Christian Vieri stood proudly outside the housing block in Prato.

“Here’s where it all started,” he posted on social media.

As a teenager, Vieri moved in here, near Florence, with his aunt Bianca and uncle Egidio. He was over for some trials with a few of the local teams. But Vieri was homesick. He wanted to go home, and home was Down Under. His old man, ‘Bob’, had left Bologna in 1977 to finish his playing career with Marconi Stallions in Sydney, and he moved his family to Australia too.

Vieri wanted to follow in Dad’s footsteps and that meant making it in Italy with his team-mate in Marconi’s youth setup, Paul Okon, who also lodged with Bianca and Egidio in Prato. Desperately missing shrimps on the barbie, Vieri booked a flight back, only for a couple of grandads to persuade him to have another crack at breaking Italy. One was his nonno. The other, Rodolfo Becheri, was the president of area side Santa Lucia and saw the potential in Vieri that neighbours Prato somehow missed.

He was the one who had paid for Vieri’s one-way ticket, a 27-hour connecting flight with Air China to Rome. The rest is history and who knows what the future might have held for Vieri had he stayed in Australia.

Some aspects of Aussie culture have never left him. His wife Costanza catches him, every now and again, watching cricket highlights on YouTube. At school, Vieri played as much of that sport as he did football. He recalls going to see a West Indies side featuring Viv Richards and Joel Garner play a Test match at the Sydney Cricket Ground.

An all-rounder never short on confidence, Vieri believes he would have become the best batter in the world and has been videoed in Milan’s Moscova neighbourhood swinging a cricket bat. Ahead of Italy’s first ever T20 World Cup game against Scotland last Monday, Vieri sent a video message wishing the team luck. “Nobody in Italy knows what cricket is,” he said. “But we know what it is.”

When Justin and Anthony Mosca, Sydney boys like Vieri, became the first brothers to ever notch 50s in the same game at the tournament, doing it in their next match, a 10-wicket win against Nepal, coach Justin Davidson said: “This will be front-page news in a lot of publications in Italy, I’m hoping.” Tweets about the men’s cricket team winning as many games at a World Cup as the men’s football team have done in the past 12 years went viral. Alas, the feat didn’t get a single mention in any of Gazzetta dello Sport’s 48 pages the following day.

If it feels like the world has been well and truly turned upside down in Italy, look no further than their rugby union side. The Italians beat Australia 26-19 at Udinese’s Bluenergy Stadium in November. Then, decimated by injuries, they started their Six Nations campaign at a sold-out Stadio Olimpico in Rome last weekend with an 18-15 win against Scotland and, in Dublin on Saturday, were ahead at half-time against Ireland before losing 20-13.

Italy gave hosts Ireland a scare in rugby’s Six Nations at the weekend (Evan Treacy/Getty Images)

“In years gone by, it would have been a tragedy to lose players like Leonardo Ghiraldini, Martin Castrogiovanni, Alessandro Zanni and myself all at the same time,” long-time Italian international Sergio Parisse told newspaper La Repubblica. Not anymore. This generation, in Parisse’s estimation, “has the potential to be” the best rugby team Italy has ever produced.

“Us Italians say we’re rubbish at everything,” Milan coach Max Allegri observed in a press conference last week. Italians do tend to do themselves down. They’re their own harshest critics. “But in the end, we get results,” Allegri added. He wanted to compliment Italy’s Winter Olympic athletes who, within a week of the Games starting, in Milano-Cortina, were on course to break their record medal haul from Lillehammer in 1994.

Federica Brignone’s unexpected gold in the Super-G and then again in the giant slalom barely 10 months after fracturing her left leg in several places and tearing the MCL and ACL in that knee captured the imagination of the nation. The injuries were so bad, doctors told Brignone’s mother she “seriously risked” losing the leg to amputation.

“We need to be proud of what we do,” Allegri said. “Our history speaks for us in sport. Of course, there are cycles. At the moment, we have lots of great tennis players. We have two of the top five players in the world (Jannik Sinner and Lorenzo Musetti). We should be proud and stop beating ourselves up all the time.”

