According to Sports Illustrated, two players in Italy’s top league, Serie A, currently wear No. 88: Lazio’s Toma Bašić and Atalanta’s Mario Pašalić.
I just looked up both on Wikipedia and nothing weird or regarding Nazi connections mentioned there, so maybe just a coincidence to get a nice looking 2-digit number, not knowing the code behind it.
Idk how italy works on the matter but as a German it'd be highly unlikely not to know these.
Since Italy was part of the axis it feels like people would be aware.
For the uninitiated H is the 8th letter and HH is a shorthand for the hail. 88 is the dogwhistle
Also to mention that how a professional footballer is branding themselves is almost as important as how they are playing right now - so I'd guess every single footballer in one of the top clips in the top 5 leagues has a dedicated employee whose sole job it is that the decisions that player makes have a good public image depending on what the player wants.
You can't tell me that any professional footballer doesn't have advisors that are aware of stuff like that