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Paolo Rossi exploded at GB Fabbri’s Lanerossi Vicenza, a miracle of provincial football that in 1977/78 finished in second place in Serie A behind Juventus thanks to 24 goals from the slender boy from Prato who won the title of top scorer. Raised at Juventus, the bianconeri sent that far too fragile winger to gain experience in Como, where Fabbri noticed it and it was the luck of both. Coach Enzo Bearzot called him up for the World Cup in Argentina 78 and Rossi did not betray his expectations, dragging the Azzurri to the sound of goals (three at the end) to the semifinal, lost to the Netherlands.
Dead Paolo Rossi, legendary 1982 world champion
Italy finished fourth and went crazy for Rossi, so much so that Giampiero Boniperti’s Juve (still owning half of the card) and Giusy Farina’s Vicenza went to the envelopes to resolve co-ownership. The president of Veneto won it for the record figure of 2 billion and 612 million lire, a blunder for football at the time “Paolo – Farina justified himself – is the Mona Lisa of our football.” But the following season was a disaster for Lanerossi, who was relegated to Serie B despite 15 goals from Paolino Rossi who, in the summer of 1979, became the protagonist of the “great negative” against Napoli: «What am I going to do? to do? The savior of the country? ». He then chose to go to Perugia, another rampant provincial with a similar fate to Lanerossi: a two-year loan of 500 million per season with the Umbrians who the previous year had finished second and undefeated. Castagner on the bench. Rossi in Perugia did not find the glory, but the misfortune of football betting. Accused of having invented Avellino-Perugia, he was arrested at the end of the Olimpico game against Roma. Tested alongside dozens of other players (including players from Lazio Giordano and Manfredonia, rising stars of Italian soccer), the sports justice disqualified him for two years and forced him to skip the European Championships of the 80s.
Only Bearzot’s foresight saved him from oblivion. The coach called him against everyone and everything for the ’82 World Cup in Spagna and put him on the field despite two years without official matches (he went to Juve with whom he played some games before the Spanish kermesse). The three games of the qualifying round against Poland, Peru and Cameroon were disastrous, the critics tore him to pieces and he was already supposed to return to Italy with a shot of tomatoes and Bearzot was waiting for him. The match against Brazil, the hat-trick with which he stretched the team of Zico, Falcao, Cerezo, Junior, Socrates, Eder, perhaps the strongest team ever seen in a World Cup, changed his life. He became Pablito, scoring three more goals: two in the semifinals against Boniek’s Poland and one, the first, against Rummenigge’s West Germany in the final of the triumph at the Bernabéu, beaten 3-1.
Paolo Rossi awarded by Vicenza with honorary citizenship
Spain was the rise of the underworld and its footballing zenith. Rossi in Juve (where he won the scudetto, cup of cups and lost a champions cup final), then in Milan (of “his” president Farina) and finally in Verona he never reached those levels of prolificity under the net. As happened in the national team, which failed to qualify for the final phase of Euro ’84 and at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico no longer found the magic of four years earlier and Bearzot preferred the young Galderisi. In 1987, at the age of 31, he decided to say enough. His blinding talent was so intense that he left an indelible mark on Italian and world football in such a short time.
Last updated: 04:09
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