How Rossi’s 1982 heroics signed death of the beautiful game

Paolo Rossi burst into life when it mattered the most. The Azzurri, Italy’s national team for whom he was the star striker, had laboured through three uninspiring draws against Cameroon, Poland and Peru in their opening matches of the 1982 Fifa World Cup.

They had the same goal difference with Cameroon and only staggered into the second round at the expense of the Indomitable Lions because they had scored more goals.

In the second round, they were drawn against Argentina, the tournament’s defending champions and Brazil, the red-hot favourites to lift the title.

There are groups of death and there are groups of death: this one comprised former World Cup winners.

Brazil crushed Argentina 3-1 and Italy parked the bus after leading the champions 2-1.

On account of their superior goal difference in their last group match against the Azzurri, Brazil needed only a draw to proceed to the semi-finals. That is when the catastrophe that changed world football happened.

With only five minutes of the game played, Paolo Rossi began what was to become his and his country’s most unforgettable World Cup episode. He shook the Brazilian goal with a header from Antonio Cabrini’s cross.

Seven minutes later, with Brazil playing like Brazil, Socrates, their captain, equalised.

That was the first chance for Brazil to put the match away. But they didn’t.

In the 25th minute of play, Brazil’s Toninho Cerezo made an uncharacteristic mistake by gifting a ball to Rossi who saw off the brilliant left back Junior to score Italy’s second goal.

Brazil pitched tent in the Italian half and had their endeavours bear fruit in the 68th minute when Falcao slammed in a 20 metre blockbuster. This was Brazil’s second chance to put the game away. Still they didn’t. They played true to their philosophy: happy, free-flowing and exquisitely artistic football.

Finally, in the 74th minute a poor clearance from an Italian corner had Rossi complete his hat-trick and no amount of Brazilian pressure could crack the granite Italian defence.

Three-two it was and the greatest football squad never to win a World Cup, the best Brazil had put together in the post-Pele era, was out.

In the world of football, there was a seismic shift. The most evocative words about the Brazilian style of play were not uttered by a star struck fan in Sao Paulo but by a defeated coach from Oceania.

“It was like playing in the 21st century,” John Adshead, New Zealand’s coach, told a post-match press conference after his team succumbed 4-0 to Brazil in the first group stages of the tournament. The 21st century was a distant 18 years away then.

Tragic death

This is the memory that Paolo Rossi’s tragic death brings to football lovers across the world.

He went to Spain a villain, having been implicated in a match fixing scandal that earned him a three-year suspension and appeared in the World Cup only after earning a one-year reprieve.

But there, after the sluggish start noted above, he burst into life and became a hero, the standard bearer of the team that consigned the beautiful game into the museum.

And the team that lost, whose high aesthetic standards hacked back to the legendary teams of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, mourned the ending of a way of life. Millions of their adherents across the world mourned, too.

For the beautiful game was no more. Listening to their recollections of the destruction wrought by Rossi and his Azzurri teammates is to indulge in a futile yet pleasurable exercise of trying to turn the clock back and wanting to live in a world of what might have been.

“The world went crazy for that team,” Juca Kfouri, a veteran Brazilian editor, told David Tryhorn, producer of a touching documentary made on the 30th anniversary of that famous or infamous match depending on who you were talking to.

“There was a romantic atmosphere around them. I’ll never forget a headline in the Spanish press:
“‘It’s impossible to understand the world – Brazil knocked out.’ Because we were all in love with that team. It was the crystallisation of the so-called beautiful game.”

What to fans around the world was art in motion was to Brazilians the face of their country. All regions of the country had representation in a team that was four years in the making under the tender loving care of a coach named Tele Santana.

In Falcao, that team had the biggest star for the most popular team in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Internacional, and in Socrates, its pediatrician captain, it had the biggest star for the most popular team in Sao Paulo, Corinthians.

In Zico, it had the biggest star for the most popular team in Rio de Janeiro, Flamengo, and in Toninho Cerezo it had the biggest star for the most popular team in the state of Minas Gerais, Atletico Mineiro. It was much loved throughout the country.

Its starting eleven was: Waldir Peres, Leandro, Oscar, Luizinho, Junior, Cerezo, Falcao, Socrates, Zico, Eder, Serginho.

Football in its purest form

Junior said: “That team was football in its purest form.”

