ROME (AP) — Italy is coming off a record performance at the Winter Olympics.
Kimi Antonelli just became the second youngest driver at 19 to win a Formula One race and is considered The Next Big Thing in auto racing.
The Azzurri rugby squad beat England for the first time in the Six Nations.
Jannik Sinner is back to winning ways on the tennis court.
Italy’s men and women are the world champions in volleyball.
Even the country’s unheralded baseball and cricket teams have broken barriers recently.
Yet there’s one big team from Italy that continues to struggle. The once-dominant men’s soccer team is at risk of failing to qualify for a third consecutive World Cup.
The four-time World Cup champion needs to beat Northern Ireland in the playoffs next Thursday in Bergamo and then either Wales or Bosnia and Herzegovina away to avoid going at least 16 years without even playing a match at soccer’s biggest event.
“Sports are about cycles but this one in soccer has gone on for too long,” Italy Sports Minister Andrea Abodi says.
An entire generation — basically anyone under 15 — has no memory of the last time Italy played in the World Cup: An elimination loss to Uruguay in 2014 in Brazil remembered for Luis Suarez’s bite of Giorgio Chiellini’s shoulder.
“For generations of Italians, the World Cup was the time when the country came together and waved our flag,” Abodi tells La Stampa. “Our national spirit now extends beyond soccer but it would still be nice to share those emotions with younger fans.”
Italy’s qualifying campaign was doomed in the opening match by a 3-0 loss at Erling Haaland’s Norway — leading to coach Luciano Spalletti being replaced by Gennaro Gattuso.
The Azzurri then went on a six-match winning streak before losing again to Norway in November to finish second in their group and end up in the playoffs again — the stage where Italy was eliminated by Sweden before the 2018 World Cup and by North Macedonia in 2022.
Ranked 13th, Italy will be a heavy favorite against No. 69 Northern Ireland.
But the Azzurri should be reminded that their last meeting, a 0-0 draw in Belfast in 2021, plunged the recently crowned European champion into the playoffs for the 2022 World Cup.
Italy has won all seven of its home games against Northern Ireland and the opponent’s captain, Liverpool right back Conor Bradley, is out injured.
Northern Ireland coach Michael O’Neill was also appointed Blackburn manager last month in an arrangement that sees him splitting duties.
Italy’s World Cup struggles go back all the way to 2010 and 2014, having failed to advance from its group on both occasions.
The Azzurri's last World Cup knockout match was when they won the title in 2006 by beating France in a penalty shootout — a match remembered more for Zinedine Zidane headbutting Marco Materazzi.
So it’s no accident that members of the 2006 squad are involved in trying to revive the Azzurri’s fortunes — starting with Gattuso.
Former goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon, who holds the record with 176 appearances for Italy, is the national team’s delegation chief and had a role in selecting Gattuso.
Also, former fullback Gianluca Zambrotta and former midfielder Simone Perrotta are working in the Italian federation’s youth development program.
Even with Gattuso and Buffon making their cases, the national team was not able to convince soccer authorities to set up a training camp in the four months since Italy last played.
Instead, Gattuso and Buffon embarked on a tour up and down Italy — plus trips to London, Saudi Arabia and Qatar — to share dinners with the squad’s players and maintain team spirit.
Serie A has gone from being a destination for the world’s best players in the 1990s and early 2000s to a competition that now attracts castoffs past their prime from other leagues.
No Italian club has won the Champions League since Inter Milan in 2010.
Italy won the European Championship under Roberto Mancini in 2021 but it was also under Mancini that the Azzurri failed to qualify for the following year’s World Cup.
Mancini left the team in chaos by resigning to take on a lucrative job as Saudi Arabia coach in 2023.
Spalletti had little time to prepare Italy for Euro 2024 and the Azzurri were eliminated by Switzerland in the round of 16.
With the national team’s struggles in mind, federation president Gabriele Gravina this week unveiled a new youth development program he says is aimed at “overcoming a sort of extreme tacticalism that really worries me.”
Gravina suggests Italian clubs and coaches need to move away from defensive tactics that prioritize “winning at all costs.”
Perhaps the soccer team could learn some lessons from Italy's successes in other sports, too.
AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
FILE -Italy's Pio Esposito reacts during the 2026 World Cup Group I qualifier soccer match between Italy and Norway in Milan, Italy, Nov. 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno, File)
FILE -Italy's head coach Gennaro Gattuso gestures during the 2026 World Cup Group I qualifier soccer match between Italy and Norway in Milan, Italy, Nov. 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno, File)
HELSINKI (AP) — Heavy social media use contributes to a stark decline in well-being among young people, with the effects particularly worrying in teenage girls in English-speaking countries and Western Europe, according to the World Happiness Report 2026 published Thursday.
The annual report, published by the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford, also found that Finland is the happiest land in the world for the ninth year in a row, with other Nordic countries such as Iceland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway ranking among the top 10 countries.
It highlighted how life evaluations among under 25-year-olds in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have dropped significantly over the past decade, and suggested that long hours spent scrolling through social media is a key factor in that trend.
A new entry to the top five on the list is Costa Rica, which climbed to fourth place this year after rising through the ranks from 23rd place in 2023.
The report attributes that to well-being boosts from family bonds and other social connections.
“We think it’s because of the quality of their social lives and the stability that they currently enjoy,” said Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, an Oxford economics professor who directs the Wellbeing Research Centre and co-edits the World Happiness Report.
“Latin America more generally has strong family ties, strong social ties, a great level of social capital, as a sociologist would call it, more so than in other places,” he added.
The report said Finland and the other Northern European countries’ steady ranking on top is related to a combination of wealth, its equal distribution, having a welfare state that protects people from the risks of recessions, and a healthy life expectancy.
Finnish President Alexander Stubb reacted Thursday to his country being on first place again, saying that “I do not think there is a magic potion, but it helps to have a society which strives towards freedom, equality and justice.”
Semi Salmi, a pensioner, who was out for a swim at a pool with cold sea water in Helsinki, echoed that sentiment, saying that that “Finns are very content, confident, have faith in their system, their country, their government.”
He also stressed the advantage of having access to good health care, saying that "my father is now in a long-term care and he’s extremely well taken care of by the system.”
As in previous years, nations in or near zones of major conflict remain at the foot of the rankings. Afghanistan is ranked as the unhappiest country again, followed by Sierra Leone and Malawi in Africa.
Country rankings were based on answers given by around 100,000 people in 140 countries and territories who were asked to rate their own lives. The study was done in partnership with the analytics firm Gallup and the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
In most countries, approximately 1,000 people are contacted by telephone or face-to-face each year.
Respondents were asked to evaluate their lives on a scale from 0 to 10. Among under-25s in English-speaking and Western European countries, that score dropped by almost one point over the past decade.
The report said the negative correlation between well-being and extensive social media use is particularly concerning among teenage girls. For example, it said that 15-year-old girls who use social media for five hours or more reported a drop in life satisfaction, compared to others who use it less.
Young people who use social media for less than one hour per day report the highest levels of well-being, researchers said, higher than those who do not use social media at all. But adolescents are spending an estimated average of 2.5 hours a day on social media.
“It is clear that we should look as much as possible to put the ‘social’ back into social media,” De Neve said.
Researchers noted that in some parts of the world, such as the Middle East and South America, the links between social media use and well-being are more positive — and youth well-being has not fallen despite heavy social media use.
The report said this is due to many factors that differ between continents, but concluded that heavy social media use in some countries is an important contributing factor to the decline in youth well-being.
It said the most problematic platforms are those with algorithmic feeds, feature influencers and where the main material is visual, because they encourage social comparisons. Those who use platforms that mainly facilitate communication do better.
The 2026 rankings mark the second year in a row that none of the English-speaking countries appear in the top 10. The United States is at 23rd place, Canada is at 25th and Britain at 29th.
The report, with its focus on social media, comes at a time when more and more countries have banned or are considering bans of social media for minors.
Grieshaber reported from Berlin.
FILE - Young people use their phones to view social media in Sydney, Nov. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft, File)
FILE - A young girl uses her phone while sitting on a bench in Sydney, Nov. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft, File)
FILE - Outdoor swimming pools are seen in a harbor of Helsinki, May 29, 2023. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin, File)
FILE - People spend time outside after using the sauna of the public bath in Helsinki, March 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits, File)
FILE - A woman walks past the Helsinki Cathedral in Helsinki, May 29, 2023. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin, File)
