Italy and T\u00fcrkiye have secured their spots in the UEFA play-offs for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, keeping their dreams of qualification alive after intense group-stage battles. While both nations missed out on automatic qualification, their resilience and recent form suggest they are far from done yet.<\/p>\n
Italy, the four-time world champions, confirmed their play-off berth with a commanding 3\u20130 win over Israel in Udine. Mateo Retegui continued his fine scoring run with a brace, while Gianluca Mancini sealed the victory late on. The Azzurri\u2019s result guarantees them a second-place finish in Group I, ensuring a playoff lifeline. After the heartbreak of missing out on Qatar 2022, Luciano Spalletti\u2019s men now face another high-stakes path \u2014 one they\u2019ll be desperate to conquer to avoid consecutive absences from football\u2019s grandest stage.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, T\u00fcrkiye also booked their play-off ticket following a solid campaign that saw them maintain consistency under Vincenzo Montella.\u00a0 Despite some ups and downs, T\u00fcrkiye\u2019s mix of young talents like Arda G\u00fcler and Kenan Y\u0131ld\u0131z alongside experienced names such as Hakan \u00c7alhano\u011flu has kept them competitive in every fixture.<\/p>\n
With both sides now set for the UEFA play-offs in March 2026, the stakes couldn\u2019t be higher. The format, one-legged semifinals and finals, leaves no room for error.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Italy and T\u00fcrkiye have secured their spots in the UEFA play-offs for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, keeping their dreams\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":202,"featured_media":35902,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[3686,1823,3417,3761,4133,4132,3860,3570,3649],"class_list":["post-16260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football","tag-david-ornstein","tag-fabrizio-romano","tag-italy","tag-italy-football-team","tag-play-offs","tag-spain-football","tag-turkiye","tag-world-cup-2026","tag-world-cup-qualifiers"],"reading_time":"2 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/202"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16260\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}