NEW YORK — An elderly Mafia capo got two years in prison for socking a Manhattan steakhouse owner to collect a gambling debt, and his lawyer said he had no regrets about the fateful punch.

Federal prosecutors were asking that Anthony “Rom” Romanello get a much more serious sentence, nearly seven years, to account for the 86-year-old Genovese member’s long, mostly unpunished life of crime.

But Romanello’s lawyer, Gerald McMahon, called the charges a “meatball case” that prosecutors sat on for years in the hopes Romanello would do something more serious so they could try to flip him against now-deceased Genovese big Anthony “Tough Tony” Federici.

“When the government asks for 71 months, and the judge gave 24, thank God justice was done in Brooklyn,” an ebullient McMahon said after the sentencing in Brooklyn Federal Court on Monday. “His lawyer thinks, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that Rom has no regrets.”

Romanello was convicted in December of extortion-related charges after he punched steakhouse owner Shuqeri “Bruno” Selimaj on May 11, 2017, to collect an $86,000 gambling debt owed by the restaurateur’s kin. The punch, inside Selimaj’s now-closed swanky Lincoln Square Steak, was caught on video.

McMahon argued that his elderly client punched Selimaj because the restaurateur called him a “washed-up Italian.”

“What would Gerry McMahon do? I would have knocked him flat out,” the defense lawyer told reporters Monday.

The confrontation happened after Selimaj’s nephew, Toni, and the nephew’s brother-in-law, Eddie, lost big gambling with a Queens ring run by bookie Michael Regan, according to prosecutors.

Romanello, a regular at Selimaj’s restaurants, knew all the parties involved, and was brought in to resolve the debt — which he did in three menacing visits over two months, prosecutors allege.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Dana Rehnquist characterized Romanello as a lifelong career criminal who hasn’t held legitimate work since the 1960s. In a letter to Judge Eric Komitee, she argued that Romanello was convicted of 23 crimes over his life, but only sentenced to 36 months.

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