Eight World Cups

by George Vecsey

  The great majority of the 71,513 fans normally booed Baggio when he came in with Fiorentina or Juventus, but now he was the great ponytailed hope.

  In the first half, Baggio kept Portugal occupied with his dribbling and passing and a few shots near the goal. There was a terrible moment of fear as the goalkeeper Gianluca Pagliuca overran a ball as it skittered near the goalmouth, but the ball did not want to go in.

  “We were afraid late in the first half,” Sacchi would say later. “Fear blocks you.”

  At halftime, the press box provided espresso—the real stuff, from an ornate espresso machine, just like the ones in the city’s elegant cafés and arcades, with real cups and real spoons.

  The match was still scoreless, disaster lurking, with ten minutes to go, when Sacchi sent in Roberto Mancini, the dapper forward with wavy hair from Sampdoria, who twenty-two years later would coach Manchester City to a Premiership title. Three minutes later, Mancini fed Roberto Baggio, who passed to Dino Baggio (no relation), who kicked the ball past the Portuguese keeper. Italy’s celebration consisted mainly of breathing again.

  “Now we go to the U.S. as the first team in our group,” Sacchi said later.

  And Alan Rothenberg let loose the Forza Italia scarf in his pocket.

  While I was in Italy, it just happened that AC Milan was home against Napoli the following Sunday. I took the tram out to San Siro again, noticing a much rougher crowd for a club match, security all over the place, as if the city-states were still at war.

  On the gelid field, Paolo Di Canio of Napoli collided with my favorite defender, Franco Baresi, the captain of the Azzurri. I was partial to the earnest Baresi, unemotional and modest-sized, because he reminded me of a few fathers in my old neighborhood, who worked on the docks in Brooklyn. Now, as medics attended to Baresi, I figured he was done for the day, but he trudged back onto the field, blood staining the wide swatch of bandage, making him look like the piper in the famous Archibald MacNeal Willard painting, The Spirit of ’76.

  Still groggy, Baresi shuffled in place while the graceful Paolo Maldini covered the zone for both of them. Just before halftime, Napoli exploited Baresi’s sector for a goal, but he revived in the second half, and Christian Panucci and Demetrio Albertini both connected on long-range shots for a 2–1 victory for AC Milan.

  After the match, I spotted Baresi slipping through the mixed zone; good grief, he was no more than five feet nine, even smaller than I had thought.

  The next day the papers said there had been only one or two stabbings and beatings at the match—a relatively calm night at San Siro.

  After a five-hour sciopero at the airport, I went home. Mission accomplished. All that talent, all that angst was coming to America.

  * * *

  The ansia did not disappoint the following June. Having been seeded into the Meadowlands, as everybody knew would happen, Italy was now disappointing its constituency. In New Jersey, the sociological reality was that the next generation of Italian Americans had moved out to the suburbs and gotten Americanized; somewhere along the line the love of soccer had been bleached out of them. The team was encamped at a private school in a leafy suburb in New Jersey, attracting a cast of journalists and roaming tifosi and other Felliniesque characters.

  Instead of the usual first-round draw, Italy was stunned by Ireland, 1–0, in its first match.

  American sportscasters fell in love with the name of the Italian keeper Gianluca Pagliuca, pronouncing it over and over again when Pagliuca fouled a Norwegian attacker, incurring an automatic ejection. Sacchi was forced to remove a player to make room for his substitute keeper. To his horror, Roberto Baggio, theoretically the centerpiece of the Italian offense, saw his No. 10 illuminated on the portable signboard held by the fourth official. His eyes and mouth narrowing into tight little lines, Baggio trudged off the field.

  Much of the entire Italian diaspora went mad: take out your most imaginative player so early in a scoreless tie? The fans said they always knew that they should not have faith in the shoe salesman.

  “Baggio on the bench? It’s something that I will never understand in my lifetime.”

  This comment was attributed to another country’s star who would dominate the next World Cup, and who essentially would replace Baggio at Juventus in 1996. They were kindred souls, Baggio and Zinedine Zidane.

