When anti-mafia police swooped on the Sicilian mob on Tuesday, their main aim was to stop them regrouping and creating a new governing body or cupola.

But what has emerged from their wide-ranging investigation is an organised crime group having to adapt to modern realities and displaying a nostalgia for the loftier ambitions of the past.

They don’t produce mobsters like they used to, Giancarlo Romano told an associate in a wiretapped conversation before he was shot dead a year ago.