Florence –
Gianluigi Buffon resigned from his position as Head of Delegation Italian national team. He resigned after Gli Azzurri failed to qualify 2026 World Cup.
The Italian national team had to bury their dream of appearing in the 2026 World Cup. This happened after Gli Azzurri lost to Bosnia and Herzegovina 1-4 on penalties in the play-off final. The match had to be decided via penalty shootout after a 1-1 draw for 120 minutes.
Failure to perform at the 2026 World Cup meant that Italy failed to qualify for this event three times in a row. Previously, La Nazionale also missed the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.
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Italy last played in the World Cup in the 2014 edition. This is a shame because Italy is one of the football giants in the world with four World Cup titles.
This failure immediately had an impact on Italian football officials. President of the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) Gabriele Gravina officially resigned after Gli Azzurri failed to qualify for the 2026 World Cup.
Following Gravina, Gianluigi Buffon also resigned his position as Head of the Italian National Team Delegation. The legendary Italian goalkeeper stepped down from the position he has occupied since the summer of 2023.
Buffon announced his resignation via a post on his Instagram account. He wanted to resign immediately after the match against Bosnia last weekend. However, he held back waiting for Gravina to withdraw first.
“Resigning right after the match against Bosnia ended was an urgent action, an action that came from the bottom of my heart. It was as spontaneous as the tears that flowed in my heart, and which I know I feel with all of you,” said Buffon in a post on Instagram.
“I was asked to postpone until everyone had time to reflect. Now that President Gravina has chosen to step down, I feel free to do what I feel is the responsible action. Despite my sincere belief that I have built so much in terms of team spirit with Rino Gattuso and all my collaborators in the very short time available to the national team. The main goal was to bring Italy back to the World Cup and we didn’t succeed,” he continued.
(pur/mrp)
