"Today Mbangula scored three goals, and yet I was considering him very little," Palladino admitted afterward. The Bologna manager had barely used the loan signing from Werder Bremen, who played four minutes against Sassuolo and eight against Napoli under Domenico Tedesco and then sat out Palladino's first game on the bench.
San Siro changed that on Wednesday night. Bologna were 2-1 down at the break after Alphadjo Cissé scored twice for Milan inside 27 minutes, and Mbangula was already responsible for their only goal, an eighth-minute finish from a Nadir Zortea cutback.
He put Bologna ahead two minutes after Davide Bartesaghi's own goal had levelled the game, turning in a Juan Miranda pull-back at close range. He completed the hat-trick in the 86th minute when Jens Odgaard rolled the ball across for a simple finish, and Bologna won 4-2.
It was Ruben Amorim's first league defeat as Milan manager. No Milan opponent had scored a hat-trick at San Siro in Serie A for 28 years, since Gabriel Batistuta did it for Fiorentina in September 1998.
Mbangula, speaking to DAZN, did not pretend to be calm.
"One of the best nights of my life," he said. "My first hat-trick in my career, let's hope not the last." He promised to take his teammates out for dinner, and Łukasz Skorupski confirmed the debt. "I told him that next week he has to take us to dinner," the goalkeeper said.
Palladino was more measured.
"What I liked about Mbangula was the attitude and the spirit," he said. "He is a serious lad, he listens, he does what he has to do and puts himself at the team's disposal."
The night answered a question that has followed Mbangula through five clubs. The coaches who worked with him as a boy saw the talent. They were less sure what he would do with it.
Mbangula was born in Brussels on January 16, 2004, to Congolese parents, and came through Léopold in Uccle and FC Brussels before Club Brugge's recruiters found him. He arrived at their academy as a child and stayed about five years.
"From the start, he was seen by many people as a special talent," Pascal De Maesschalck, the academy's former director, says. Nicolas Verwilst, a former Club Brugge youth coach, offered the other half of the picture: "He was nonchalant, less disciplined than others, but he had a click."
Thierry Siquet, who worked with him on the Belgian national youth teams, described "a somewhat nonchalant side, a bit 'peace and love'".
School was the problem. Mbangula was moved from French to Dutch-language lessons at boarding school, and he has been open about what it cost him.
"I went from sixth primary to first secondary, from French to Dutch," he said. Speaking to RTBF, he added that on the sporting side, "I did not get the trust I had hoped for".
De Maesschalck rejects that, "We really tried to keep him," he said.
Mbangula went home to Anderlecht in 2019 "to be closer to my family", but did not find what he wanted there either.
"I didn't get the proposal I expected," he recalled. "They did nothing to keep me. When Juventus come knocking, you don't hesitate for long."
Juventus signed him in August 2020, aged 16. Gill Swerts, who coaches Belgium's Under-21s, understood why.
"The moment a top club invites you for a tour, try saying no," Swerts said.
He went through the Under-17s and the Primavera, scoring 12 goals in 57 appearances, and announced himself in the first match of Paolo Montero's tenure as Under-19 coach in August 2022 with a chipped finish against Sassuolo. Then came Next Gen in Serie C, where Massimo Brambilla saw both sides of him.
"He had above-average quality, but at the start he was very inconsistent," Brambilla declared last year.
Thiago Motta gave him his chance in the summer of 2024.
"I chose him because he deserves it, he can give us a big hand," Motta said before the Como game. Mbangula scored in the first half, becoming the youngest Belgian scorer in Serie A history, and said: "When I scored that first goal, it felt like a dream."
Even the highlights came with the same restlessness. After his winner against PSV in the Champions League in February 2025, Mbangula said: "I'm not very happy, because I scored, but I came on badly and I can do much better."
Then Motta was sacked, and with him went Mbangula's role. Igor Tudor's 3-4-2-1 had no obvious place for a winger. Mbangula had played four minutes under Tudor by late June 2025, and he was left out of the squad entirely for Juventus's last Club World Cup group game against Manchester City.
Nottingham Forest agreed a fee with Juventus, reportedly €8 million. Mbangula refused.
"Nottingham had an agreement with Juventus during the World Cup, not with me," he told La Gazzetta dello Sport. He said Juventus had been straight with him about the reason.
"We're sorry, but we have to raise money and we're obliged to sell you," the club told him. Tudor was equally blunt.
"He was frank, he told me I didn't fit into the plans. He just didn't 'see' me," Mbangula said, after offering to play as a wide man, a number 10 or even in midfield. About Motta, he was generous: "He changed my career and my life."
Werder Bremen paid around €10 million in July 2025. At first, it worked. After scoring against St. Pauli in October, he said: "I know I haven't reached my best level yet. But that will come soon."
It did not come quickly. Bremen's head coach Horst Steffen switched to a back five, which turned Mbangula into a defensive wing-back as well as a winger.
"The idea of an attacker being responsible only for attacking doesn't exist," Steffen said in January, before adding: "Harry Kane also defends in his own box." He also wanted more. "The skills he has, I want to see them more often."
When Mbangula came off the bench in a 3-3 draw with Eintracht Frankfurt, setting up two goals, Steffen's praise had an edge.
"Samuel has earned it," he said. "He saw that he has to step on the gas, otherwise he won't get to play." Steffen was later dismissed, and Daniel Thioune took over.
Thioune, too, ran out of patience. After Bremen's DFB-Pokal win over Lüneburg, he said: "Obviously I substituted him because I wasn't satisfied, or rather we weren't satisfied." Clemens Fritz, Werder's sporting director, had given the player a vote of confidence earlier this year. "We believe in him, we see his huge potential," he told Bild.
At the end of the summer window, Bremen let him go. Thioune said Mbangula "perhaps needs a change of air" and "Sam can now unfold his potential at Bologna". Bologna announced the loan on September 1, with reports of a €2 million fee and a €12.5 million option to buy. Mbangula is the seventh Belgian in the club's history.
His arrival was complicated by timing. Tedesco, who had given him his first senior Belgium call-up in November 2024, was dismissed within two weeks, after three months and one point from 12.
"It is unfortunate when a player comes to a new club and the manager suddenly changes," Fritz said. "Sam is now required to fight through it and get as much game time as possible." Mbangula's reward came at San Siro.
On the pitch, he is a left-sided winger who attacks with the ball at his feet but is just as dangerous arriving late in the box, a runner in the vein of Rafael Leão rather than a traditional crosser. Motta has described him as "fast, technically very strong". Mbangula himself names Neymar and Vinícius Júnior among the players who inspire him. Wednesday's three goals came from a sweep from nine yards, a first-touch finish and a late tap-in, all of them the work of a player who reads the space before the ball arrives.
His international future is unsettled. DH reported in 2024 that the Congolese federation had approached him and that he preferred Belgium for the time being. Africa Soccer said in May that he had started a switch to DR Congo, only for the same outlet to report two days later that no such discussions were under way.
Bologna have a game to play first. Palladino had told his squad to think only of Saturday’s match against Monza, and Mbangula agreed. “Tonight we enjoy it, because a difficult match awaits us on Saturday,” he said. Three goals have given the manager every reason to pick him again.