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Paolo Rossi, ex-footballer, world champion in 1982 and third Ballon d’Or in the history of Italian football, died on Wednesday, December 9, at the age of 64. Rossi was also a well known television commentator on soccer, on Rai, Sky and Mediaset. The news of the death came from his wife, the journalist Federica Cappelletti. According to Gazzetta dello Sport, had lung cancer. Born in Prato in 1956, Rossi gained inexhaustible notoriety and affection with the Italians during the 1982 World Cup in Spain that he won with the national team. A few months later he became the third Italian to win a Ballon d’Or, after Gianni Rivera and Omar Sivori.
Paolo Rossi with the Ballon d’Or in 1983 (ANSA / OLDPIX)
Rossi started playing football in the team of a small fraction of Prato and in 1972, after making himself known locally, he was bought by Juventus. He remained in the Juventus youth academy for two years, then was loaned for a short period to Como. The following season he was bought in partnership (half by one team, half by the other) by Lanerossi Vicenza: at four In the seasons he spent in Veneto, he became one of the strongest Italian forwards of his generation.
It was Lanerossi’s coach, Giovanni Battista Fabbri, who changed his role to take better advantage of his characteristics. As a winger, practically the only role in which the little ones were made, he became a striker, a role in which he knew how to compensate his non-imposing body with speed and skill in movements without the ball. He scored around sixty goals in just over ninety appearances, and in his sophomore year Lanerossi finished second in the league. Rossi was then summoned by the then technical commissioner Enzo Bearzot for the 1978 World Cup. The then president of Vicenza, Giuseppe Farina, had to make an effort not to let Juventus take him away: for his sale he asked for 2,000 million and 600 million of lire, adds what generated a certain stir in the public opinion of the time.
At the end of the four years spent in Vicenza, Rossi moved to Perugia, whose president, Franco D’Attoma, to amortize the 500 million per season paid for his two-year loan to Lanerossi, presented the sponsor for the first time in a T-shirt. of an Italian soccer team. D’Attoma gave the local pasta factory “Ponte” a rectangle about four inches wide on the shirt, at chest height, for which he charged about 400 million lire. Rossi stayed in Perugia for just one season, in which he scored thirteen goals in the League and Cup.
Platini, Boniek and Rossi with Juventus in 1985 (LaPresse Turin / Archives)
In 1980 Paolo Rossi’s career was interrupted for two years by the “Totonero” scandal, for which he lost the 1980 Euro Cup: he was accused of having agreed to the Avellino-Perugia tie in the 1979/1980 season and later disqualified for two years, but he always pleaded not guilty. He said he had met two people at the hotel where he was in retirement with Perugia before the game against Avellino, but that he left them immediately after understanding their intentions. Despite the disqualification, Juventus bought it anyway at the will of president Giampiero Boniperti. Rossi trained with the team for two years, without playing, ahead of his return to the field scheduled for the end of April 1982: a few months before the World Cup. On May 15, 1981, however, Rossi received another month of disqualification for qualifying the sporting event that had deemed him “a fool.”
The Federal Appeals Commission accepted Rossi’s appeal and returned him to the field at the end of the 1981/82 season to play the last league games with Juventus. In his first game after disqualification, Rossi immediately scored against Udinese and then only had time to play two more. Italy’s coach Enzo Bearzot still decided to call him up for the 1982 World Cup, leaving out seemingly better players like Roma’s Roberto Pruzzo, who had scored fifteen goals that year, despite Rossi not playing for two years. Bearzot drew a lot of criticism, which escalated when Rossi played poorly in the first three games. In the second phase of the tournament, however, Rossi’s performance changed completely.
Rossi against Brazil (LaPresse / Historical Archive)
Rossi even scored a hat-trick in the final match of the second group stage against Brazil, who were favorites, played very well and had a midfield made up of champions like Zico, Falcao and Socrates. Italy managed to beat him in one of the most beautiful matches in the history of the World Cup, and Rossi after the match against Brazil became for everyone. Pablito, nickname they gave him in the 1978 World Cup. Rossi scored two more goals in the semifinal against Poland and a goal in the Madrid final won against West Germany. He finished the World Cup as the top scorer with six goals.
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