“All the people we used to know they’re an illusion to me now” – The surreal fate of the glorious 1990 world cup squad

December 15th, 2011 | by: gadsby | Comments Off

Do you remember the first time?

While some (primarily English) observers consider Brazil’s 1982 “jogo bonito” side to be the best team never to win the world cup (which is, in itself, ridiculous. The Grande Inter of the 1960s, just to name one, never won the world cup. They would have destroyed the Tele Santana’s half-legendary side, probably 1-0. Luis Suarez from a Corso free kick. No, I don’t have anything better to do.), this is not the case, as that semi-dubious honour goes the way of the 1990 Italy side that achieved a third placed finish on home soil. This team was, in some ways, very much like today’s Azzurri side; to elaborate, after Enzo Bearzot’s (read: Marcello Lippi) team of 1982 (2006) veterans crumpled into an ignominious exit at the 1986 (the word for “1986″ is a hair’s breadth away from the word meaning “2010″ in a South African aboriginal dialect. You should believe everything you read.) World Cup, resulting in the legendary tactician’s departure from the Azzurri fold and replacement by perennial Azzurrini coach Azeglio Vicini (Cesare Prandelli).

Vicini achieved an immediate modicum of success, revitalizing an Italy side that had, of recent, been dishing out performances as miserable as an average Smiths song, immediately leading them to the semifinal of the 19988 European Championships, before, two years onwards, assembling a team of bright young charges for what would be, in your blogger’s humble opinion, the second greatest world cup to be contested. This piece is not about that world cup, Italia 90, rather it is about the men–if they can be called mere men,– the players assembled by Vicini for that occasion beyond hyperbole and superlatives, and where they are now.

To begin, why not start with the first player on every manager’s team sheet, the goalkeepers. Walter Zenga, the Azzurri’s number one between the sticks and in terms of actual numbering in 1990 has since gone on to have an incredibly interesting career, playing a crucial part in Inter’s ill-fated title challenge against Vujadin Boskov’s 1991 Sampdoria side, one of the best teams to play the game in my opinion. Zenga would, after a bit of an up and down period with Inter, eventually sign for Sampdoria, before flitting off to Padova and finally the New England Revolution in the young MLS, a team that he would pursue a typically short coaching career with. As a coach, Zenga would experience mixed luck, proving himself far too inconsistent to hold down any job for more than two years with any of the ten(!) clubs he has managed since the beginning of the millennium, including switches between National and Steaua Bucharest, Catania and Palermo,Al Nassr Riyadh and Al Nasr Dubai, and Heaven and Hell. His greatest achievement was doing the double with Red Star Belgrade in 2006.

Surprisingly, Zenga has had probably the most glittering career post-football of any of Gli Azzurri’s goalkeepers of ‘90, with Gianluca Pagliuca, his immediate reserve between the sticks currently holding the position of commentator on an Italian TV station, after a career that, prior to his role in Sampdoria’s scudetto victory of 1991, mostly consisted of excellence at the peninsula’s midtable sides, most notably Inter, where he spent five golden years.

Italy’s third choice goalkeeper, Stefano Tacconi, also fared rather well, playing an extraordinary career stretching from 1974 with Spoleto to 1995 with Genoa, with its pinnacle being his nine years at Juventus. He made a return to calcio in 2008, aged 54, with the semi-professional Aquarta. He has not aged gracefully.

Stefano Tacconi. This is also exactly what I'd like you to think I look like, except I have a snappier jacket.

The defence that Vicini selected for the 1990 world cup was, quite honestly, breathtaking. I have no words to describe its unparalleled splendour. For the last few hours, I have done nothing but make incomprehensible gargling noises that sound somewhat like the nouns “Baresi”, “Bergomi”, “Ferrara”, “Vierchowod”, and “Maldini”, which, incidentally, was the back five that turned out for Gli Azzurri in the third place match against England, and this was by all counts a weakened line-up. You read that correctly.

Italy’s defence of 1990 have generally avoided the mistakes of their 1982 equivalent, of whom a sizeable portion became fascist politicians, and have generally tended to either retire from public life (Ricardo Ferri) or go into coaching, with mixed successes. Both Giuseppe Bergomi and Franco Baresi have taken a role in the youth sides of their respective clubs after playing well into the 90s, though both have moved on, Baresi taking a role as an ambassador for Milan and Bergomi moving to the position of U-19 coach at Atalanta, by way of Monza in between.

