“Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood, for nothing now can ever come to any good.” Being in London the morning after a particularly poor Sweden team had managed to eliminate Gli Azzurri should have been a different experience...especially when your work agenda that day involved meeting Italians based in Covent Garden. The hand gestures, the melodrama, the tears. It is of course true, tragically so, that a World Cup without Italy doesn’t make any sense, and for all football fans represents a true glitch-in-the-matrix type moment. Italy has been in six World Cup finals, and they have defined the tournament in every way possible. They represent one of the true “schools” of football culture. It’s like not inviting the coolest kids to the party. That national anthem, those elegant kits, the fear that whilst notoriously slow starters, they know how to win a tournament; the further they go, the more of a protagonist they always become. This is an undeniable disaster for football, and FIFA, who itself has probably lost £80m in commercials rights. But today there was no anger at the Ivy. Italian heads with stylish haircuts were shaken in resignation, confirmation of impending doom that had been merely confirmed. You don’t get so upset at inevitability. This has been coming ragazzi. And we all knew it. Since 2006, Italy have performed awfully in World Cups, disturbing the stats and almanac guys only briefly, before being eliminated from mediocre groups. So now, in what flippantly could be interpreted as a fit of pique, they’ve apparently decided not to attend the celebrations at all this year. Bravi! But yes, this has been coming. The peninsula stopped producing “i talenti” many years ago. Bruno Conti, Giuseppe Giannini, Roberto Baggio, Alessandro Del Piero, Francesco Totti, Gianfranco Zola, Roberto Mancini, Antonio Cassano, Andrea Pirlo. Players to seduce the most diffident and envious anti-Italian. Players to make you ignore some playacting, cynical defense, and extravagant time wasting. (By the way, anyone thinking those vices are exclusive to Italy have not been watching). Those players were beautiful. They were iconic. They became a global brand. No Totti no party, Pirlo is not impressed. Italian football was always forgiven and secretly admired because it was “Bello”. Simply “Bello”. But they are gone. A bunch of hard-nosed juventini in front of the greatest goalie in world history, lead by some astute Italian coaching from Cesare Prandelli and Antonio Conte, in 2012 and 2016 respectively, have hidden a pretty dramatic decline. Where in hindsight it is now clear that Fabio Grosso in Berlin was the equivalent of the 1968 Elvis special. One last display of outrageous talent before kissing ladies with blue hair in Vegas. Well, Carlo Tavecchio has finally taken us to Vegas, with the part of Fredo Corleone played by a coach called Gian Piero Ventura.