think, Rafa? Would they want to, to learn lessons from elsewhere to try and improve? You know, other nations have been at rock bottom and sort of pick themselves up. Or is it so, you know, is Italy such an individual, sort of unique football nation? That won't happen, do you think? I'm in two minds about this. I think on the one hand, when you have a country the size, the history of Italy, it would almost be a sense of capitulation if now they said, OK, we have not enough know-how, we need to go and import it. I mean, England has done it. And I'm not sure it says much for English coaching that they had to go down that route, as much as I think Tuchel is a brilliant manager.

13:44I don't think Italy will do it. but looking at the list of names being mentioned it also doesn't inspire me with a lot of confidence that things change because the same names i don't know maybe there are names that haven't emerged yet but if i see you know again mancini allegri all these guys i mean it sounds to me like just i haven't seen his name being mentioned um that would make for a change that would make that would make for a big change in style of football. But can he play, can I theoretical Pep Guardiola as Italy manager, can he play Pep Guardiola football with the kind of player that Italy produces?

14:26When was the last time we have seen a genuine world-class, world-class attacking number 10, attacking winger, centre forward even of the likes that would walk into a Real Madrid team a Barcelona team a top English side these players they're not there or if they are there they're not being developed and they're not being given a chance to to progress and to grow into the kind of players that they can be but the players are not there as far as I can see Can I push back on some things? You know, when we talk about the youth and Fabregas says that he can't find them. So Como has come under fire recently because from all the Italian football teams, they've given Italian actual football as the least amount of minutes.

15:18So all in all this season they have played, and Italian football without that team has played one minute. One minute is all an Italian player has played within Como. And so it's not that he can't find any, because Italy in 2024 won the Under-17 European Championship. They won the Under-17 World Cup, sorry, the third place in 2025. The Under-19 European Championship won in 2023 was Italy. Under-20 World Cup, runners-up in 2023. The talent is there. And I think that Baggio had some great ideas about it. The problem you have is after that, nobody takes that forward. They don't transition from that level.

16:03Now, I'm not saying to you that the Italian is not there. I think it is. I think it's not being developed correctly. I think that it's become a system that is too tactical. I think that if you bring Pep Guardiola, you are going to kill Fabio Capello because he thinks he's just the evil of everything in football. I think it's quite hilarious, to be honest with you. I think one of the major problems that you've got right now is Italian football has become really sensitive to physicality. Sorry, you want to use it? No, go on a minute.

16:31Alistair Bruce-Ball:Keep going. Sorry. Go on. Is that right now, if it's a great young player, and Raf is right, a traquartista, a fantasy player, if you like, and I think this is the problem across football, that is sort of being ironed out right now because of tactical football. Do France really exploit the strengths of their squad? Do you think that you're watching an Arsenal side that play and exploit the creativity or are they more just a hardened team? How much are we actually now within the tactical setup of our football, are we actually allowing players to show off their technique at all times in the way that we're now being here?

17:06I completely disagree. I think we have an unbelievable number of creative players in the modern game right now. Whether that's Lamine Yamal or Michael Olisse or Cole Palmer or all the French players you can think of or half the Spanish I have mentioned is full of amazing individualists. Are they playing really big? That's a different question because you have Deschamps as a manager who likes to play in a different way. But Barcelona play pretty exciting football. Bayern Munich play pretty exciting football. Manchester City play pretty exciting football. You have unbelievable players like Doku, like Dior Mondé.

17:46I mean, there's dribblers everywhere. You shake a tree and dribblers falling out of it. this idea that football has become static and pragmatic and there's no individualists anymore first of all people used to say that in the 1930s yeah 100 years ago this is just an old complaint and it's just not true it's just not true but what is true that italy doesn't have these players none of the players that we've mentioned just now is italian that's true and there's a reason for this you're right and actually there was a right there was a there was a a report that was done at the time by the, you know, the Seas Observatory, Football Observatory Demographic Study.

18:26And it was looking at the fact that from January 22nd, it was 2022 that they did this report, that Serie A gave homegrown players just 7.4 % of total playing time, which was the lowest among the top five leagues. And when you look at Argentina, they give their home players 30 % in the same period. So 30 % of their own youth products are playing minutes. Then if you look further and you look at the leagues, 27 leagues in their report in 2023, across 27 leagues, they found Italian players made the lowest proportion of forward runs of any league in possession. So this is a generation that is being built right now to destroy football more than actually create it.

