In the meantime, between those two world championships, they were also European champions and showed that they are a great team, so the surprise is even bigger.
In the qualification group for the world championship, they were second, behind Switzerland, and in the additional qualifications they lost to Macedonia.
I watched that game against Macedonia and Italy was a much better team but they couldn't score a goal. Macedonia scored a goal from practically the only real opportunity, in the last minute of the game, and beat Italy.
I would say Italy was just unlucky.
For me actually, it is not a very big surprise because Italy has not been doing well recently and I am not going to say that there did not deserve to play in the world cup but they have also not been playing like a team that deserves to play in the world cup. And I also agree that they have been really unlucky in some cases. But whatever you say they cannot just concede a goal at that time of the match against Macedonia.
I agree, Italy didn't deserve to play in the world cup because they played badly in the world cup qualifiers.
In their matches, there were a lot of bad luck, unused penalties, missed opportunities to score, but in the end, if you can't achieve the desired result, you don't deserve success.
They were excellent at the last European Championship and became European champions, but it seems that their magic has been lost since then
The time has probably come for the rejuvenation of the Italian national team and a new beginning.