Andrea Pirlo and Paolo Maldini deserve recognition as two former greats who brought distinction to Italian football on the pitch. But they also deserve criticism for the astonishing carelessness with which they underestimated signs of an unacceptable affinity with Russia during its brutal war against Ukraine.

Enough hypocrisy. Pirlo’s rejection as head coach of the Italian national team was not a technical decision but a political one. It would be unacceptable for Italy’s coach to serve as an ambassador for Russia’s leading betting agency, which belongs to an oligarch close to Vladimir Putin.

It is regrettable, but Pirlo showed indefensible poor judgment. Maldini was no less at fault when he stubbornly defended Pirlo to the point of resigning, without realizing that nobody was questioning his technical independence. As the new president of the Italian Football Federation, Giovanni Malagò, rightly argued, this was and remains a matter of political appropriateness.

Do Pirlo and Maldini believe the world ends at the boundaries of a football pitch and that the political context surrounding sport is irrelevant? We do not live on the Moon, and there can be zero tolerance toward the war crimes of Putin’s Russia.

Pirlo and Maldini have suffered a spectacular embarrassment. The sooner they understand that, the better.