The World Cup’s missing XI: Discover the biggest stars set to stay at home this summer
Discover the best XI of players set to miss this summer's World Cup tournament
The dust has settled on World Cup qualifying, with 48 nations descending on the United States, Canada and Mexico this summer for the most expansive tournament in the competition’s history.
Spain, England, France, Brazil and Argentina are all present. Erling Haaland gets his first taste of a World Cup with Norway. Cristiano Ronaldo matches Lionel Messi as the only players to appear at six editions. On paper, it is a tournament overflowing with quality.
And yet, some of the finest players in world football will be watching it at home.
Italy, four-time world champions, have failed to qualify for a third consecutive tournament. It is a footballing catastrophe for one of the sport’s great nations, and it drags with it a generation of players who may never get the chance to compete at a World Cup.
Nigeria, bursting with Premier League talent, fell on penalties to DR Congo in the CAF play-off final for the second consecutive cycle.
Poland’s Robert Lewandowski bid farewell to international football after a 3-2 play-off defeat to Sweden. Denmark lost on penalties to Czechia. Cameroon, Hungary and Ukraine all fell short. Georgia’s Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, arguably the best player not going to the tournament, will miss out as well.
Put the best of the missing together, and you do not have a squad that would fill seats. You have one that would compete for the biggest prize in football.
Here is our starting XI of stars set to miss the World Cup this summer.
Table of Contents
- 1 Goalkeeper: Gianluigi Donnarumma (Italy)
- 2 Right-back: Dominik Szoboszlai (Hungary)
- 3 Centre-back: Alessandro Bastoni (Italy)
- 4 Centre-back: Calvin Bassey (Nigeria)
- 5 Left-back: Federico Dimarco (Italy)
- 6 Midfield: Nicolo Barella (Italy)
- 7 Midfield: Sandro Tonali (Italy)
- 8 Midfield: Ademola Lookman (Nigeria)
- 9 Forward: Victor Osimhen (Nigeria)
- 10 Forward: Khvicha Kvaratskhelia (Georgia)
- 11 Forward: Robert Lewandowski (Poland)
- 12 Honourable mentions
Goalkeeper: Gianluigi Donnarumma (Italy)
Gianluigi Donnarumma is 27 years old. He has won a Champions League, a European Championship, and the Yashin Trophy.
He is considered by many to be among the two or three finest goalkeepers on the planet. He has never played at a World Cup. That sentence should not be possible, but Italy’s repeated qualifying failures have made it a reality.
The Manchester City goalkeeper was unable to save a single penalty in the shootout defeat to Bosnia and Herzegovina that confirmed the Azzurri’s latest misery. None of what happened in that game was his fault. He simply had no business being in a play-off in the first place.
Right-back: Dominik Szoboszlai (Hungary)
A slight positional indulgence, but Dominik Szoboszlai is too good to leave out. The Liverpool midfielder has had the finest season of his career, and his efforts during qualifying were relentless.
Five goal contributions in six games, including a stunning stoppage-time equaliser against Portugal, carried Hungary further than they had any right to go.
They were undone by complacency when it mattered most, and Szoboszlai, now 25 and at the peak of his powers, is left to rue another near miss on the international stage.
Centre-back: Alessandro Bastoni (Italy)
Alessandro Bastoni’s absence is as damaging for this XI as it is for Italy. The Inter Milan defender is one of the most composed ball-playing centre-backs in European football, capable of dictating tempo from the back.
His red card in the play-off final against Bosnia was the moment Italy’s qualification hopes collapsed. A cruel way for a player of his quality to bow out of a tournament, before it had even begun.
Centre-back: Calvin Bassey (Nigeria)
Nigeria’s failure to qualify for a second consecutive World Cup is one of the tournament’s biggest absences.
Calvin Bassey has developed into one of the most dependable centre-backs in the Premier League, physically imposing and increasingly comfortable in possession.
Alongside Bastoni, he would provide a defensive pairing with genuine Premier League and Champions League pedigree. The Super Eagles’ inability to hold their nerve in the CAF play-offs has denied him the stage his form has deserved.
