WATCH out, Glenn Hoddle. When you lead England out of the Wembley tunnel to face Italy in the World Cup qualifier on February 12th, the man next to you will be remembering the greatest night of his life.

Cesare Maldini, Italy's new manager, has been to Wembley before, and can recommend the experience. On May 22nd, 1963, he climbed the steps to the Royal Box as captain of AC Milan to collect the European Cup, the first of the club's five victories in the competition. A mere 45,000 had turned up to see two goals from Jose Altafini, Milan's Brazilian striker, defeat Benfica, whose sole reply came, inevitably, from Eusebio.

Maldini had retired from the sweeper's position by the time Milan next reached the final, six years later. Nowadays he is probably best known outside Italy as the father of the prodigious Paolo Maldini, one of the world's outstanding defenders and owner of three European Cup winner's medals of his own.

But Cesare was there in Spain in 1982, as assistant coach to Enzo Bearzot when Italy beat West Germany to win the World Cup, before moving on to manage the Olympic and under-21 sides, capturing three European under-21 titles in a row. And he has been waiting in the wings all through the lengthy final stages of Arrigo Sacchi's reign.

Sacchi may have taken his team to the final of the 1994 World Cup, but in many eyes the players got there despite their coach, whose only reliable trait was the consistency with which he preferred journeymen to players of real talent. The exception, in USA '94, was Roberto Baggio, without whose flickering genius Italy would not have made it to the knock-out stages.

So what happened next? Sacchi consigned Baggio to the wilderness as he prepared the formation that eventually capitulated so spinelessly in England last summer. And this winter he has presided over unconvincing wins against Moldova and Georgia.

Sacchi's position had been protected by the president of the Italian federation, who had given him a deal worth £1 million a year, lasting through the 1998 World Cup. But a change of presidency meant that Sacchi would no longer be indulged - although to sack him would have meant coughing up the balance of the contract, close to £2 million.

Then, as if by divine intervention, the mutual desire of Sacchi and the federation to see the back of each other coincided with Milan's urgent need to offload the Uruguayan coach Oscar Tabarez after a defeat-riddled start to the season. Silvio Berlusconi solved a lot of people's problems when he agreed to take over the remainder of Sacchi's contract and bring him back to his old club.

Maldini, by contrast, is being paid a mere £250,000 a year to take the Azzurri to the 1998 World Cup. And he takes the job in the knowledge that he was almost certainly not the new president's first choice.

Fabio Capello, the most obvious candidate after five years spent filling Milan's trophy cabinets, is riding high at the top of the Spanish league in his first season at Real Madrid, and could not be tempted. Giovanni Trapattoni, who played alongside Maldini at Wembley 33 years ago, is in a similar position with Bayern Munich, where he is bound by a two-year contract. And presumably Gianni Agnelli would bring down the government rather than lose Marcello Lippi, whose daringly rebuilt Juventus are heading for the championship and a second consecutive European Cup.

Nevertheless Maldini's appointment is probably bad news for Hoddle. "Our job is to restore the public's affection, to give certain values back to our team," Maldini told reporters in Rome this week, noting that the public had been "perplexed" by his predecessor's tactics.

What this means is plain. Maldini will be planning a return to the old counter-attacking style of Italian football, which he imposed on his under-21 sides even while Sacchi was trying to get the senior team to adopt the "pressing" strategy he had introduced so successfully at Milan.

So, in place of Sacchi's confused and demoralised bunch, Hoddle's England will be facing a team fired up to get their new manager off to a winning start. And it will be no surprise if there is once again a blue shirt for a skinny little Buddhist with a ponytail, who would like nothing better than to give Cesare Maldini another day to remember at Wembley.