When Michael Olise gave France the lead after ten minutes on Thursday at the San Siro, many knew where things were going. They guessed wrong. Italy came back, they even missed a penalty, but still beat Zinedine Zidane's eleven 3-1 after two goals from Pio Esposito.
To someone who happened to be in a coma for the past fifteen years, that probably doesn't sound very alarming. But after three consecutive missed World Cup finals, Italian men's football is in a kind of ongoing shipwreck where no one knows where the bottom – let alone the emergency exits – is.
At least until now. It is the new old confederation captain Roberto Mancini who has started to get things in order in a short time.
When Italy face Belgium away in the Nations League on Sunday night, a national team with a partially new look will be on the field.
The same thing applies at the football association's office in Rome. After losing the World Cup playoff final against Bosnia-Herzegovina last spring, confederation captain Gennaro Gattuso, national team manager Gianluigi Buffon and confederation chairman Gabriele Gavrina left their positions immediately.
The fiasco did not escape any sections of society.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni threatened to put the FA under compulsory administration if a series of reforms were not implemented in Italian football, including stricter financial requirements on clubs and investment in young players.
Giovanni Malagó, organizer of the Milan-Cortina Olympics earlier this year, became temporary confederation president and gave Milan legends Leonardo and Paolo Maldini the responsibility of finding a new confederation captain.
When first Pep Guardiola and then Carlo Ancelotti proved unavailable, the Leonardo/Maldini company bet their last money on Andrea Pirlo. But Pirlo overworked as an ambassador for a Russian gambling company, something that made him politically impossible for the job.
When Leonardo and Maldini learned that Malagó was negotiating with Roberto Mancini on his own, the Italian FA's "super duo" left the job, just sixteen days after taking office.
Since the beginning of October, the federation has been under forced administration by the Italian Olympic Committee, while Malagó and old Milan fox Adriano Galliani are competing to take over the chairman's baton.
In the same period, the Gli Azzuri have taken ten points from five matches and share first place in the Nations League group with France, one point ahead of Belgium.
It was Mancini who led the Italian national team to unexpected European Championship gold in 2021, a feat that looks like an anomaly in retrospect.
Perhaps he is, paradoxically, the innovator Italy needs. Instead of staring blindly at Serie A, where home-grown players have long accounted for less than thirty percent of playing time, Mancini has looked to Europe.
Sporting's Issa Doumbia, Brentford's Michael Kayode, Crystal Palace's Honest Ahanor and Nuremberg's Mohamed Ali Zoma all received a call-up from Mancini in September, making the squad one of the smallest ever in Serie A.
With an average age of under 25, Mancini's first collections have broken with many of the old taboos of Italian football. One is, of course, the origin of the players just mentioned.
Together with Moise Keane, currently injured, and Milan's breakthrough man Alphadjo Cisse, who may get his first national team minutes against Belgium, all Italians have roots in Africa.
- I have worked abroad for so long and this is how it looks, it is completely natural for me, Mancini recently answered the question about the Italian national team's new multi-ethnic profile.
Why they all blossomed only when they left Serie A is, of course, something to think about.
For several years, the debate has also been raging around which tactical path Italian football should take. After the defense-oriented catenaccio style of play was re-run sometime after the turn of the millennium, Italy has found it desperately difficult to find a new identity. Not least Mancini has claimed that the hard tactical training of young Italian talents kills creativity instead of encouraging it, as it does in Spain, for example.
Despite this, the Gli Azzurri are provisional standings ahead of the match against Belgium in Brussels tonight.
Victory and you will be in a sensational group ahead of France, who at the same time face Turkey. Loss and Italy are likely to finish third and miss the playoffs.
After losing three consecutive World Cup playoff finals, the Italians know all about small margins.