Left-back: Federico Dimarco (Italy)
Italy’s loss of an entire generation of talent is nowhere more apparent than in wide defensive positions. Federico Dimarco has been one of Serie A’s outstanding performers over the last two seasons, a ferocious attacking presence from left-back whose crossing and set-piece delivery would trouble any team in the world.
At 27, the 2030 cycle offers some hope, but there are no guarantees in international football, and the fact he has never appeared at a World Cup represents a genuine waste of genuine talent.
Midfield: Nicolo Barella (Italy)
Nicolo Barella has never played at a World Cup. He will be 33 by the time the 2030 tournament arrives. For a player of his quality, that reality is an impossible truth.
One of the most complete midfielders in European football, Barella has an ability to control games that has made him indispensable to Inter Milan’s domestic and European campaigns.
Italy’s decision-making under Gennaro Gattuso frequently bypassed their best midfielders in favour of a direct approach, which only deepened the sense of waste.
Midfield: Sandro Tonali (Italy)
Sandro Tonali gave everything he had in the qualifying campaign. He scored and assisted in the play-off semi-final win over Northern Ireland, was Italy’s sole successful penalty taker in the shootout against Bosnia.
His summer now looks set to be dominated by transfer speculation rather than a tournament, but the 25-year-old Newcastle midfielder is the kind of player who shifts the dynamic of a game.
Technically gifted, physically relentless, and capable of playing at the very highest level. He should have been in North America.
Midfield: Ademola Lookman (Nigeria)
The 2024 CAF Player of the Year was one of the most exciting attackers on the continent last season, his hat-trick in the Europa League final two years ago against Bayer Leverkusen giving Atalanta one of the competition’s great upsets.
Ademola Lookman’s movement, directness and eye for goal make him equally effective as a wide midfielder or a forward.
Nigeria’s squad is rich enough to accommodate him in a deeper midfield role here, though in truth, wherever he plays, he causes problems.
Forward: Victor Osimhen (Nigeria)
Of all the absences from this summer’s tournament, Victor Osimhen’s might be the most painful.
At 26, he is at the peak of his powers, and his time at Galatasaray this season has reminded anyone who needed reminding of just how devastating he can be.
Pace, power, technical ability and a finishing instinct that few strikers in the world can match. He is precisely the kind of player who wins tournaments.
That he will not be at one this summer, for the second consecutive cycle, is a genuine failure of Nigerian football administration as much as it is a footballing loss.
Forward: Khvicha Kvaratskhelia (Georgia)
If Osimhen is the most decorated name missing from the tournament, Kvicha Kvaratskhelia may well be the most talented.
The Georgian winger, nicknamed Kvaradona by those who have watched him grow up, has had another season with PSG that confirmed his place among the elite.
His dribbling, creativity and goalscoring contribution this campaign have been exceptional. Georgia were in a qualifying group containing Spain and Turkey, which made their task close to impossible, but the scale of his absence from the tournament is significant regardless of context.
Forward: Robert Lewandowski (Poland)
And so we end with a farewell. Robert Lewandowski took to Instagram after Poland’s play-off defeat to Sweden and said goodbye.
The most prolific international goalscorer Poland has ever produced, the man who spent a decade as one of the two or three finest strikers in world football, will not get the World Cup send-off his career merited.
He scored two goals across seven World Cup appearances in 2018 and 2022. In a different team, in a different cycle, the numbers would have been far greater. He deserved more from the tournament.
Honourable mentions
This XI does not have room for everyone. Rasmus Hojlund and Christian Eriksen will not be heading to North America after Denmark’s penalty defeat to Czechia, with Eriksen’s farewell to the international stage looking increasingly likely.
Bryan Mbeumo’s outstanding Premier League form counts for nothing in a Cameroon shirt this summer after Les Lions Indomptables fell at the final CAF hurdle.
Ukraine’s Alex Zinchenko and Serbia’s Dusan Vlahovic are two more of the game’s recognisable names who will be absent.
And Jan Oblak, who could have given this XI a different but equally compelling option in goal, misses out with Slovenia.