  Sacchi did not become coach of the national squad without a ration of good fortune. Dino Baggio saved the second match, scoring while the team was shorthanded in the sixty-ninth minute, thereby keeping Italy alive. For all his spiritual journeys, Il Codino was a pure competitor, who hated it that Sacchi took him out; very un-Zenlike, he glared out at the world.

  The horrors continued: Baresi, the stoic defender, underwent arthroscopic knee surgery after the second match.

  Sacchi’s moves paid off again in the third match against Mexico in Washington, D.C. At halftime, he sent in his supersub, Daniele Massaro, who had played for him at AC Milan, and two minutes later Massaro scored. Mexico countered for a draw, and all four teams in the group finished with four points and were even on goal differential. However, Norway was punished for its defensive posture, having scored and allowed the fewest goals; once again, Italy barely survived the first round.

  Now things really got crazy: after Roberto Baggio’s tepid performance against Mexico, Gianni Agnelli, il padrone of Fiat and Juventus, who had just spent millions for Baggio, labeled him “a wet rabbit.”

  Before the tournament, Baggio had said: “I am hoping to be the Paolo Rossi of this World Cup,” but he was not exactly following the path of Rossi in 1982 or Totò Schillaci in 1990. Some supporters were now calling for him to be benched, but he was in the starting lineup for Nigeria in Massachusetts.

  Disaster was closing in as Nigeria took a lead in the twenty-fifth minute, and Gianfranco Zola was tossed out in the seventy-fifth minute for not very much.

  In the front row of the open press tribune, the head of the Italian federation was pacing. It looked to me that he was edging closer to tossing himself over the railing. Keep an eye on that man.

  Il Codino cut it close, waiting until the eighty-eighth minute before leading a furious swarm toward the Nigerian goal and taking a sideways pass and from fourteen yards out rolling a low shot between the moving legs of a teammate and a Nigerian defender. Peter Rufai, the Nigerian keeper, sprawled but could not stop the shot out of the forest of legs—the first goal for Baggio in this World Cup. The harried head of the Italian federation backed away from the railing. Maybe he wouldn’t jump, after all.

  Now that the match was drawn, in the 102nd minute, Italy’s Antonio Benarrivo went sprawling near the goal while settling under a lobbed pass from Dino Baggio. The sprawl was at least 50 percent theatrics, but the referee went for it. Italy would have a penalty kick. Il Codino calmly arranged the ball on the scruffy disk area and calmly scored the penalty kick—low, off the left post. Italy had endured into the quarterfinals.

  Four days later, Italy was back in the same stadium in Massachusetts, this time against Spain, the classic underachiever of the World Cup. With its great domestic league and obvious talent, Spain always found a way to self-destruct. Did Italy count on that? Dino Baggio scored in the twenty-fifth minute, Spain scored in the fifty-eighth, and Il Codino waited until his time, now established as the eighty-eighth minute.

  Baggio received a looping pass from Giuseppe Signori in the penalty area, as the Spanish keeper rushed toward Baggio to intimidate him. With feline grace, Baggio flitted to his right and flicked the ball into the goal for the 2–1 lead.

  With a lead, Italy transformed from quivering wreck to swaggering bully, straight out of the classic American movie Breaking Away, in which a seasoned Italian cyclist sticks an air pump into the spokes of the admiring kid from Indiana. In this version, Mauro Tassotti ascertained the official was not looking and hammered Spain’s Luis Enrique to the ground. Blood dripping onto his shirt, an enraged Luis Enrique tried to get through to Tassotti, but Spain
was done, again.

  When FIFA caught up with the films, weeks later, it banned Tassotti for eight matches, which became academic since Italy never again chose him for the national team. (Seventeen years later, on the sideline before a Serie A match, Tassotti and Luis Enrique, both long retired, happened to meet, and Tassotti mumbled something that may or may not have been an apology.)

  Now Italy was heading for the semifinals, again in New Jersey. Tickets were going fast.

  * * *

  As I traveled across America, I had the melancholic impression, more than usual, that I was missing half the World Cup. Bulgaria and Sweden had both advanced to the semifinals, with players who earned good livings in the better leagues of Europe. The reward for both nations was that these players gained experience against other top players and were not in awe of anybody.

