Former Azzurri and Chelsea stars Pierluigi Casiraghi and Gianfranco Zola were put in charge of Italy's Under-21 team on Monday. Casiraghi will be the coach of the 'Azzurrini', while Zola will be his assistant.
The duo replace Claudio Gentile, who was surprisingly dropped by the Italian Soccer Federation (FIGC) when his contract expired at the end of June.
Gentile led the Under-21s to victory at the 2004 European Championship and to a bronze medal at the Athens Olympics.
But with Roberto Donadoni replacing Marcello Lippi at the helm of the full national side, the FIGC opted to make a fresh start with the youngsters too. "I have great confidence in, and respect for, Casiraghi and Zola," said Arrigo Sacchi, who included both players in his squads for the 1994 World Cup and for Euro 1996.
"I wish them all the best and a lot of luck. They are good lads and they deserve everything they get". Casiraghi and Zola will have the job of nurturing the next generation of national-team players. This task is seen as particularly important at the moment, with a number of members of the World Cup-winning side approaching retirement age.
Neither Casiraghi nor Zola have a great deal of coaching experience.
Casiraghi, 37, has trained fourth-division Legnano and the youth side of home-town club Monza, which is in Serie C1. Zola, 40, only quit playing last year and does not have his coaching license yet; hence the official title of "technical consultant". The duo's first game in charge of the Under-21s will be a friendly against Croatia in Grosseto on August 15.
Things then get serious in the first week of September, when the Azzurrini take on Iceland and Austria in qualification matches for the 2007 European Championships.
A powerful centre-forward with heaps of heart and skill, Casiraghi turned professional at the age of 16 with Monza, which was a Serie B team at the time. In 1989 he signed for Juventus, winning two UEFA cups before switching to Roman club Lazio in 1993.
In total he netted 61 goals in 238 games in Italy's top flight.
He was also a regular in the Italian national team in the 1990's, playing for his country 44 times and scoring 13 goals.
In July 1998 he joined Zola and another Azzurri, Gianluca Vialli, at Chelsea.
Casiraghi's playing career was cropped short in November 1998 by an injury picked up in only his 10th game for Chelsea.
Nine operations and thousands of hours of toil in rehabilitation therapy failed to put him back into action. Zola has a spotless image and his presence in the national team set-up will help Italian soccer put the scandals of recent months behind it.
He is considered by many to have been one of the greats of the modern game.
He rose to fame as Diego Maradona's understudy at Napoli, where he won a league title in 1990. He then plied his trade for Parma for three seasons
before joining Chelsea in 1997, where he played 312 matches and scored 80 goals, winning two FA Cups, a League Cup, a Cup Winner's Cup and a European Supercup.
In his last year with the London club, Chelsea's fans voted him the team's best-ever player.
In 2003 he returned to his native Sardinia to inspire Cagliari to promotion to the top-flight. He helped the side stay in Serie A the following season.
Zola played 35 times for Italy after his debut against Norway in November 1991, scoring eight times. In 2004 he was made an honorary Member of the Order of the British Empire (OBE), one of Britain's highest civilian honours.
