Sometime in the early 1980s, a boy named Christian Lattanzio approached a hero named Carlo Ancelotti. The boy wore an excited, 10-year-old smile. He was with a bunch of his excitable, 10-year-old friends. Lattanzio was probably walking home from the football pitch at his local church, San Camillo de Lellis. He’d often play there from school dismissal to sundown.

Lattanzio breathed football, and Roma was his hometown club, and one of his favorite players on that team was Ancelotti — the spry midfielder who would one day help deliver one of Roma’s three Serie A titles. He was a wonder in Lattanzio’s eyes. A hero. Ancelotti, meanwhile, leaned on a pair of crutches.