Italy not qualifying is just bonkers. Yes, the shouldn't have lost to North Macedonia. But it has to say something about the qualifying system that the defending European champions who are ranked #6 in the world can get left out with one bad game.
Back-to-back(-to-back) bad games. We had an easy group, led the whole way, and didn't close it out when we had a pair of draws with Switzerland and couldn't score against Northern Ireland who was playing for nothing. And even beating North Macedonia wouldn't have been enough with Portugal waiting for us.
At least we won't be able to miss when they expand to 48 teams. Right? Right?
