Riccardo Calafiori is a Vision of What Might Have Been for Serie A after assured Azzurri display

Everything was going smoothly for Italy, until one tackle changed everything.

Five minutes before half-time, Roma’s Lorenzo Pellegrini made a desperate lunge at Belgium’s Arthur Theate after Alessandro Bastoni’s sloppy pass infield was anticipated by the defender.

Despite the ball being in Italy’s half, there was no need for Pellegrini to dive in to win the ball. Italy had enough players back to deal with the situation, yet in Pellegrini went, Theate went down, and the referee gave a yellow card.

After a VAR check, the card was changed from yellow to red, and suddenly Italy went down to 10 men with 50 minutes remaining on the clock. From the resulting free-kick, Belgium scored via a well-worked move involving Youri Tielemans, Leandro Trossard and Maxim De Cuyper, with the latter bending his shot brilliantly into the bottom corner of Gianluigi Donnarumma’s goal from the edge of the area. 

Belgium were now back in the game, and Luciano Spalletti’s men knew they were in a real fight.

The game would finish 2-2, with Trossard scoring an equaliser after Italy failed to clear a corner. 

While Riccardo Calafiori was somewhat suspect for the equaliser by allowing Trossard to ghost in behind to head home, the Arsenal defender produced another confident display at the heart of the Italian rearguard amid growing Belgium pressure.

In what was just his sixth start for the Azzurri, Calafiori gave a composed performance and was handed a 6/10 by La Gazzetta dello Sport in today’s edition. Bastoni, by contrast, was awarded a 5/10.

Over the past six months, Calafiori’s stock has increased exponentially and Arsenal’s gain has been Serie A’s loss. One of the pillars of Bologna’s success last season, in which the Rossoblu qualified for the Champions League for the first time, the defender went into Euro 2024 still an unknown quantity to those outside the Italian game.

That didn’t last long.

In what was a truly wretched performance from Italy in Germany, comfortably losing to Switzerland 2-0 in the Round of 16 after barely making it out of the group stage, Calafiori was one of the few to emerge with any credit. His performances against Albania, Spain and Croatia saw him gain international exposure, where the word ‘aura’ and a picture of Calafiori’s face, complete with early-2000s hairband, went viral for a hot minute.

Most recognised his brief time at Bologna was coming to an end. Calafiori had only joined the club a year prior, when he signed from FC Basel, but such was his impact for club and country that there was very little chance of the side from Emilia-Romagna keeping hold of him.

It was just a matter of where Calafiori would go.

Juventus appeared close to Calafiori for the longest time, but the distance between what Juve supposedly offered and what Bologna wanted remained great and, with Juve needing other areas strengthened, the club pivoted towards other targets. Inter arguably didn’t need another centre-back, while Milan, Roma and Atalanta couldn’t afford to pay €50m for a single player. 

In years gone by, a player like Calafiori would’ve likely went to Parma, Fiorentina or Lazio before making a big-money move to one of the big three in the prime of his career, but those days are long over. Calafiori was destined to leave Italy with several Premier League sides sniffing around him. In the end Arsenal won the race, and Serie A lost one of its brightest talents.

“He’s [Calafiori] a regret for the whole Italian football, not only Juventus,” lamented Juve sporting director Cristiano Giuntoli in the wake of his departure to Arsenal. “We must think about the fact that we didn’t have the strength to keep a player of his level in Italy. All big teams signed a defender, but not him.”

In recent decades Italian players have struggled to assert themselves in the Premier League. After the first wave of players moved to England in the mid-1990s — Gianfranco Zola, Gianluca Vialli, Fabrizio Ravanelli and Paolo Di Canio — Italy’s track record in the Premier League has been patchy, to be kind.

In fact, Italy has performed better at managerial level in England, with four different coaches winning the Premier League, the most of any nation. Yet the likes of Andrea Dossena, Massimo Taibi, Alberto Aquilani and Dino Baggio won’t be fondly remembered by many.

Calafiori has taken to the Premier League with the ease of a man who’s seemingly played there his whole career. He’s already scored for his new side, sweeping in a left-footed curler from the edge of the area in the tense 2-2 draw with Manchester City.

Bologna, meanwhile, haven’t coped with his absence well. In the aftermath of his departure the club signed Emil Holm from Spezia and Martin Erlic from Sassuolo. Both are competent defenders, especially Holm, but they haven’t been able to fill the hole left by Calafiori. 

Bologna have only kept one clean sheet in the early rounds of the season, and look defensively vulnerable.

Calafiori looks set to play a vital role in Arsenal’s push to win a first Premier League title in 21 years, while those in Serie A can only look on and wonder what might have been had they convinced him to stay put in the country’s top flight.

There is of course a silver lining, with the 22-year-old set to be a stalwart for Spalletti and Italy for years to come. It ensures Calcio fans will still get their fix of the man single-handedly bringing back hairbands.