To be sure, there had been other exceptional teams that deserved to win the Fifa World Cup but didn’t. Hungary in 1954 with Ferenc Puskas, the tournament’s best player, did not. And there are some of us who can remember the shock and disbelief when West Germany defeated Johan Cruyff’s Holland 2-1 in the 1974 World Cup final in Munich.

The Dutch had introduced a new concept in the game, total football, in which all players attacked and all of them defended.

They played with panache and no neutral in the world wanted Germany’s precision calculations to win. Unfortunately, they did.

In 1982, Rossi was the opportunistic forward in a dour but effective team. He punished mistakes mercilessly and his teammates did everything they could to hang on to their advantage once that had happened.

Dino Zoff, their goalkeeper and captain, who at 40 would become the oldest player to lift the World Cup, wasted so much time clinging on to the balls he had saved that Fifa later moved to clamp down on that conduct.

This was the Italian team of that day: Dino Zoff, Giuseppe Bergomi, Antonio Cabrini, Fulvio Collovati, Claudio Gentile, Gaetano Scirea, Gabriele Oriali, Marco Tardelli, Bruno Conti, Francesco Graziani and Paolo Rossi.

It went to win and not to entertain anybody. It went to get the results and it got them.

And its philosophy triumphed such that even future Brazilian World Cup winners in 1994 and 2002 imitated their businesslike approach. And this despite having stars like Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Romario and Kaka.

Serginho, who missed chances that he shouldn’t, was one of the players who thought his country should have changed tactics and even philosophy.

“Yes, we were one of the best teams,” he said. “But we were a losing generation. We won nothing. We had great players who deserved to have a World Cup winners’ medal, guys like Falcao, Zico, Socrates, and they deserved it. We all deserved it. But we didn’t win. So we are remembered for that game, that defeat, it’s been 30 years and we shall be remembered for another 60 or 70 years. You played well, but you didn’t win. So what does that mean? We didn’t win!”

Zico thought that all things considered, he and his team mates did the only things they knew how. “I obviously wanted to win,” he said.

“We played to win that World Cup but within the laws of the game. We wanted to win but maintaining our philosophy. I think that group of players did not know how to play football any other way. If you told us to play differently, to shut up shop or to play on the counter attack then you would have had to change the players.”

'Tardelli the hard man'

If Paolo Rossi was the opportunist, defender Marco Tardelli was the hard man.

Notoriously physical, a journalist once asked him why he thought a certain viciousness belonged to football. “Sorry, Signor,” he replied dismissively, “it is not ballet dancing.”

Contrast this with Tele Santana’s attitude: rough play was a no go zone for him. If a player exhibited roughness, he was warned severely and then dropped altogether if he persisted. Zico, Junior, Serginho and Luizinho all spoke persuasively about the coach’s utter disgust with any flouting of the rules of the game. A professional he was but he was even more a gentleman.

Paolo Rossi now belongs to the ages. To a great extent, he was instrumental in Italy’s win of the 1982 World Cup, the second since they had last taken it in 1938.

With six goals, he was the tournament’s leading scorer, an achievement for the record books. Without doubt, he will be remembered as one of the great football players of the 20th century, his dalliance with match fixing notwithstanding.

The tactics that his coach, Enzo Beazot employed in 1982 worked and were subsequently copied by many teams around the world. Everybody loves a winner and Italy won – and Brazil lost. Still, the debate over which style a country should adopt won’t go away.

Luizinho said: “Nothing else mattered after that, just victories. That was bad for Brazilian football because people stopped concerning themselves with beautiful football."

"And that’s something that we had always been proud of in Brazil. If Brazil had won, then other nations would have started copying us and our style. But that did not happen. Italy won and other nations started copying them.”

What happens at the top of the game influences what goes on below around the world. Imitation is the easiest way in which young people learn; they try to become like the people of their adoration.

As Italy was winning their second World Cup, Gor Mahia’s Sammy Ndong’a, a lanky, left-sided midfielder became “Socrates” and Zedekiah Otieno, a future Harambee Stars player and coach, became Zico.

No player adopted an Italian name – no Rossi, no Dino Zoff, no Antonio Cabrini. What does that say about our choice of heroes? I don’t know. But this much I can say: Rest in peace, Paolo Rossi, your work is done.

Roy Gachuhi, a former Nation Media Group sports reporter, is a writer with The Content House. [email protected]