Sports is a ruthless endeavor -- and not just because Babe Ruth has been dead since 1948. But it takes a special brand of ruthlessness to be a soccer player and title your autobiography I Made Brazil Cry.
Paolo Rossi was such a ruthless man.
He was born on September 23, 1956, in Prato, outside Florence, in Italy's Tuscany region. A forward, he made his professional debut in 1973, for Juventus of Turin. Due to being funded by the Agnelli family, owners of Fiat Motors, Italy's biggest employer, they are the country's most successful team, which makes them its most popular, and also its most hated. Much like the Yankees, the Lakers, Notre Dame, Manchester United, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich. A common slogan in Italy is "Amo il calcio, quindi odio Il Juve" -- "I love football, therefore I hate Juventus."
But knee injuries kept Rossi from becoming a regular player for Juve, and he was loaned out to Lombardy team Como. In 1976, he was sold outright to Vicenza, the largest team in Veneto and thus the closest major team to Venice. There, he blossomed, helping them win Serie B in 1977, gaining them promotion to Serie A, Italy's highest league.
In 1977-78, he led Serie A in scoring with 24 goals, and helped Vicenza to nearly pull off a miracle, finishing 2nd in their 1st season in the league. That got the attention of the Italian national team, and he was selected for the 1978 World Cup in Argentina.
It all fell apart in 1979, as Vicenza was relegated. He was sold to Perugia, in Umbria. He did well for them, but 1980 was the year of the Totonero match-fixing scandal. Two of Italy's biggest teams, A.C. Milan and Rome team Lazio, were punished by relegation to Serie B. Some others, including Rossi's Perugia, were docked 5 points. Rossi was punished more than any individual player, suspended for 3 seasons.
He always insisted he was innocent, but he missed his age 23 and 24 seasons. His suspension was lifted after the 2nd season. Juventus, known for their corruption (they were not charged in Totonero, but would be relegated and stripped of 2 titles in the 2006 Calciopoli scandal), didn't care that people still thought Rossi was guilty, and scooped him up for the 1981-82 season.
He helped them win the League in 1982, and he was once again selected for the national team. Despite there being no blue in Italy's national flag, their national team wears blue (this is also true for Japan), due to it being the color of their former ruling family, the House of Saovy, and are known as Gli Azzurri (The Blues).
Italy's sporting press is notorious for making bigger deals out of things than they should -- for a big team like Juve, the Milan teams (A.C. Milan and Internazionale) or the Rome teams (Roma and Lazio), a 3-game winless streak is a "crisis" and talk that the manager should be fired begins. So there was some fuss about Rossi being chosen for the World Cup.
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The tournament was held in Spain, and 2 teams seemed to be the popular favorites, Brazil and France. Brazil, in particular, because, for the 1st time since their 1970 win, they seemed to have a team that was not only greatly talented, but stylish. Like most Brazil teams, they were led by men using single names, and the names still echo through the history of the game: Sócrates, Zico, Falcão, Éder. (Some of these names had been used for popular players before, and would again.) And one man who used 2 names, serving as a nickname: Roberto Dinamite.
Brazil had beaten Italy in the 1970 World Cup Final, and the contrast between the national teams' reputations couldn't have been more stark: While they had a high-scoring team in 1970, Italy's best club teams had been notable for defense, with a style known as catenaccio, or "padlock."
Gianni Brera, the legendary writer for La Gazzetta dello Sport -- effectively, Italy's Grantland Rice -- had said that the perfect soccer game would end 0-0. Most Americans would find this boring, but Italian fans of the 1960s and '70s tended to agree with him.
Not surprisingly, Juventus were known for a strong defense, and had 6 players on Italy's team for the 1982 World Cup: Rossi, midfielder Marco Tardelli, goalkeeper Dino Zoff, and 3 defenders: Antonio Cabrini, Claudio Gentile and Gaetano Scirea.
Fiorentina, of Florence, had 5: Backup goalkeeper Giovanni Galli, defender Pietro Vierchowod, midfielder Giancarlo Antognoni, and forwards Daniele Massaro and Francesco Graziani. Inter Milan had 5: Backup goalkeeper Ivano Bordon, defender Giuseppe Bergomi, midfielders Giampiero Marini and Gabriele Oriali, and forward Alessandro Altobelli.
A.C. Milan had 2 players, both defenders: Franco Baresi and Fulvio Collovati. And 1 player each came from 4 other clubs: Forward Franco Selvaggi from Cagliari on Sardinia, midfielder Bruno Conti from A.S. Roma, midfielder Giuseppe Dossena from Turin team Torino, and midfielder Franco Causio from Udinese. The manager was Enzo Bearzot.
Italy excited no one in the First Group Stage, gaining 3 draws, all in the northwestern Spanish city of Vigo: 0-0 with Poland, 1-1 with Peru, and 1-1 with Cameroon. The Italian media ripped their own boys, singling Rossi out, with one writer calling him "a ghost aimlessly wandering over the field." But it was enough to finish 2nd to Poland in Group 1, and advance to the Second Group Stage.
They were put in Group C, with Brazil and Argentina. The latter were not only the defending champions, but had added a new star, Diego Maradona. Italy seemed like lambs being led to the slaughter. The term "Group of Death" was not yet in use in 1982, but, in 2007, with a quarter-century of hindsight, British newspaper The Guardian called this "the deadliest-ever Group of Death in World Cup history."
All the games in this Group were played at Estadi de Sarrià, home of RCD Espanyol in Barcelona. On June 29, Italy stunned Argentina -- a country which, despite having Spanish as its official language, has Italians as their largest ethnic group -- with 2nd-half goals by Tardelli and Cabrini within 10 minutes. Argentina pulled one back, but it wasn't enough, as Gentile and Scirea marked Maradona out of the action, and Italy were 2-1 winners.
