The match between England and Italy takes place the night after the opening match at the Stade de la Vilodrome in the French coastal city of Marseille.

For this Four Nations Invitational Tournament, the elder Maldini's attitude is mainly to train his troops, and by the way, observe the key goals in his eyes. Therefore, in this game against England, Lao Ma naturally sent the strongest starting lineup in his mind.

The battle for the number one goalkeeper of the national team between Pagliuca and Toldo began on the day Maldini Sr. took over, and the two have similar jishu characteristics, both of them are the type of reflexes that are extremely fast and have long arms, and both have two brushes on penalty kicks.

Overall, though, Pagliuca is a bit more consistent and experienced than Toldo, who can save any shot he faces when he's in good form (Euro 2000 was a testament to that), but can concede anything if he's in poor form.

Therefore, after a year of scrutiny, the elder Maldini made Pagliuca the number one goalkeeper and Toldo as a substitute.

At the back, Panucci and Paolo Maldini undisputed the position of the two starting wing-backs, while Ferrara and Nesta had to put Cannavaro on the bench because of their more tacit cooperation.

In midfield, under the influence of Fiorentina, the elder Maldini was not as stubborn as he was in history, insisting on sending two full-backs on the field, but learned Fiorentina's tactics and switched to a diamond-shaped midfield. He chose Albertini for Redondo's role in Florence; Di Biagio is responsible for dragging back and is a line of defense for Zuihou in midfield; Another hard-nosed midfielder, Dino Baggio, is in charge of sweeping the entire midfield, and when attacking, he also has to take advantage of the opportunity to intervene and threaten the opposition goal with long-range shots.

The midfielders are a bit of a problem for Maldini Sr., with Pierrot and Roberto Baggio both being nine-and-a-half types of players, where lethal passing and scoring are their areas of expertise, allowing them to control the tempo of the game is likely to backfire. As a result, Maldini Sr. has his eye on Roma youngster Francisco Totti as Italy's best choice in the midfield position.

Of course, in response to Italy's current dilemma of lack of people in the forward position, the old Maldini still has two sets of backup plans in his hands: one is naturally a return to the traditional four-four-two parallel position, but after watching the video of many games in Fiorentina, the old horse feels that if he really adopts this plan, Italy's Shijie Cup next year may become a cup; The other is to learn from Fabio Capello in this year's Champions League final and let Italy play as a striker.

Anyway, Piero and Baggio are not unable to pull to the wings, Maldini and Panucci have the ability to open up the entire wing, and if Italy plays three forwards, in addition to the defense may be weakened, there will definitely be a lot of improvement in other aspects.

Up front, Maldini Sr. chose Inzaghi and Vieri to partner him. Unlike in history, because Baggio has performed quite well at Inter Milan this season, the old horse did not exclude him from the national team squad; Pierrot, on the other hand, has earned the nickname "Prince of the Biancones", but in terms of championship honours is much worse than in history, in this case, Vieri and Inzaghi, who have performed better, are naturally favored by the old horses, while Pierrot and Baggio have to face the reality of serving as substitutes in the national team.

As for England, Hoddle, the big-mouthed manager, has traditionally set up a 442 parallel formation: the goalkeeper is Fowlers from Blackburn, the back four are Stuart Pearce, Southgate, Keown and Phil Neville from left to right, David Beckham, Paul Ince, Paul Scholes and Le Sox form the midfield, and Sheringham and Ian Wright are two veterans up front.

Facing a very different Italy team under the influence of Zhuang Mingge, the trajectory of this game has also quietly changed.

England is not Manchester United, no matter how much Ince and Becky can run, in the absence of Manchester United's complete system of running without the ball, they are completely unable to control the pace of the game, and the result is that they are beaten by the Italians' quick counter-attacks again and again.

Vieri struggled with Keown and Gareth Southgate's centre-backs, but he created plenty of scoring opportunities for Inzaghi, while England's defenders looked a little frustrated against the likes of Inzaghi, who rarely come across this type of striker in the Premier League.

In the 22nd minute, Beckham's cross was cleared by Nesta, and the ball was transferred to the feet of Albertini through Di Biagio, who sent a long pass over the top near the center circle of the stadium, and Inzaghi, who was successful in the offside position, did not wait for the ball to land, and it was a volley directly in the penalty area!

Forles' best efforts couldn't stop the ball from flying into the door behind him, 1-0, Italy took the lead!

Although Paul Scholes equalised for Ingola with a long-range strike early in the second half, the game then fell completely into Italy's hands, with Totti, who was gradually finding his senses, and Albertini behind him combined to control the tempo of the game, and scalpel-like passes stumbled England's backline.

In the 66th minute, Totti sent a through ball past Ince, and Inzaghi broke away from Keown's defense to meet the ball to make it 2-1, which was also the final score of the game.

After watching this game, Zhuang Mingge was about to pack his bags, planning to fly to Paris tomorrow to watch the highlight of the second round of the game, that is, the match between Italy and Brazil (although he usually pays attention to the Premier League, Zhuang Mingge has no good impression of the English national team, so the Anglo-French game is unattractive in Zhuang Mingge's eyes), a phone call made his originally good mood fall to the bottom.

"Giancarlo (Antonioni), what's going on? Didn't I already hand over the transfer to you and Hercule? How could that bald guy Galliani come to France to find me? After receiving a call from Antonioni, Zhuang Mingge was a little depressed, he finally found a reason to throw these trivial matters to the people below, but he didn't expect Galliani, a bald man, to be so uninteresting, and rushed to France to discuss important matters with Zhuang Mingge in person, "What important thing can he do?" Thinking about it, I know that this guy must have taken a fancy to one of our players, and then ran to France to fool me as the boss. ”

"Boss, I guessed the purpose of Galliani's trip, but what can I do? Can you still contact the customs to prohibit him from leaving the country? Antonioni, who had long known that his boss wanted to be the shopkeeper, snickered on the other side of the phone, thinking to himself, boss, you also have today, "Anyway, Antonio, you are so wise and martial, you will definitely not fall for that bald man." ”

After listening to Antonioni's words, Zhuang Mingge was silent for a while, and spit out a word: "Damn!" ”