  Bulgaria’s powerful striker, Hristo Stoichkov, now playing in Barcelona, carried his nation to the semifinals with his wiles and free kicks. Then in the Meadowlands on July 13, Roberto Baggio scored two goals before Stoichkov scored one, for a 2–1 victory that sent Italy to the finals. Baggio hobbled off late with a tender hamstring.

  Sweden had won its quarterfinal in a shoot-out over Romania in the midday sun at Stanford on Sunday and had one less day of rest than Brazil for the semifinal. In the Rose Bowl, Sweden had to play the final twenty-seven minutes after an ejection, and Romário put in a header past Thomas Ravelli in the eightieth minute for a 1–0 victory for Brazil.

  * * *

  Everyone arrived at the Rose Bowl early in the morning for the final, which began at the ungodly hour of 12:30 p.m.—nine hours later in central Europe. Pelé, no longer shunned by the thought police from FIFA, was looking spry and handsome in a white suit as he jogged across the field, escorting Whitney Houston, who was quite gorgeous in a billowing outfit, along with white socks and sneakers, as she sang a little pregame concert.

  The Brazilian and Italian players looked weary as they marched out. Baresi was back in the lineup for the Azzurri, after arthroscopic surgery on his knee just twenty-four days earlier.

  “I decided to play,” Baresi said later. “I haven’t been playing for a month, but this game for the national team will be my last game.” He was the captain; that was his code.

  Italy had other problems. Two players had been suspended for yellow cards, Donadoni’s hamstring had tightened on the six-hour flight west, and Roberto Baggio’s hamstring was still twanging. He advised Sacchi that he might be more valuable coming off the bench but the coach said he would start—or not suit up at all.

  This is the cruelty of soccer, with its quickie summer vacations. Most of the finalists were playing from memory after a long club season in Europe. They were the best footballers in the world, but they were gassed. The strikers shot and the defenders blocked and the keepers dove, and nobody could score.

  In the thirty-sixth minute, Baresi, squat and postsurgical, spotted an opening and went forward with Il Codino on a two-on-one break, my two favorite players on that squad, the lame leading the lame. That sortie was broken up, and after that, Baresi stayed closer to home, admirably keeping track of Bebeto and Romário. The ninety minutes ended without a goal, and in the final minute of added time—120 minutes on his feet—Baresi went down on the field with cramps. Two teammates tried to stretch his legs, and the trainer took him off the field on a motor cart.

  When the game ended with no goals, some American fans booed when it was announced that a shoot-out would decide the championship.

  Boo FIFA for a killer schedule, I wanted to say. Just don’t demand that these players run anymore. American fans, many just discovering this sport, dream up all kinds of gimmicks to decide a match, but soccer already has a method—the shoot-out, the only humane ending after the players have run eight or ten miles.

  The teams casually saluted each other on the sideline, acknowledging that whatever happened afterward was a fluke, “a lottery,” as Baresi would say. In the moments before the shoot-out, Baresi lay on his back as the trainer massaged and flexed his legs. He opened his mouth in pain, like somebody being bombed in Picasso’s Guernica.

  This man was not some zeppole, some creampuff, all soft and sweet on the inside. When you saw Franco Baresi’s teeth bared, it was time to stop the running.

  The two coaches, Carlos Alberto Parreira and Arrigo Sacchi, turned in their lineups for the shoot-out. I would guess that everybody in the Rose Bowl was shocked to see that the first man out was Baresi. Then somebody looked it up: in the fatal semifinal against Argentina in 1990, in steamy Naples, Baresi had also been the first Azzurri shooter. And he had converted. That’s what captains did. They went first.

  “It was a great game, but Italy doesn’t have a history of doing well in shoot-outs,” Baresi said later. “I was asked if I was willing to kick first, so I did.” Of course, Sacchi never should have asked the brave captain to shoot first.

  Flexing his legs, facing the ball on the ground, Baresi skied his shot above the crossbar, to land in the twentieth row. Brazil also missed its first, but then made three straight. Italy made two straight, but Massaro was stopped. Italy was trailing, 3–2, after four kicks. To stay alive, Italy sent out Il Codino.

