The Story of Italy in The World Cup Part 1

Italy participated in all the FIFA World Cup finals except in 1930, 1958, and 2018 held in Russia, where it was eliminated from the World Cup qualifying play-off by the Swedish national team,

The Italian national team will also miss the 2022 World Cup, which Qatar will host from November 21 to December 18, 2022, after its disappointing elimination from the qualifiers by losing at home to North Macedonia.

The Italian national team is the first European team to win the FIFA World Cup title, winning it four times (1934, 1938, 1982, 2006). While Italy was a runner-up in the years (1970, 1994), and came third in the 1990 championship.

World Cup 1934

In the 1934 FIFA World Cup, Italy was chosen to host the tournament, after it was nominated by the International Football Association after the Berlin Conference in October 1932. After the Executive Committee of the International Football Association met eight times, and then Italy was chosen to host the tournament at the meeting that was held in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden on October 9, 1932, the Italian request was preferred over the Swedish request, as the Italian government decided to allocate 3.5 million Italian liras as a budget for the tournament.

It is considered the first tournament in which qualifying qualifiers are played after 32 countries decided to participate in the tournament, and therefore it was necessary to hold qualifiers for 16 countries to qualify.

The Uruguayan national team, which boycotted the World Cup, was absent from the tournament after European countries boycotted the World Cup hosted by Uruguay 4 years ago, and England, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland, which were boycotting the activities of the International Football Association at that time, were also absent.

Italy played its first-round match against the United States of America on May 27, 1934, at the National Fascist Party Stadium in Rome.

Italy beat the Americans 7-1.

The scorers for Italy: Angelo Schiavio (hat-trick), Raimundo Orsi (two goals), Giovanni Ferrari, Giuseppe Meazza, while USA’s only goal was scored by Aldo Donelli.

With this victory, Italy qualified for the quarterfinals.

In the quarterfinals, at the Artemio Franchi stadium in Florence, the Italian national team faced Spain.

Spaniard Luis Regueiro opened the score in the 30th minute before Giovanni Ferrari scored the equalizer for Italy in the 44th minute.

The result remained like this until the end of the 90 minutes and extra time.

The penalty kicks system was not applied at the time, so if the match ended in a draw, it was decided on a rematch at a later date.

In the rematch that was held at the same stadium two days later, Italy won with a single goal, scored by Giuseppe Meazza.

Italy qualified for the semi-finals:

In the semi-finals and at the San Siro stadium in Milano. Italy faced Austria and managed to win by a single goal scored by Enrico Guetta in the 11th minute to qualify for the final.

The final was held on June 10, 1934, at the National Fascist Party stadium in Rome.

Italy defeated Czechoslovakia 2-1 to be crowned world champion for the first time.