The Stade Pierre-Mauroy sits on the edge of Lille as a monument to brilliant architecture, a vast, enclosed arena that holds noise the way a cathedral holds silence, pressing it back down onto the pitch, amplifying everything and forgiving nothing.
It hosted the last meeting between these two sides, a 13-13 draw in 2024 that France escaped through a refereeing decision that denied Italy the retaken penalty that would have won it, and the memory has not faded in the Azzurri camp. These things do not fade; rather they’re filed away and retrieved on the coach journey to the ground, passed around quietly, and used as fuel at exactly the point in the week when fuel is needed most, especially considering the French shenanigans during that final Paolo Garbisi kick, something that still rankles with Italy.
France arrives with 10 tournament points, a Grand Slam in their sights, and the quiet authority of a side that steamrolls all in its way. We’ve seen two performances of such devastating completeness that the tournament has begun to arrange itself around them, the other five nations calculating desperately how to stay competitive long enough for something miraculous to happen. Italy arrives having beaten Scotland in Rome, pushed Ireland to the wire in Dublin, and earned something that was not always guaranteed in this fixture: the right to be taken seriously.
This is another jump up from Italy of four years ago, absorbing defeats and looking for consolation in individual performances. A side with a structure, a gameplan and a coaching staff that has transformed the Azzurri from the tournament’s charitable gesture to one of its genuine threats.
The question is not whether they can compete; that argument was settled long before this weekend. The question is whether they can sustain it across 80 minutes against the most complete squad in the Northern Hemisphere.
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Gonzalo Quesada spent 20 years coaching in France. He played here, coached here, won the Top 14 here, and served as kicking coach to Les Bleus under Jacques Brunel. He knows where to probe, where to hide, and where the margins live and Fabien Galthié might not publicly admit it, but he knows he knows. That mutual knowledge makes this considerably more interesting than the historical record suggests.
Where the game will be won
This match will be decided by the kicking game and the scrum, and the two feed each other, Italy’s entire tactical architecture for Sunday constructed on that foundation.
Italy kicks more than any other side in this tournament, a coherent territorial philosophy that pins opponents deep, accumulates errors, and creates the field position from which their structured attack operates with genuine menace.
Against most sides in this Six Nations, that strategy is rational and often decisive. Against this French back three it borders on the foolhardy, because Thomas Ramos, Theo Attissogbe and Louis Bielle-Biarrey have spent this tournament painting pictures that opposing defences cannot decode in real time and analysts struggle to describe coherently afterwards, three French impressionists sharing a canvas, each working in his own distinctive style, each producing something you did not fully process until it had already happened.
On any given weekend on the banks of the Seine there are artists setting up their easels and attempting to copy the Mona Lisa, and they have been doing it for centuries without getting close; opposing back threes have spent two seasons attempting something equally ambitious with this unit, trying to replicate what they do with space and time and a rugby ball, and arriving at the same humbling conclusion: you can see what they are doing, you can watch it unfold in front of you, you still cannot reproduce it and you still cannot stop it.
Quesada understands all of this with a precision that no other coach in this championship can match. He has stood in that coaches’ box, he has run those training sessions, he has watched from inside the machine that built this system and these players, which means the man in the Azzurri coaches’ box on Sunday afternoon knows exactly when the aerial kick is a tactical weapon and when it is simply an invitation.
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Italy get the ball back through the scrum, and Danilo Fischetti, Giacomo Nicotera and Simone Ferrari have been the most cohesive, most aggressive front-row unit in this tournament, dismantling the Irish pack in Dublin and establishing physical superiority over Scotland in Rome in conditions that should have favoured Scottish power, their scrummaging a collective act of controlled violence that has drawn penalties, rattled confidence and built the platform from which Garbisi has been able to operate. The Azzurri scrum is a weapon, and Galthié, remarkably, has handed them something to aim it at.
France have restored Thibaud Flament and Emmanuel Meafou to the second-row and the back five pushes harder for it. At tighthead, Dorian Aldegheri and Georges-Henri Colombe share a particular and somewhat poignant distinction: between them they possess almost every attribute the position demands, the ball-carrying, the mobility, the technical understanding of the collision and the breakdown, every tool in the box except the one the position fundamentally cannot be performed without, which is the ability to scrummage at tighthead at Test level. Regis Montagne is built to push. Rabah Slimani has done it at this level and knows what it costs. Neither starts. Colombe waits on the bench. Quesada and Fischetti will have circled that number three jersey the moment the teamsheet landed.
What they said
France captain Antoine Dupont is keeping a lid on talks of a Grand Slam, saying: “We are ambitious anyway. We know how the tournament works and we take the games one at a time. Then we are going to dream big.”
Meanwhile, Italy prop Fischetti paid tribute to France ahead of the game and looked at their own ambitions on the Six Nations table.
“France is one of the best teams in the world. It’s clear to everyone,” he said. “They have great individual qualities and play a high-level game. I dream of finishing as high as possible, but we always think game by game.”
Players to watch
Matthieu Jalibert keeps the 10 jersey ahead of the fit-again Romain Ntamack, a selection statement in itself, Galthié making a choice the tournament has emphatically confirmed, because Jalibert could legitimately make a case right now as the most dangerous 10 in world rugby.
Louis Bielle-Biarrey scored eight tries across last year’s Six Nations, and Italy will know exactly where he is at all times on Sunday afternoon. The question, as it always is with this particular player, is whether knowing and stopping are remotely the same thing, and historically they are not.