  Many great scorers hate penalty kicks. They will take their chances freelancing on the field, but they detest the rigidity of kicking from the twelve-yard spot with the entire stadium, the entire world, watching.

  Baggio did not look comfortable. He bent over the ball, as if humming some Zen koan, but there was no peace in his tight visage. He used his artistic hands to eliminate any mole hills, any seismic eruptions, in the grit on the Rose Bowl floor. Then he trudged back a few steps, bad karma evident in his askew jersey. He took a few steps, and after a mild approach he dispatched the ball over the crossbar, almost exactly where Baresi had put his.

  The World Cup was over. Baggio stood in place for a long time, more Schillaci than Rossi, no shame in that. Everybody cried on the Italian bench, even the public-relations man. Franco Baresi cried. It’s Italy. The opera was over.

  Brazil, the champion everybody loves, had won its fourth World Cup, the first I had seen. But after the shoot-out, it did not feel like a championship. Where were Sócrates and Falcão from Barcelona in 1982? Everybody staggered to the exits, looking to get out of the sun.

  As the organizers trucked away the Porta Potties and took down the fences, FIFA counted its swag from this excursion into the strange new world of O. J. Simpson and enclosed stadiums and surging happy crowds.

  The legacy of Alan Rothenberg and his staff was a total attendance of 3,587,538 for fifty-two matches, a full million ahead of Italy in 1990 for the same number of matches. The average per match was 68,991.

  Four World Cups later, the United States still holds the record for attendance and profit. Sepp Blatter knew it all along.

  10

  AMERICA’S FIRST SOCCER CHAMPION

  ATHENS, GEORGIA, 1996

  Loyal fans of the University of Georgia know the expression “between the hedges,” a reference to the thick privet hedges that ring the hallowed field.

  Not much is allowed between those hedges except football, American-style.

  In 1996, the hedges were removed for the first time since being planted in 1929, to accommodate a strange activity—soccer.

  After Atlanta was awarded the Summer Olympics, a World Cup–style tournament was planned around the eastern United States. The semifinals and finals for men and women would be played at the state university—but only if Sanford Stadium could accommodate a soccer field, which at 115 yards by 74 yards is larger than a football field. That meant the hedges would have to come down.

  Some officials were a tad uncomfortable telling Georgians that the hedges were being removed to accommodate this rather suspicious foreign sport, so the public was informed that the hedges were imperiled by nematodes, a minute but dangerous parasite. Citizens were reassured that a healthy crop of hedge would be planted a few days after the Olympics ende
d.

  As a result, one of the great moments for women and soccer and the Olympics took place in Athens, seventy miles from Atlanta.

  To its credit, the International Olympic Committee, under Juan Antonio Samaranch, had added more sports for women in time for the 1996 Summer Games. Women had been kicking the round ball in Europe, just like men, since the nineteenth century, and there were even leagues for women early in the twentieth century.

  The Title IX legislation of 1972 helped women play organized sports, with college scholarships now available to female athletes. By 1982, the National Collegiate Athletic Association held its first official women’s Division I championship, won by the University of North Carolina, which has dominated the event ever since. But the American federation maintained only a “paper team,” in the words of Mia Hamm, a North Carolina player who became one of the icons of female soccer. She meant that female players were only occasionally called together for international play.

  In the United States and elsewhere, women encountered stereotypes about female athletes, but the women persisted. FIFA began organizing competitions for women and by 1991 counted 65 national women’s teams, compared to 165 men’s teams. FIFA authorized the first Women’s World Cup in late November of that year in China, even though that country did not yet have a powerful soccer team.

  “There is still a lot of condescension when it comes to women’s soccer, even in Europe,” Andreas Herren, a FIFA spokesman, told the New York Times. “We were afraid that if the games were held in Europe, the crowds would be very small, the stadiums not the best. It would be embarrassing and not the best way to promote the sport.”

  Chinese officials made sure that large stadiums were packed, even in the late November chill. “The Chinese fans didn’t have a team in the finals, so they would cheer for good soccer,” recalled Carla Overbeck, an American defender. “If we made a good play, they cheered us. If the Norwegians made a good play, they cheered the Norwegians. It was a very healthy atmosphere.”