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Roberto Mancini's last redeeming act as Italy manager was to call up Mateo Retegui. The Azzurri were reeling from their most recent World Cup qualifying debacle, and a lack of firepower was their biggest concern. Mancini tried to find solutions on the peninsula but soon realized he had to expand his scope as the talent just wasn't there. He scoured the globe for players with some sort of Italian lineage and asked one of his former teammates, Juan Sebastian Veron, about Retegui, who was playing for little-known Buenos Aires side Tigre at the time and, crucially, qualified for an Italian passport through a great grandparent.

It was March 2023 and Mancini was already comparing his new discovery to Gabriel Batistuta. Retegui's bust potential was sky high. Then he scored twice in consecutive games for his country of ancestry. Inter became interested. Juventus entered the conversation. But Genoa beat them all for Retegui. In just a few months, a relative unknown who had never lived or played in Italy before had become its next great hope.

Circumstance has played a massive role in Retegui's career. He wouldn't have ended up on Serie A's radar if Mancini hadn't been on such an aggressive hunt, and he wouldn't have ended up at Atalanta if Gianluca Scamacca, once Italy's saving grace at the center-forward position, didn't get injured as the season got going. That he's leading Serie A scoring with 20 goals is as much down to his own growth as a striker as it is to the series of events that led him to Bergamo.

If Retegui has taken the fast track, the man behind him in the scoring charts has taken the long way 'round.

Moise Kean's story reads like a tome compared to Retegui's novella. Kean bounced from club to club in search of permanent residence, racking up €64.5 million in transfer fees in the process, but couldn't convince Juventus, Everton, or Paris Saint-Germain he was worth the wait. The player who had scored a brace at 18 years old looked washed up at 24, going all of last season without scoring a single goal. No one knew why Fiorentina wagered up to €18 million to sign him in the summer.

But they believed in him when few others did. Fiorentina coach Raffaele Paladino didn't shunt him out wide as Kean's previous coaches had done. Kean has started 23 Serie A games and played as a center-forward in all of them.

The numbers suggest Retegui and Kean are on unsustainable runs. Retegui is vastly outperforming his xG rating, meaning he's scoring far more than he should based on the quality of his chances. Kean is more in line with this metric. But stats don't explain everything. How many more goals would Retegui have scored if he played every game? And how much better he is compared to the average striker?

Both just needed chances, and both have taken them.