Even Ferrari, whose most recent F1 drivers’ championship is a distant memory from almost 20 years ago, managed to come out on top in race simulations at pre-season testing in Bahrain last week, as Lewis Hamilton returned from his Super Bowl date with Kim Kardashian to set the fastest time of all. It’s early, very early. Too good to be true, perhaps. But maybe the prancing horse isn’t lamei after all.

So what about the football? Can we talk about the football now? That it came up in conversation when Sergio Mattarella, the snowy-haired president of Italy, met Sofia Goggia, the country’s most famous skier, in Cortina last week offered a reminder that it is still one of the first things people talk about in Italy, if not the first.

Goggia is from Bergamo and frequently visits the city’s New Balance Arena to watch Atalanta play. Mattarella is from Palermo. You wouldn’t think they’d have all that much in common. Goggia is 33. Mattarella is 84. But they found common ground in Gian Piero Gasperini, the long-time Atalanta manager now at Roma. “You know why he’s so good?” Mattarella put it to Goggia. “Because he had a couple of years with Palermo.”

They weren’t the only ones talking about the football this week.

Como reached the Coppa Italia semi-finals for the first time in 40 years, eliminating Napoli on penalties. Gennaro Gattuso and his national-team coaching staff continued to take players out for dinner.

Como goalkeeper Jean Butez celebrates beating Napoli on penalties (Francesco Pecoraro/Getty Images)

Unable to find time in the schedule for a training camp before the World Cup qualification play-offs next month, Gattuso has got players round a table instead, eating out last week with Napoli’s Italian contingent. Midfielder Antonio Vergara, one of the revelations of 2026, was among them and looks set for a call-up for the Northern Ireland semi-final on March 26.

Vergara’s candidacy was not hurt by him appearing to go down far too easily to win a stoppage-time penalty at Genoa a week earlier. Rasmus Hojlund put it away and Napoli won 3-2 in controversial circumstances. “I felt (Maxwell Cornet) touch me and thought, ‘Oh joy!’,” Vergara admitted. Cornet’s studs only seemed to brush over Vergara’s right foot. It was more footsie than a ‘step-on-foot’, as defined by the rules.

Genoa coach Daniele De Rossi, who has a tattoo of a sliding tackle on his calf to illustrate what kind of player he was back in the day, cut an incredulous figure afterwards. “I don’t know what to say,” he told DAZN. “I don’t know anything anymore. I don’t know what sport I’m coaching. Watching it back, it not only leaves a bitter taste in your mouth. It makes you fall out of love.”

Juventus counterpart Luciano Spalletti was equally dumbfounded by some of the recent decisions going against his team. Every contact in a contact sport does not a penalty make, he argued. To demonstrate this concept, he asked DAZN’s reporter, Federica Zille, if he could give her a kiss. She consented. “Contact,” he exclaimed. Philosophically, should a penalty be given for it?

“We need to see what kind of contact it is,” he said, because without a more nuanced appreciation of contact, every handball turns into a penalty, every stepped-on foot becomes a spot-kick.  “The thing that’s not right is the only person who isn’t a professional in a match as important as a Serie A game… the only person who isn’t a professional is the referee,” Spalletti highlighted. After all, refereeing is, if not a side-hustle, then a second job for the match officials. It is, as we’ll see, what they do on the weekend or a weeknight.

But, for now, let’s try to talk about the actual football and, particularly, Saturday’s Derby d’Italia at San Siro.

“You can’t talk about football after what happened today, it’s unacceptable,” Giorgio Chiellini, Juventus’ director of football strategy, said.

Oh? And why’s that?

Scheduling the Derby d’Italia on Valentine’s Day was always going to be a source of argument, not only for husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends but because Serie A matched the two teams who hate each other most on the night people are expected to make love, not war.

More box office than Wuthering Heights on opening night, the fixture delivered a 4-all draw last season, a 4-3 at the beginning of this one and didn’t disappoint on Saturday night either, serving up a 3-2 that was decided in the final minute. Ultimately, Inter emerged victorious and re-established an eight-point lead at the top of Serie A.

“I think we lost three points, but Italian football lost a lot more than the three points we lost,” an ashen Juventus chief executive Damien Comolli said beside Chiellini.