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Oscar Jégou and Francois Cros, the left-right pairing operating within the vertical corridor system that has defined French back-row rugby for eons, will need to dominate the collision battle to give their backs the platform this back three deserves. Cros is the angry ruck janitor with breakdown OCD, tut-tutting with exasperation as he sweeps the offending mess up, and where he walks, fast ball appears as if by magic, as both France and Stade Toulousain know better than anyone. Jégou brings something different alongside him, more athletic, more instinctive, occasionally more distracted, the creative foil to Cros’s obsessive order.
And then, when Italy have spent 60 minutes absorbing all of this, France reaches for the bench and produce the nuclear difference. Charles Ollivon and Mickael Guillard, two genuine World XV selections and two of the finest performers anywhere in this tournament, arrive as thermo-nuclear escalation, La Bombe Surprise detonated precisely when Italy can least afford it.
Danilo Fischetti‘s work rate across every facet of the game is extraordinary for a loosehead prop: scrummaging with controlled aggression that has drawn penalties and rattled front-rows across two rounds, carrying with purpose beyond the gainline, tackling with a ferocity that embarrasses players twice his size, jackalling at the breakdown with the instincts of an openside. He is not simply a scrummager who turns up elsewhere; he is actually everywhere, all the time.
Manuel Zuliani, operating alongside him in the loose, recorded 16 tackles and five turnovers against Ireland in the work of a player at the peak of his powers, and Michele Lamaro sets the contest tempo from the first whistle with a captain’s authority that France’s back-row will need to match.
Main head-to-head
Tommaso Menoncello was man of the match the last time these teams met in Lille, a 13-13 draw that France escaped through a coat of paint on a post and the Italian centre has spent every game since adding layers to a profile that was already extraordinary for a player not yet into his mid-20s: the physical authority, the instinctive carry, the refusal to go sideways when forward is available, the almost supernatural ability to make the gainline irrelevant because he’s already beyond it before defenders have registered what is happening.
Fabien Brau-Boirie is 20 years old and has played one Test match. In that game, which France won 54-12 in Cardiff, he scored a try in the 15th minute and spent the remaining 65 playing with the unhurried composure of someone who had been doing this for a decade. France’s attack coach Patrick Arlettaz reached for Yannick Jauzion as the comparison; the understated brilliance, and the capacity to make those around him better.
These two men will be cited against each other for every World XV for the next decade and the debate starts on Sunday.
Prediction
Italy has the scrum to cause early damage, the back-row to compete at the breakdown, and a Quesada gameplan built on 20 years of intelligence about exactly how France want to play. The first 40 minutes could be as tight as the scoreline suggests it might be. The brilliant Nacho Brex is missing, and his defensive authority in midfield will be felt, the channel around 12 giving Jalibert the space to ask questions Italy cannot fully answer without his management of the Azzurri blitz.
However, Ramos, Attissogbé and Bielle-Biarrey are operating at a level this tournament has not seen since the great French sides of 1999, 2022 and 2023, each of them capable of turning territory into points from positions that look innocuous until suddenly, they explode into transition attack like men possessed. Italy’s kicking game, coherent and effective against every other side in this championship, is in danger of becoming the very mechanism by which France accelerates. Every aerial ball that lands in that back three is a transition opportunity, and France take them with a ruthlessness that has defined their tournament.
Ollivon and Guillard coming off the bench changes the game again. Two World XV selections, two players who would walk into any starting XV in the Northern Hemisphere, arriving in the final quarter to pulverise Italy with direct carrying and offloading skills to match, and we believe the difference in class at that point of the match is too wide for a tiring Italian pack to close. France by 18.
Previous results
2025: France won 73-24 in Rome
2024: The teams drew 13-13 in Lille
2023: France won 29-24 in Rome
2022: France won 37-10 in Paris
2021: France won 50-10 in Rome
2020: France won 36-5 in Paris
2019: France won 47-19 in Paris
2019: France won 25-14 in Rome
The teams
France: 15 Thomas Ramos, 14 Theo Attissogbe, 13 Emilien Gailleton, 12 Fabien Brau-Boirie, 11 Louis Bielle-Biarrey, 10 Matthieu Jalibert, 9 Antoine Dupont (c), 8 Anthony Jelonch, 7 Oscar Jegou, 6 François Cros, 5 Emmanuel Meafou, 4 Thibaud Flament, 3 Dorian Aldegheri, 2 Julien Marchand, 1 Jean-Baptiste Gros
Replacements: 16 Peato Mauvaka, 17 Rodrigue Neti, 18 Georges-Henri Colombe, 19 Charles Ollivon, 20 Mickaël Guillard, 21 Lenni Nouchi, 22 Baptiste Serin, 23 Pierre-Louis Barassi
Italy: 15 Ange Capuozzo, 14 Louis Lynagh, 13 Tommaso Menoncello, 12 Leonardo Marin, 11 Monty Ioane, 10 Paolo Garbisi, 9 Alessandro Fusco, 8 Lorenzo Cannone, 7 Manuel Zuliani, 6 Michele Lamaro (c), 5 Andrea Zambonin, 4 Niccolò Cannone, 3 Simone Ferrari, 2 Giacomo Nicotera, 1 Danilo Fischetti
Replacements: 16 Pablo Dimcheff, 17 Mirco Spagnolo, 18 Giosuè Zilocchi, 19 Federico Ruzza, 20 Riccardo Favretto, 21 David Odiase, 22 Alessandro Garbisi, 23 Paolo Odogwu
Date: Sunday, February 22
Venue: Stade Pierre-Mauroy, Lille
Kick-off: 16:10 local (15:10 GMT)
Referee: Andrew Brace (Ireland)
Assistant referees: Luke Pearce (England), Eoghan Cross (Ireland)
TMO: Olly Hodges (Ireland)
FPRO: Ben Whitehouse (Wales)
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