Dear Millennials, try to explain why Italy-Brazil was the most beautiful match of our life in the history of Italian football, it means going back forty years, recovering the magical age of childhood-adolescence and stopping at the summer of 1982. The result of that challenge, 3-2 for Italy, you can find it everywhere, googling or asking around who is a few years older than you; but that’s not what matters.
Know that Italy was playing the World Cup in Spain that summer. Well yes, in those days we used to go to the World Cup, other than today: a teenager of today has a sentimental hole to fill, between Russia 2018 and Qatar 2022, there are already two editions in which Italy has not participated. Unfortunately, a common and shared imaginary is precluded, because the World Cup has this great strength: it stitches up memories and gives us back a plot in which everyone recognizes themselves.
But let’s go back to that 1982. The three games in the qualifying round, against Poland, Peru and Cameroon, had been disappointing, Italy had collected three draws useful to pass the round but certainly not to ignite the enthusiasm. Far from it. The team had been targeted by criticism, the worst criticism, the most poisonous, the ones that touch within and hurt.
In the second phase the Azzurri had arrived in what at the time was called “The round of death” because there was Argentina world champion reinforced by a Maradona at his first participation in the tournament and the Brazil of wonders, the Dream-Team of Zico and Socrates, Falcao and Cerezo, a fabulous team, made up of dancers and magicians, champions who played with the ball and had fun like children on the beach, a very strong national team, so strong that it was inevitable to cheer for them. It is always beauty that calls us into relationship, and that Brazil sweated beauty, carried it around with glee, made it his pride. At the first game we beat Argentina rather unexpectedly and we fixed the date in our calendar: July 5, 1982, Italy-Brazil. If that was the “Circle of death” (it was), then the ending was written: the guillotine was lowering on the blues.
It was played in a stadium that no longer exists, they demolished it. It was the Sarrià of Barcelona. The game began at five in the evening, the hour of bullfighters and bullfighting, of destinies of fire and enchantment. We know how it ended. The center forward of Italy was Paolo Rossi. He was going through the worst time in his life. In that tournament he hadn’t scored even a goal. He had lost weight, on the pitch he wandered like a ghost. Only one man believed in him. The coach Enzo Bearzot. Before that game, the «Vecio», as they called him, took him aside and said to him: «Paolino, don’t be discouraged. I trust in you”. It was thanks to those words that that day Paolo Rossi found the flicker of the past, slipped like an eel among the Selecao defenders and even scored three goals in one stroke. Paolo Rossi, the Hombre del Partido. Our dear angel, who recently flew away. You know: there was a team that had to win big, Brazil. And there was another – Italy – that didn’t even have to take the field, as everyone knew that he would lose. But football is an extraordinary dream machine that leaves us breathless every time.
But how was it possible? To give an explanation to that enterprise – forty years later – one must believe in magic, in the strength of men, in the friendship that reigned in the blue locker room. David shooting down the Giant Goliath, sure, okay. Rossi, Tardelli, Zoff, Cabrini, Conti, Collovati, Scirea: the knights who made the feat. But it can’t just be that. On July 5, 1982, the day of Italy-Brazil 3-2, something more and different happened. It happened that the world was in equilibrium and that the bounces of the ball followed the blue dreams, it happened that that miracle that in the life of each of us happens two or three times, no more. Feeling in the right place at the right time, masters of your own destiny.
That was the most beautiful game ever, in our personal life and in our common history, because it marked a redemption, it took us to the moon and left us there, to admire the stars, it was above all because it taught us that dreams are made for be chased with a light heart and trained muscles. Then of course, a few days later we won that World Cup: we overtook Poland in the semifinals, we beat Germany in an unforgettable night. But everything was already done, everything was already written. Because Italy-Brazil 3-2, in its unraveling, in its manifestation, kept the most precious gift that can be received: a promise of happiness.
Other stories of Vanity Fair that may interest you:
– World Cup without Italy, who to cheer for?
– From Rafa Nadal to Roberto Baggio, the champions who have become friends with pain
Source: Vanity Fair