At half-time, Spalletti confronted the referee, Federico La Penna (a lawyer by trade), on the steps down to the tunnel. He then had to turn and forcibly push Comolli back towards the dressing room as his CEO launched an F-bomb at La Penna. The foul La Penna called on Juventus defender Pierre Kalulu in the 42nd minute “did not exist”, Chiellini shouted.

pic.twitter.com/uhHBS5wPYH

— Serie A Out of Context (@CalcioNoContext) February 14, 2026

Inter centre-back Alessandro Bastoni fell like Ilia Malinin in the figure skating final, insofar as no one touched him. There wasn’t even a double tap, like the one Oskar Eriksson alleged Marc Kennedy made in the curling match between Sweden and Canada. Bastoni dived. He then celebrated as if he’d won the Champions League when La Penna showed Kalulu a second yellow. “Oh joy!”

In a week in which we have seen the very best of Italian sportsmanship, this was the worst of it. At the end of last month, the International Football Association Board proposed that video assistant referees should be permitted to review red cards resulting from incorrect second yellows. Unfortunately they can’t, for now, and so the VAR on Saturday could not intervene to stop La Penna making the sort of mistake VAR is supposed to prevent; the clearest and most obvious of all.

Bastoni showed no contrition. Rather than pull his player up on it, Inter coach Cristian Chivu suggested Kalulu had given La Penna a decision to make just as Bastoni had when he pulled Florian Wirtz’s shirt and gave away the deciding penalty in Inter’s 1-0 defeat to Liverpool in the Champions League in December.

Enrico Letta, a former Italian prime minister no less, disagreed. A Milan fan, he tweeted Bastoni should not be called up for the World Cup play-offs.

Bastoni non va convocato in Nazionale.

— Enrico Letta (@EnricoLetta) February 14, 2026

Called to defend La Penna and his refereeing body, the designator Gianluca Rocchi said: “La Penna is mortified and we sympathise with him, but I have to tell you the truth: he is not the only one who got it wrong, because yesterday there was a clear simulation. The latest in a long series in a league where they try everything they can to cheat us. I say this also in relation to a league where the coaches have never helped us, but have made things difficult for us.”

While the decision made the Derby d’Italia an unfair contest of 11 vs 10, it did not ruin the game. Inter had struggled to press Juventus in the first half. The fluid ultra-modern mix of positional and relational football introduced by Spalletti confounded Chivu.

A man up at 1-1, Inter could not break a spirited Juventus down. Chivu went full YOLO. He brought on Francesco Pio Esposito, switching from a back three to a back four. Marcus Thuram moved to the left, Andy Diouf went to the right and Lautaro Martinez played in tandem with Esposito. It doesn’t get more attacking than that.

When Esposito headed in a go-ahead goal 15 minutes from the end, it felt like the biggest moment in his young career. However, Chivu made a mistake. Once back in front, he didn’t seek to rebalance his team.

Inter were too open, and Juventus valiantly equalised with seven minutes to go through Manuel Locatelli, a player reborn under Spalletti since his appointment in October. The Juventus bench personnel spilt out onto the pitch in celebration. Beers and Campari were raised by members of the city’s Milan-supporting populace.

The next time they were lifted, however, was to drown sorrows. Chivu had annoyed Nicolo Barella, who petulantly tossed his shinpads at the advertising boards, by replacing him with Hakan Calhanoglu earlier in the second half. The thinking was Calhanaglu would bring more control but also give Inter a dual threat from distance, along with Piotr Zielinski, as they couldn’t play through Juventus.

In the 89th minute, Zielinski elegantly turned on the edge of the box and struck a low shot, hard and fast, beyond goalkeeper Michele Di Gregorio. The Inter fans near the directors’ box lauded it over the Juventus executives, boiling blood.

Without a win for two years in the derbies that matter most, this was big for Inter.

They have been the best Italian team this decade and this season. Two Scudetti are, frankly, too little to show for it. The ones lost on the final days in 2022 and 2025 hurt, which is perhaps why, in addition to all the historic grievances and sense of injustice with Juventus, they’ll stop at nothing to win this one.

Even if the way they won on Saturday was, shall we say, definitely not cricket.