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Brazil was the favorite, a vision in yellow and cobalt blue, a team of bright and unpredictable forwards. There were doubts about his defense, but this was a tribute to the old Brazil, the Brazil of the myth, the legend of 1970. Italy had been terrible during the 1982 World Cup. They had tied all three games in the first group stage. Only the goals scored had made him pass in front of Cameroon.
True, there were flashes against Argentina in their opening game in the second phase, but Italy’s 2-1 win over the defending champions was the result of Claudio Gentile’s brutal tagging of Diego Maradona rather than anything more constructive. Furthermore, Brazil had beaten Argentina 3-1. He only needed a draw against the Italians in Barcelona to progress. But after five minutes, an extraordinary move by Italy, initiated by a dribble by Bruno Conti on the right, culminated with a cross from the left by Antonio Cabrini and a perfect header from Paolo Rossi at the rear post. What followed was perhaps the best game in the history of the World Cup.
It was, Zico said, the day soccer died. And perhaps for some ideal of the game as something to be improvised by individuals, that is true. But for me, a 5-year-old looking in his living room in Sunderland, about 1,200 miles north of the Sarria Stadium, (and, judging from social media, for a large number of other people of my generation from all over the world ), was the day football really started. That game, more than any other, ignited my love for soccer. With the news late Wednesday that Rossi had died at 64, so did a part of our childhood.
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Rossi had been a controversial selection for Italy’s World Cup team. He was the highest paid player in the world when, in 1980, he was given a three-year ban for his role in the Totonero match-fixing scandal, although he always protested his innocence. Rossi missed the European Championship in 1980 as a result and would have missed the World Cup if the ban had not been commuted a month before the tournament. He was 25 and should have been in his prime, but hadn’t played for two years. Enzo Bearzot, the coach of Italy, selected him anyway.
In the absence of sharpness in the game, Rossi struggled in the first group stage and failed to score. He did not score against Argentina. Surely Bearzot would drop it, right? It did not. Rossi’s header against Brazil was the beginning of his revenge. Socrates tied seven minutes later. Everyone seemed to go back to the script. But after 25 minutes, Rossi pounced on Toninho Cerezo’s sloppy square pass and finished clinically: 2-1, Italy. Falcao tied in the middle of the second half, but five minutes later Brazil failed to clear a corner. Marco Tardelli fired and Rossi spun six yards to hook Waldir Peres, completing his hat trick and a totally unexpected victory.
The cliché said that Italian pragmatism had won; rather, it was Italy’s ability to seize its opportunities, to create an extraordinary goal and then to take advantage of Brazilian mistakes, that decided the game.
Rossi scored two more goals against Poland in the semi-final and then opened the scoring when Italy beat West Germany in the final. His six goals in the tournament earned him the Golden Boot and Ballon d’Or, and he beat Italy the tournament. For a generation, he became the icon of a goal-hunting center forward.
With Juventus, Rossi won two Serie A titles, the Recopa and then, at Heysel in 1985, the European Cup. But it is for that golden week in Spain, six goals in three games – against Brazil, Poland and West Germany, to win the World Cup – that he will live in football history. And for those of us of a certain age, it will always be even more than that.
In the past two weeks, soccer has lost Rossi and Maradona, the 1982 and 1986 World Cup Golden Ball winners, and also Papa Bouba Diop, the scorer of arguably the most iconic goal of the World Cup. XXI century. Each of them touched people from all over the world.
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For me, 1982 was a first World Cup and a proper first understanding that there was this whole exciting world beyond Great Britain, that players, countries, and people were involved in this activity, all doing it in their own way. Paolo Rossi was fundamental for that; for a time, your name was called out every time someone hit you up close in the schoolyard. People outside of football often look at the saturation of the coverage the game receives and wonder why it is so important, why we pay so much attention to it. This is why.
Rossi and Maradona and Diop and our shared memories of them are why. It is the great universal. Soccer can be a nasty, hostile, and cynical place, but at best it can also remind us of what we have in common.
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