Italy's San Siro Comeback Against Zidane's France Is the Nations League at Its Entertaining Best

Italy erase an early Donnarumma howler with three unanswered goals to top Group A1, while Harry Kane's record 126th cap delivers England's qualification at Wembley.

This was the kind of match the Nations League was designed to produce and rarely does: a genuine competitive fixture between elite teams with group-topping stakes, played at full intensity in monsoon conditions. Italy's 3-1 comeback at San Siro against a Zidane-coached France — his first defeat in the job — delivered drama in almost every register football offers. The opening act belonged entirely to France. Even without Mbappé and Dembélé, they swarmed Italy with Doué, Rabiot, and Da Cunha all going close before Donnarumma gifted Michael Olise the opener with a suicidal short pass. Olise's finish — his fifth in five Nations League games — was clinical, but the goal was manufactured by Italian self-harm, not French brilliance. Italy's response was immediate and sustained. Francesco Pio Esposito equalized in the 26th minute with a deft finish from Cambiaghi's byline cutback, and San Siro shifted from anxious to electric. The match then turned into a genuinely open contest, with Barcola hitting the post for France and Cherki forcing Donnarumma into a sharp save tipped onto the woodwork. Both teams were playing to win, not to protect, and that made it watchable in a way international football often isn't. The second half belonged to Italy's bench. Frattesi drilled home from a Dimarco cross three minutes after Sebastiano Esposito blazed a penalty wide — the kind of sequence that turns a near-collapse into a momentum swing. Substitute Vergara then earned a second penalty, and this time Francesco Pio Esposito converted coolly to seal it. The Esposito brothers operating as a two-man penalty relay — one missing, the other scoring — was the sort of subplot that makes live sport unreplicable. The result extends Roberto Mancini's unbeaten run to four matches in his second spell as Italy coach and delivers Italy's first home win over France since 1962. That historical footnote matters less than the structural one: Italy top Group A1 on head-to-head record with 10 points, level with France, Belgium a point behind after beating bottom-placed Türkiye. Meanwhile at Wembley, Harry Kane's record 126th England cap was scripted to the minute — a 64th-minute penalty winner in a 2-1 comeback against Croatia that sealed England's qualification for the last eight. Kane's 92nd international goal, stroked down the middle as Livaković dived left, was pure routine from a player whose international career has become an exercise in milestone accumulation. Peter Shilton, whose 125-cap record had stood since 1989, handed over a commemorative token before kickoff. Sunday's final group matchday — Belgium hosting Italy, Türkiye traveling to France — will determine whether Italy's head-to-head advantage holds or whether a slip creates a three-way tiebreaker scenario. The football itself, for once, justified the format.