Gigi Riva Chimes In

Gigi Riva has thrown in his two cents on the victory over Germany and made an analogy to the ‘74 Azzurri squad, but he says this crew won’t suffer the same fate. The ‘74 team hadn’t lost in over two years prior to the World Cup (including victories over England and Brazil in that time). This about sums up how fragile the whole tournament can be:

“If everything goes to plan you are obliged to stay together for more than 50 days…You can’t afford to get depressed if the first match doesn’t go well. Too much confidence if you start well can be very dangerous too…the objective is a long way off and if you don’t have everyone pulling together, you won’t get anywhere.”

For my money that ‘74 WC probably had to be one of the best. Cruyff…Beckenbauer…Gerd Mueller. An absolute classic. Of course, I was more worried about learning my ABC’s at the point in history, but I digress.