Italy doesn’t deserve to take Iran’s World Cup spot, says Sydney-raised Azzurri great

Christian Vieri is still getting over it. Last month, he watched Italy’s latest World Cup qualification failure at a restaurant with a group of his ex-teammates, all of them deeply passionate about the fate of the Azzurri and the state of the Italian game.

The vibes, let’s say, were not good.

“We’re still trying to recover,” Vieri told this masthead, in a thick Australian accent that belies the fact he hadn’t returned “home” for more than 25 years until his current trip to Perth.

But where there’s life, there’s hope. And despite Italy missing a third successive World Cup – an unimaginable catastrophe – there remains a remote chance they could sneak their way in through the back door, following a thought bubble from one of Donald Trump’s top envoys.

Paolo Zampolli, the US special envoy for global partnerships, has reportedly suggested to both Trump and FIFA president Gianni Infantino that, if Iran aren’t able to participate in the upcoming World Cup, Italy should take their place.

Zampolli told the Financial Times that the four-time world champions had the “pedigree to justify inclusion”, even though it would be most irregular for an Asian country – whose involvement is only in doubt because a World Cup host nation became involved in an armed conflict against them – to be replaced by yet another from Europe.

If the door is still ajar for the Azzurri, Vieri – who jointly holds the record for most World Cup goals for Italy with fellow legends Roberto Baggio and Paolo Rossi – would hardly slam it shut.

But for him, that’s a distraction from the main issue: Why can’t they make it of their own accord?

“Of course we don’t deserve it,” Vieri said.

“We’re going to see what’s going to happen with Iran. I don’t really think much about that. You’ve got to think more about why you haven’t been going for the last 12 years. That’s the main subject.

“A lot of things have got to change. We need the government and the Italian federation to change things … to get youth players back again, as we used to have. I think that’s missing in Italy, making the Italian youngsters come up. We haven’t had so many in the last 15, 20 years – so I think they have to, instead of talking, work a lot on these topics here.”

There was a great irony that Vieri was professing this view while standing on Australian soil for the first time since 1999, when he faced the Socceroos in a friendly as part of a World Stars XI.

Vieri, now 52, is in Perth to promote the upcoming visit of Italian clubs Juventus, Inter Milan, AC Milan, and Palermo for a series of exhibition matches in August. But it was in Sydney where he grew up, and encountered his other sporting love: cricket.

He stunned reporters at the 1998 World Cup when he revealed his all-time sporting hero was not a footballer, but none other than Allan Border.

Fast-forward to now, and an Italian athlete is more likely to reach a World Cup by playing cricket rather than football.

As a child in western Sydney, he once dreamed of becoming a cricketing great himself.

“I know the cricketers are going to get angry,” he said in response to a hypothetical: if he stayed in Australia instead of returning to Italy as a teenager, could he have made it at Test level?

“But, listen, I would have done something.”

Vieri still keeps in touch with the game. In February, he sent a video message of support to the Italian cricket team ahead of their debut appearance at the ICC T20 World Cup, where they beat Nepal and fell just 24 runs short of a major upset over England.

And in his downtime, he watches snippets of the players he grew up admiring.

“I’ve been watching, on TikTok, the 1980s games,” Vieri said.

“You had Ian Botham, you had Viv Richards, all the West Indies players, Allan Border, Merv Hughes. So I’ve been watching them for the last three, four months – like at one in the morning. My wife was going, ‘What the f--- are you watching?’ So it’s very funny.”

As for the forthcoming ‘Calcio Italia’ tour of Perth – which involves three of Vieri’s former clubs in Juve, Inter and Milan – he said Italian-Australians are in for a treat, even if it might not make up for their World Cup absence.

“It’s the first time Inter is coming to Perth, to Australia,” he said.

“All the big players are going to be coming. It’s going to be a good August, I think, for all the football fans in Australia.”