19:08So I agree with your point that Italy is not actually creating if you like. But I personally don't think that a lot of teams are necessarily playing beautiful attacking football or exploiting the magnificence of their technical players. I even think that right now, even if we look at Manchester City, I would argue that they are relying on a lot of tall and bigger physical players. This is one of the issues that we have in Italy in the sense that, I'm sorry, I know Guillaume you're dying to say something, but just let me finish this point. because, yeah. But one of the issues that we have is that one of, like, Spain understood at the time that they had a physical limitation, that they were smaller players, that they were technical players, and they played on that.

19:48They created it. They ensured that they had the infrastructure to allow those players to develop. Italy right now is dismissing shorter players and smaller players and nimble players. And they are choosing the big, big guy at the top. You know, you're Lorenzo Lucrez. And I think that that focus on physicality is also another problem. So I don't at all want to diminish Italian. I absolutely think Italy is leading that and they are not creating creative players. And that's why, Mina, I've got it. Fabio Capello is the reason why you're failing big time. What does Fabio Capello represent? Winning at any cost.

20:26Style doesn't matter. You're not building anything. You have to win now. So you don't look after the young players because you think it's a waste of time. You have to win now. They're not prepared to be to jump into the and to be the defining players of a nation side or of a team. He defends that physicality that you're talking about as well and does not like where football is going, which is positional football, players developed through the intelligence, not just their physique. He defends a lot of things that really doesn't help by him being perhaps one of the biggest voices of Italian football.

21:05doesn't help Italian football. And the thing to go in favor of Pep Guardiola or whoever, it has to be somebody of a strong personality that proposes things differently with players that perhaps have been brought up with that style, with that methodology of being intelligent first, the Pep Guardiola methodology, if you like. To have somebody like that is that it will mean that we'll have enough authority to build something. There's nothing being built. And what are the national sides doing that are the successful ones? Scaloni has got a way of doing it but he's been there for a long time the Shams, Luis de la Fuente and before him a way of doing with the federation there's no plan to build anything in Italy you go from one to the other with that really relation that's entirely true but I would argue that with Capello and not that at the end of the day I think that he turned a lot of players into monsters starting with Zlatan Ibrahimovic teaching him, nurturing him into being the champion that he became and much of like that has been he's been lauded for creating that champion that champion mentality but I don't think that Capello listen I disagree with a lot of the points that he makes especially when it comes to Pep Guardiola but I what I would say is that what he is trying to say is let's not try to import different ideas from different countries and actually focusing on on actually looking what we are creating and develop around that so who do we have right now how can we go back to the things that made italy famous what is the things that you know whether it be great defending let's get back to great defending i think capello being somebody who focuses on the results that's an italy issue every single coach there from max allegri to antonio conte focuses on results focuses on their ego conte would rather be known as the guy who revolutionizes manchester united players than to give lorenzo luca a chance up top.

22:58So I think that is the issue that we've got is big egos and people not wanting to lose power and wanting to win.

23:05Alistair Bruce-Ball:On the Football Daily Podcast, the EuroLeagues with Alistair Bruce Ball.

23:28Alistair Bruce-Ball:From less than a dollar a week for your first year, read, watch and listen to trusted, independent journalism and storytelling. It all starts with a subscription to bbc.com and the BBC app. Find out more at bbc.com slash unlimited.

23:58Alistair Bruce-Ball:Red Stearns. The engines are revving. People are getting excited. Hear every race live on BBC Sounds. It's all eyes to the lights. Hands for the floor. On 5 Live Sports. On the Football Daily Podcast. The Euro Leagues. With Alistair Bruce Ball. Let's move it on from Italy then. Let's talk about the winners of the tie. Bosnia and Herzegovina. They have qualified for just their second World Cup. So they're first since 2014. We can actually bring in the man who played in goal for his country at that World Cup, Asmir Begovic. Asmir, thank you very much for joining us on the show. If you can put it into words, can you explain, describe what it means for Bosnia and Herzegovina to be there again?

24:47Well, good evening, everyone. Thanks for having me on the show. And it's been one heck of a week. Absolutely. I think for all Bosnians, a very unexpected qualification for a major tournament. I think in terms of the rebuild and what's happened in the Federation and Bosnian football over the last few years, people were more looking towards the next European championship. So to be in this World Cup is incredibly unexpected, but a very, very pleasant surprise. We've had a lot of bad luck in playoffs many times. I think we've been undone five times when I was there, four or five times at least. and so it was nice to have a bit of good fortune on our side and it means everything to our people.