Italy’s coach, Gennaro Gattuso, candidly acknowledged his team’s shortcomings following a crushing defeat at home against Norway in their final World Cup qualifier on Sunday night.

Italy faced the daunting task of defeating Norway by nine goals to automatically qualify for the World Cup. The Azzurri took an initial lead with an early goal from Francesco Pio Esposito in the first half.

However, the flood of goals Italy needed never materialized. Instead, it was Norway who dominated the scoreboard. Erling Haaland netted two goals, while Antonio Nusa and Jorgen Strand Larsen each contributed to Norway’s commanding 4-1 victory at the San Siro.

“We owe our fans an apology,” Gattuso expressed in an interview with Italian state broadcaster RAI following the match.

“This defeat is devastating,” he added.

As a result of this loss, Italy now faces the challenge of navigating the World Cup play-offs for the third time in 12 years, a hurdle they have not successfully cleared since their triumphant 2006 World Cup victory.

The thrashing against Norway means Italy must negotiate the play-offs for the third time in 12 years to qualify for the World Cup, something it has failed to do since lifting the trophy in 2006.

The post-mortem after the defeat in Milan followed a predictable route, amid calls for Gattuso to be sacked to warnings Italian football is long beyond rescuing and everything in between.

But while Italy may miss out on another World Cup, Serie A remains in fine form.

Is Serie A the most entertaining league in Europe?

Yes, the heydays of the 1980s and 1990s when the self-styled “most beautiful league in the world” ruled over the beautiful game are long gone, but Italy’s top flight remains immensely entertaining.

That, admittedly, does not mean free-scoring. There were three 0-0 draws in the last round of Serie A fixtures before the international break, bringing this season’s tally to 17 scoreless affairs in 11 weeks.

In the Premier League, Erling Haaland has already scored 14 goals, while Kylian Mbappe and Harry Kane have scored 13 each in LaLiga and the Bundesliga respectively.

Over in France, Joaquin Panichelli has netted 12 goals for Strasbourg.

In Italy, meanwhile, the league top scorer is Hakan Calhanoglu with five goals, two of which came from the penalty spot.

But there is more to football than high-scoring matches and Serie A is currently home to a four-horse title race, with two points separating league leaders Inter Milan and Roma from AC Milan and reigning champions Napoli.

That is the biggest gap in any of Europe’s top five leagues, with Paris Saint-Germain two points clear of Marseille in Ligue 1 and Real Madrid three ahead of Barcelona in LaLiga.

Arsenal are four points ahead of Manchester City in the Premier League, while Bayern Munich are already six points clear of second-placed RB Leipzig in the Bundesliga.

To put the latter number into context, that is as big a gap as the one separating Inter and Roma from seventh place Como.

Serie A’s competitiveness isn’t new either. Since Juventus won nine titles in a row between 2012 and 2020, there have been three different winners in the intervening five seasons.

Inter won the Scudetto in 2021 and 2024, Napoli took the crown in 2023 and 2025 and Milan topped the table in 2022.

Over the same period, PSG and Bayern have won four titles each with their dominance only interrupted by Lille in 2021 and Bayer Leverkusen in 2024 respectively.

In Spain, meanwhile, the Barcelona-Real Madrid duopoly have shared two titles each over the past four years since Atletico Madrid triumphed in 2021.

As for the Premier League, only Liverpool’s record-equalling 20th title last season prevented City from winning an unprecedented fifth league title on the bounce.

Serie A’s new “seven sisters”

More significantly, over the past five seasons, Inter are the only team to have always finished in the top four in Serie A.

Napoli and Milan won a combined three titles in the same period, but they both also experienced drastic declines with the Partenopei finishing 10th the season after triumphing in 2023 and the Rossoneri coming eighth last term.

Atalanta have finished in the top four three times, while Lazio, Fiorentina and Bologna, who claimed a first trophy in half a century last season, have all forced their way into the top seven at some stage.

On a continental level, Inter made the Champions League final in two of the past three seasons, albeit losing both, while Roma won the Europa Conference League in 2022 and Fiorentina lost the final in each of the following two seasons.

Atalanta, meanwhile, won the Europa League in 2024, a year after Roma had fallen at the final hurdle.

The parallels with the “Seven Sisters” era of the late 1990s and early 2000s when Juventus, both Milanese clubs, Lazio, Roma, Fiorentina and Parma were all challenging for the title are difficult to ignore.

In reality, the “Seven Sisters” tag was always somewhat of a misnomer as Juventus and Milan shared all but two titles between 1992 and 2004, with Lazio and Roma bucking the trend at the turn of the century.

The term swiftly became anachronistic as Inter won four titles in a row between 2006 and 2009, before Juventus reeled off nine on the bounce after Milan’s 2010 triumph.

And while the likes of Atalanta and Bologna may not have enough to mount a sustained title challenge – although the former came close under Gian Piero Gasperini – Serie A is no longer a procession.

As Antonio Conte noted after his Napoli side lost 2-0 away at Bologna before the international break, the time when big clubs could treat certain fixtures as formalities is long gone.

“I’m sorry to bring up old skeletons from the past but Napoli finished 10th after the third Scudetto (in 2023),” he said.

“In calcio, doing your job is not enough. You need passion, enthusiasm, heart.

As he urged some of his players to show some life, Conte added: “I don’t want to accompany the dead”.

While Conte may not want to consider his team’s own mortality, Serie A remains alive and kicking.