On July 2, Brazil beat Argentina, their arch-rivals, 3-1 in a masterclass of what they called, in Portuguese, O Jogo Bonito: The Beautiful Game. Argentina were out, and the July 5 match between Brazil and Italy would decide one of the teams for the Semifinal.
Bearzot decided that keeping Zico from attacking was the answer. He sent Gentile to mark Zico, and it worked, but at a price: Gentile was called for a foul, and granted a yellow card. Due to accumulation of cards, he would be suspended for the Semifinal, should Italy qualify.
Rossi scored only 5 minutes in, with a header off a Cabrini cross. Sócrates answered in the 12th minute. In the 25th, Rossi stepped in front of Júnior, intercepted a pass from Cerezo, and scored a 2nd goal. It was 2-1 Italy at the half. Falcão tied it in the 68th. Had that 2-2 score held, Brazil would have advanced to the Semifinal on goal difference.
But in the 74th, Italy had a corner kick. Brazil did a poor job of clearing it. Rossi took the ball at the six-yard line, and drilled a shot to complete a hat trick. Antognoni seemed to score in the 86th, but it was disallowed for offside -- incorrectly, as an instant replay later showed. In stoppage time, Oscar nearly equalized for Brazil, but Zoff made an amazing save, clinching the 3-2 win for Italy.
Brazilian fans could be seen crying in the stands. Not since the Maracanazo of the 1950 Final, which they lost on home soil to Uruguay, had their team sustained such an impactful defeat. This one would also be named after the stadium where it was played: A tragédia do Sarrià. And Rossi, approached after the tournament to write a book, titled it Ho fatto piangere il Brasile: "I Made Brazil Cry."
It has been suggested that this loss was the end of O Jogo Bonito for Brazil: The attacking philosophy that had served them so well was scrapped for a defense-first approach. It paid off in 1994, when they won the World Cup -- beating Italy in the Final, on penalties after 120 minutes of goalless soccer. But the country practically revolted against this approach: Never was a team that won the World Cup less loved in its homeland. So they went back to the old approach, led by Ronaldo and Ronaldinho, reaching the Final in 1998 and winning it all in 2002.
But the 1982 tournament was not over. On July 8, at the Camp Nou, the already-storied home ground of FC Barcelona, Italy faced Poland in the Semifinal. Rossi was the star again, scoring in the 22nd and the 73rd minute, leading Italy to a 2-0 win. The Final would be on July 11, at the home of Real Madrid, Estadio Santiago Bernabéu. It would be against West Germany, which shocked France in what was widely seen as a dirty match.
In the World Cup, matches are usually refereed by a man from neither team's home continent, in the hopes of avoiding any bias. The referee for this match was Arnaldo Cézar Coelho -- from Brazil. Despite Rossi and his teammates having "made Brazil cry," in the end, he was not accused of showing any bias against Italy, and is generally considered one of the best referees in the sport's history.
The 1st half was scoreless. Italy were awarded a penalty, but Cabrini missed it. In the 57th minute, Rossi struck again, heading in a cross from Gentile. Tardelli scored in the 69th, and later said that he saw his life flashing before his eyes thereafter. Altobelli added a goal in the 81st. Paul Breitner scored for West Germany in the 83rd, but it was too little, too late. Italy won, 3-1.
Having previously won the World Cup in 1934 and 1938, this was their 3rd, tying Brazil for the most. Through 2018, the count is Brazil 5, Italy 4, Germany 4 (but only 1 since reunification with East Germany), France 2, Argentina 2, Uruguay 2, Spain 1, England 1.
Rossi was awarded the Golden Ball as the player of the tournament, and, in The Guardian, Peter Mason wrote that, for Italy, the World Cup "was a cathartic moment for the nation, which had been subject to significant social and political unrest for a number of years and, despite being regarded as one of the world's premier footballing nations, had not won a World Cup since 1938... With the victory came an incalculable lift to the nation’s spirits, and Rossi was at the centre of the celebrations."
Rossi became an icon wherever veins carried Italian blood. There was a pizzeria in my neighborhood, on the New York side of New Jersey. Before the tournament, all the pictures were of the New York Yankees, Frank Sinatra, Sophia Loren (including posters from their movies), and the Godfather films. After it, the posters were of the Azzurri, and of Rossi in particular.
At his 25th birthday, he was a genius with a cloud over his head. At his 26th, he was an all-time legend.
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How do you follow up a World Cup win? By doing the best you can. In 1983, Juventus finished 2nd, but won the Coppa Italia (Italy's version of the FA Cup), and reached the Final of the European Cup (the tournament now named the UEFA Champions League), losing to German team Hamburger SV. In 1984, Juve won Serie A and the European Cup Winners' Cup (a tournament phased out in 1999).
In 1985, they won the European Cup for the 1st time, defeating Liverpool at Heysel Stadium in Brussels, Belgium, despite an accident before the game that led to the deaths of 39 people. The incident became known as the Heysel Disaster, and, for UEFA's decision to let the game go forward, it became known as the Cup of Blood.
Before the next season, Rossi was sold to A.C. Milan. He was selected for the 1986 World Cup, but had to miss it due to injury. He played 1 more season, with Hellas Verona, and retired at 31.
He went into the real estate business, and served as a studio pundit, including for Italy's top sports network, RAI Sport. He married twice, and had 3 children.
But he was a smoker, and today, December 9, 2020, he died of lung cancer, at the age of 64.
Now, Italy cries. But because he had once made Brazil, then Poland, then Germany cry, Paolo Rossi made Italians -- and many neutrals -- smile.
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