Senza Azzurri: Italy Skips Its Third Straight World Cup — and This One's in America

Italy Today

• Update — July 4 in Rome, without Italians: One week after the G7 photo incident, the Meloni-Trump freeze has spread from diplomatic cancellations to symbolic rebuke: Italian ministers including Agriculture Minister Lollobrigida and Sports Minister Abodi are expected to skip the US Embassy’s July 4th reception in Rome, scheduled for July 2. FM Tajani’s Washington trip remains canceled; no statement of repair has been issued. Italy and Meloni, as she put it, do not beg — and apparently will not toast either.

• Il deficit chiude, il debito no: The EU is formally closing Italy’s excessive deficit procedure, with the deficit having dipped to 2.9% of GDP — a threshold Meloni’s coalition has been chasing. But Italy’s public debt is forecast to reach 137.4% of GDP this year, second-highest in Europe, rising toward 139.2% by 2027. Meloni warned at the start of the year that 2026 would be “much worse than 2025.” The door is closing on one problem; the window on the other stays open indefinitely.

Brooklyn Dispatch

• From Bensonhurst to Carroll Gardens, con affetto: Chef Sal Lamboglia — a Bensonhurst native whose three other restaurants are all within a block of each other on 18th Avenue — was hand-picked by retiring owner Francesco Buffa to take over the 120-year-old Ferdinando’s Focacceria space at 151 Union Street. Bar Ferdinando opened April 15, preserving the tin ceiling, tile floors, and mustard-maroon walls while adding an amaro-forward cocktail program alongside the panelle and arancini. The tradition doesn’t disappear — it gets carried, by someone who grew up eating it, two neighborhoods over.

• The World Cup is here. Italy isn’t. The 2026 FIFA World Cup is currently underway across the United States, Canada, and Mexico — with group-stage matches at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, a bridge and a tunnel from Bay Ridge. But Italy failed to qualify for the third consecutive time, losing to Bosnia and Herzegovina on penalties in the playoff round. The bars on 18th Avenue and 3rd Avenue will have the matches on. There just won’t be an Azzurri jersey to scream at.

Arts & Culture

• Spoleto apre con le radici: The Festival dei Due Mondi opens today in Spoleto for its 69th edition, under new artistic director Daniele Cipriani, with the theme Radici — Roots. The program runs 17 days, 100 performances, and 7 world premieres. Tonight’s opener is Samuel Barber’s opera Vanessa, on a libretto by the festival’s founder Gian Carlo Menotti — the Italian-American composer who built this festival precisely to hold his two worlds together, and who kept his Italian citizenship until his death in 2007 while calling himself an American composer. The opening work is an American piece written in Italian by a man who never chose.

• Cinema Ritrovato, final weekend: Bologna’s Il Cinema Ritrovato wraps its 40th edition on Sunday after 400+ screenings of restored and rediscovered film. The closing days include late-night Piazza Maggiore screenings — the format that makes Bologna feel, briefly, like a city that decided cinema is more important than sleep. Buonanotte, Bologna.

Parola del Giorno

Parola: radici (noun, f. pl.) — roots; origins; foundations. Singular: radice, from Latin radix, radicis. The same root gives English “radical” (growing from the root), “eradicate” (to pull up by the roots), and, improbably, “radish.” This week it names the Spoleto festival’s entire editorial vision — and the immigrant experience as a general matter. Mettere radici — to put down roots — is the phrase for establishing yourself in a new place. On 18th Avenue in Bensonhurst, they have been mettendo radici for over a century. The question is which generation stops asking where they’re from.

Takeaway