The blue striker is the most prolific of the Mancini-bis and puts the greats in the history of Italian football in his sights. He fits in perfectly with the new coach. Here are his numbers.
The brace that defeated France at San Siro, giving Italy temporary first place in the Nations League group, has a double statistical value for Pio Esposito. The Italian national team hadn’t beaten the French at home for 64 years and the long taboo was broken on a night of great emotions, not only for the twenty-one-year-old Inter center forward. Everything else, however, is related to the performances that Pio Esposito is giving when he lands in the major selection. Goal after goal, the striker took the starting shirt by defeating the competition and began to set records that projected him into the Olympus of the greats.
Going by the numbers, he has reached 9 goals scored in blue after just 14 appearances (not even entire ones): one every 88 actual minutes on the pitch. Only Giuseppe Meazza had been capable of being so precocious, scoring 11 goals at 21, the age Esposito is today. He has already reached past totems such as Francesco Totti and Roberto Boninsegna and has put Kean (13), Raspadori (11), Frattesi and Barella (10) in his sights among the active Azzurri. Everyone’s mind, however, goes to the never-retouched record of Gigi Riva with his 35 goals from another football and another era.
Over the past half century, Riva has resisted the onslaught of Vieri, Inzaghi, Del Piero, Baggio and all the others. The feeling is that Pio Esposito has what it takes to succeed where his predecessors failed. This is demonstrated by his ruthlessness in front of goal, the courage with which he plays even the most difficult matches despite his young age and that physicality that makes him the center of Mancini’s project with which he gets along wonderfully. In the first 5 outings of the new national team, the attacker signed the scoresheet 4 times, a projection that makes the assault on Riva and the myths of the past even more credible.
