Right. Let me get this straight. Gianluigi Donnarumma, six foot five, plays for one of the biggest clubs in the world, won the Euros in 2021, says he "cried because of enormous sadness" after Italy lost to Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Bosnia and Herzegovina.

I'm not having a go at Bosnia. Lovely people, I'm sure. Beautiful country by all accounts. But this is Italy we're talking about. Four World Cup winners. The Azzurri. Maldini. Baresi. Buffon. Cannavaro. And now they can't beat a nation that most England fans couldn't find on a map if you gave them a compass and a head start.

Don't get me started.

Look, I've got nothing against a man showing his emotions. In my day, we kept it bottled up and developed stomach ulcers by 45, and I'm not saying that's better. Well. Actually. No, I'm not saying that. But there's a difference between having a quiet moment in the dressing room and going to the press to tell everyone you had a good cry. What's next? A podcast about it? A Netflix series? "Donnarumma: The Tears Behind the Gloves"?

That's the problem with modern football. Everything has to be a performance. Even the sadness. Even the losing. You can't just lose, go home, have beans on toast and stare at the wall for three hours like a normal person. You've got to make it an event.

Here's what really gets me though. This isn't a one off, is it? Italy didn't qualify for Russia in 2018. Didn't qualify for Qatar in 2022. And now they're wobbling again for 2026. Three cycles. Three. That's not bad luck. That's not a rough patch. That's systemic failure on a scale that would make my old chairman at Macclesfield blush, and that man once forgot to order the goalposts for a pre season friendly.

Donnarumma's 27 years old. Won the Euros. Never played at a World Cup. Think about that for a second. The lad won the biggest tournament in European football and has never experienced the actual World Cup. It's like winning MasterChef and never being allowed in a restaurant.

In my day, Italy were terrifying. You went to play in Italy and you knew you were getting man marked from the car park to the penalty box. Catenaccio. Tight, organised, cynical, brilliant football. Now they're getting turned over by Bosnia and their keeper is in tears before the tournament's even started.

And the worst bit? The expanded World Cup format means 48 teams are going to be there. Forty eight! They've practically sent invitations to every nation with a functioning postal service. And Italy still might not make it. That takes a special kind of incompetence. That takes dedication to failure that I haven't seen since I tried to implement a 3-5-2 at Barnet with a squad of 14.

I feel for Donnarumma, I genuinely do. He's a good keeper. World class on his day. But crying to the press isn't going to fix Italian football. What's going to fix Italian football is someone at the top looking in the mirror and asking why a country of 60 million people, with Serie A, with that history, with that culture, keeps falling flat on its face every four years.

But they won't do that, will they? They'll sack someone. Appoint someone else. Promise a revolution. Lose to Luxembourg in a friendly. And the whole circus starts again.

Honestly, if crying fixed football, I'd have won the Conference South by 2004.

Pass me the biscuits. I need a lie down.