Admittedly, the title doesn’t run off the tongue as smoothly as, ‘May the fourth be with you’, but we do have two consecutive instances of the date being represented by Italian defenders’ numbering journeys at World Cups.
Alessandro Costacurta’s favoured number was 5 – most of the time, anyway – and when he made his first appearance at a Mundial, in 1994, he would have had it under the Italian block-numbering system, except for the fact that his colleague, captain Franco Baresi, sought to wear his preferred 6 rather than the 2 he would have had if proper alphabeticisation was followed.
Instead, Costacurta was bumped one slot up the list and wore 4, with another Milan defender, Paolo Maldini, wearing 5 as Italy reached the final.
Four years later, the ‘captain’s choice’ worked in Costacurta’s favour. Objectively, being the third defender in alphabetical order would have put him as number 4 for France 98 but, with Maldini claiming the 3 with which he was so heavily associated, Costacurta landed on 5.
Maldini’s switch also had a knock-on effect for Fabio Cannavaro as he was number 4 rather than 3. It did meant that, when Cannavaro, Costacurta and Alessandro Nesta formed a three-man defender, it was a pleasing 4-5-6 – and the quirk also meant that Cannavaro would replicate Costacurta’s switch four years later.
By the time of the 2002 World Cup, Italy had gone away from the block system and the 1-11 numbers were given out more conventionally.
They weren’t given to the ‘first XI’ per se – Nesta chose 13, for instance, while Gianluca Zambrotta and Christian Vieri went with 19 and 21, respectively – but Cannavaro claimed the number 5 shirt and would go on to wear it as he captained Italy to glory in 2006 and again in 2010.
