Italy is not at this World Cup. That sentence has been true at three of the last four tournaments. It still does not feel real to anyone who watched Fabio Cannavaro lift the trophy in Berlin in 2006, or watched Paolo Rossi in 1982, or watched any of the four blue-shirted championship parades on YouTube highlight reels. Italy is one of the great soccer nations on earth. Italy has now missed three consecutive World Cups, the first former champion ever to do that.
The latest disaster came on March 31 in Zenica, Bosnia. Italy were 1-0 up through Moise Kean. Alessandro Bastoni got sent off. Bosnia equalized late. Penalties. Italy lost 4-1 in the shootout. Gennaro Gattuso, the 2006 champion brought back as coach in June to fix what Spalletti couldn't, left the job by mutual consent three days later. The country is on its third manager of the cycle and has no idea who's next.
So why include Italy in a 2026 World Cup guide? Because they belong here. Because the diaspora in DFW will still gather in June, and they will still order the Aperol Spritzes, and they will still argue about Donnarumma. And because the absence is its own story — a four-time champion sitting out the biggest tournament ever staged, on its co-host's home soil, two hours' flight from where their grandparents emigrated. That's the kind of thing Italy will write operas about.
The Manchester City goalkeeper, 27 years old, who was supposed to be the spine of Italy for a decade and instead has watched two World Cups go by from his couch. He won Euro 2020 as a 22-year-old, was named player of the tournament, and has been Italy's first-choice keeper ever since. He'll be 30 by the next World Cup. The math on his international career is starting to get sad.
The Newcastle midfielder who served a 10-month gambling ban in 2023-24 and came back as one of the best No. 8s in the Premier League. Italy fans had pinned the rebuild around him and Calafiori. Tonali was magnificent in qualifying — he's just on a team that couldn't beat Norway and then couldn't beat Bosnia. The most cruel thing in soccer is doing your job perfectly on a team that doesn't.
The Arsenal left-back/center-back who was the breakout of Euro 2024 and the face of the 'next Italy.' Twenty-three years old, technically gifted, the kind of defender who treats the ball like a midfielder. He's the player you want to remember from this dark cycle, because by 2030 he'll be a captain and the country will need him.
Italian food in America has been flattened into red sauce and meatballs, which is fine, but it's not the point. The point is regional. A real Bolognese is a slow ragù with milk and a whisper of tomato. A real cacio e pepe is three ingredients (pasta, pecorino, black pepper) and the hardest dish on the menu to actually nail. Pizza in Naples is a wet, blistered, 90-second thing — closer to bread than to the foldable slab Americans grew up on. Tiramisu, properly, is mascarpone-eggs-coffee and nothing else.
Partenope (Downtown Dallas, with a second location in Richardson) — Naples-born chef Dino Santonicola makes Neapolitan pizza that has been ranked in the top 15 in the U.S. four years running. The pasta program is just as serious. For a watch party with no actual matches to watch, this is where DFW's Italian-American crowd will be drowning their sorrows in carbonara and Aglianico through June and July. Sprezza in Oak Lawn is the second pick — modern Italian, daily-changing menu, the cacio e pepe is the move.
A soundtrack for the matches, the pregame, and the afterparty.
Italian fan culture in 2026 is, frankly, in mourning. The bars in Little Italy neighborhoods across America that would normally be Azzurri-flag-draped are quiet, and the diaspora is split between adopting another team (Argentina is popular, given the Italo-Argentine pipeline), watching with bitter detachment, or refusing to watch entirely. If you do find an Italian-American watch crew this summer, expect espresso instead of beer, a lot of hand-gesturing about Bastoni's red card against Bosnia, and someone older quietly telling you about Paolo Rossi in 1982 — the last time Italy looked truly alive at this tournament. The grief is specific and operatic. Sit with it.
Italy has won the World Cup four times (1934, 1938, 1982, 2006). They have also now failed to qualify for it three times in a row — 2018, 2022, and 2026 — the first former champion in history to do that. Their last World Cup match was in 2014. A child born then is in middle school now and has never seen Italy at this tournament.