'Good defending from Maldini': Calafiori, Esposito and Italy vs Türkiye
One line from the commentary sent Italy supporters back twenty years, and the comment section under the highlights sounds like a team coming home.
FOX SportsStory of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 341,832 views a day, 29 times a normal first day on this channel (11,829).
Italy vs Türkiye Highlights ⚽ UEFA Nations League
About two minutes into FOX Sports' highlights of Italy vs Türkiye, the commentator says something Italy supporters had not heard in a long time: "Good defending from Maldini." It is Daniel Maldini, son of Paolo and grandson of Cesare. The most liked comments come back to that moment, and several viewers write that they had not heard those words on an Italy broadcast in about twenty years.
The Nations League reel passed 145,000 views in its first seven hours. A new highlights video on the channel usually ends a full day near 12,000. It is another soccer sprint for a channel that, as we reported here, had already run far ahead of its usual with France vs Italy and with Wales against Norway.
The tags name Pio Esposito, Riccardo Calafiori and Gianluca Scamacca. Calafiori gets the warmest notes. Viewers say this was his first goal for Italy, scored in Bologna, the city he left for Arsenal in 2024, and Arsenal supporters claim him happily in the replies. Others call Esposito Italy's new number nine. A few would have liked a first look at Inacio, a youngster several of them have watched in Italy's youth teams.
Not everyone is convinced. Some point to sloppy defending on the first goal, and others found Türkiye disorganized at both ends. But the comment heard most often is some version of "Italy might just be back," which means a lot from supporters of a side that missed the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.
Baseball kept the channel busy too. Alex Rodriguez, David Ortiz and Derek Jeter broke down the Braves' 3-2 Game 2 win over the Dodgers, with Michael Harris II joining them, and a short Brewers clip billed as "fitting for a month like October" also ran well ahead of usual. The Italy reel drew the biggest crowd of the three.
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What viewers say
"Good defending from Maldini"
Man, I thought I'd never hear that again.@SirBeast1992See it on YouTubeItaly might just be back
@johnjulianolll9755See it on YouTubeItaly is back and the world is a better place for it
@jadencross1579See it on YouTube
Public comments from the video's page on YouTube
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- Channel
- FOX Sports
- Subscribers
- 2,330,000 ▲ 10,000 this week
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 8,494,361
- Channel views, pace per day
- 2,445,869 (on a normal day: 2,134,640)
- Video published
- October 5, 2026
- Video views so far
- 145,122 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 341,832
The numbers
Italy's highlights, the Braves' Game 2 breakdown and a Brewers short all ran well ahead of a usual first day for FOX Sports.
💡 Test your knowledge
Türkiye's best World Cup finish was third place. In which tournament?
At the 2002 World Cup in South Korea and Japan, Türkiye beat the co-hosts South Korea in the third-place match, a game in which Hakan Şükür scored the fastest goal in World Cup history.
