Three. Three World Cups. Not three bad games. Not three dodgy results. Three entire World Cups that Italy, four time winners of the thing, have sat at home and watched on the telly like the rest of us.

And it has taken until NOW for someone in a position of power to say what every single person with a functioning pair of eyes has been screaming for years. Italy's sports minister Andrea Abodi has finally told FIGC president Gabriele Gravina to pack his bags. Resign. Go. Arrivederci. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

In my day, you missed one major tournament and heads rolled. You missed two and the entire building got fumigated. Italy have missed three on the bounce and the man in charge has been sat there like he's got a job for life. What is he, a Supreme Court judge?

Let me put this in perspective for the younger lot reading this. Italy won the World Cup in 2006. That's not ancient history. Some of you were alive. Since then they've gone from world champions to a nation that can't qualify for the tournament their grandparents used to dominate. That is not a blip. That is structural collapse.

Don't get me started on the excuses. I've heard them all. The league is too defensive. There aren't enough young Italians playing. The coaching system needs reform. The pathway is broken. Fine. All probably true. But whose job is it to fix all that? Whose desk does that land on? Gravina's. And what's changed? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

That's the problem with modern football. Nobody takes responsibility anymore. You fail at the highest level, repeatedly, catastrophically, and you just shrug and commission another review. Another committee. Another five year plan. Meanwhile the World Cup comes and goes. Again. And again. And again.

I managed in the lower leagues for twenty years. Twenty years of scrapping and fighting and begging boards for a few quid to fix the training ground. If I'd missed promotion three times running with the resources Gravina has at his disposal, I wouldn't have needed the sports minister to tell me to go. I'd have had the decency to walk. That's what people with self respect do.

But here's the really maddening bit. It's not like Italian football doesn't have talent. They've got lads playing at the highest level across Europe. They've got one of the best domestic leagues in the world. They've got history, infrastructure, passion. They've got everything you'd need except competent administration at the top.

And Gravina's response? He'll probably dig in. They always do. These blazer merchants are harder to shift than chewing gum on a boot room floor. He'll talk about his vision and his legacy and how Rome wasn't built in a day. Well Rome might not have been built in a day but it certainly didn't take three World Cup cycles either.

The sports minister is right. Gravina has to go. But let's be honest, telling him to resign is the easy bit. Finding someone who can actually fix Italian football from the ground up, that's the real challenge. Because whoever walks into that job inherits a mess that makes my time at Dagenham look like a picnic.

Four World Cup wins. Zero World Cup qualifications in a row. That's not a stat. That's a crime scene.

Sort it out, Italy. Before four becomes five and we're having this same conversation in 2030.

Actually. Don't get me started on 2030.