The two players who have had the most success and recognition since 1990 would undoubtedly (though with the way you’ve been carrying on, I wouldn’t bet against a few commenters trying to prove me wrong there) be Ciro Ferrara and Paolo Maldini, both players in the wing-back position. Ferrara would win two UEFA cups and a Champions League over the next fifteen years with Napoli and Juventus, after which he would take up a position as the coach of the Turin club’s primavera. Ferrara would, as is known to all, subsequently hold down the role as full manager of Juventus, a highly eventful tenure which lasted for a glorious half season, before he was sacked and replaced by Alberto Zacheronni. He is presently coaching the Italy U-21s, where he has actually done surprisingly well.

Maldini, for his part, would have a similarly dazzling career as a player, winning a hat-trick of Champions League trophies to add to the two he had won prior to 1990 and six scudetti, not to forget another pre-1990 title. Italy would never win an international trophy whilst he was playing, which was probably his own fault (are you still awake?). Nowadays, he owns an incredibly shoddy clothing company. This is what comes of playing twenty years under a team owned by Zaphod Beeblebr– sorry, Silvio Berlusconi.

Last but not least, Luigi De Agostini would hold down a minor management role at Udinese under Giovanni Galeone, though he has resigned from football since.

Of Gli Azzurri’s midfielders, we saw Nicola Berti, Giancarlo Marocchi, and Fernando De Napoli both resign into obscurity, whilst Roberto Donadoni, Carlo Ancelotti, and Giuseppe Giannini would go to claim the greatest honour that an Italian manager could be rewarded with, every little Italian boy’s dream, an article in Calcio Italia. Carlo Ancelotti has probably faired the best of all these three, winning the ironically named Champions League twice with a Milan side captained by his teammate of 1990, Paolo Maldini, doing it all while only playing one striker. He was last seen as manager of Chelsea in England, and I can confirm with rigorous certainty that he prefers the Coppa.

Roberto Donadoni at Napoli. This guy has "aesthetics of calcio written all over him"

Roberto Donadoni also spent time in the red, black, and white all over (that joke was amazing when I was in the environs of 11. I’m not sure if it works in reverse, mind.) half of Milan, playing a somewhat important role in Arrigo Sacchi’s and later Fabio Capello’s great Milan side of the 90s, though his playing career fizzled out at the end in the New York and Jiddah. He achieved his greatest coaching success at Livorno, whom he led to a 9th place finish in the 2006 season. This was followed up by his announcement as the new coach of La Nazionale, following in the massive footsteps of the world cup winning Marcello Lippi. I’m not even going to say how that particular appointment worked out. Most recently, Donadoni led Aurelio De Laurentiis’s rebuilt Napoli side to 15th place in late 2009, losing his job in the process. For his next trick, he took an average Cagliari side to an average place in the table, a performance average enough for Massimo Cellino to sack him. He is currently unemployed.

Now to Giuseppe Giannini. His tenure as a coach has been incredibly disappointing, filled with mediocre spells at Serie B and C clubs, most notably Gallipoli, to whom he brought Jose Mourinho-esque tactics for three weeks before it all went downhill, principally because he was not, y’know, Jose Mourinho. At least he never has to pay for a drink in Rome.

Italy’s strikers. M’colleague Sam has already left you well informed about Roberto Baggio, but what of his strike partners? Toto Schillaci, whose performances at Italia 90 led that tournament to be called “the magical nights of Toto Schillaci” (at least, by amateur BBC-poet wikipedia),  would have frustrating spells with Inter and Juventus, before finishing off his career with the J-League’s Jubilo Iwata. Nowadays, he has an academy in Palermo, where he lives.

Perhaps the most successful of all of this generation of players was Roberto Mancini, who would not only get his hands on the scudetto with Sampdoria and Lazio as a player, but also as coach of Inter, with whom he would win it thrice in a row. Nowadays, he  is the manager of the fabulously wealthy Manchester City in England, at odds with the modest lives now held with his former comrades Aldo Serena and Andrea Carnevale, who have done nothing of note since they left football.

In addition to his former Sampdoria and Italy strike partner Mancini, Gianluca Vialli has also spent some time in the hellish planes of that once beautiful and noble land of England, playing as a striker for Chelsea before they became big, and coaching the said London club after this spell, where he performed extremely well, though not well enough to avoid being sacked the following season by the unspeakable Ken Bates, who was, for non-English readers, like Maurizio Zamparini except much less amusing. Vialli would go on have an impressively shoddy and expensive year as coach of Watford, which has, so far, proven to be his last coaching job. He works as a pundit for Sky Italia, and apparently golfs a ridiculous amount.

As Bob Dylan sung (in Tangled Up in Blue, no less), “I don’t know how it all got started, I don’t know what they’re doing with their lives”. And so it goes with the Azzurri side of 1990. While Roberto Mancini and Carlo Ancelotti would go on to manage at glamorous European clubs, Stefano Tacconi and Giuseppe Giannini would be navigating through the depths of the Italian football pyramid. Funny how it all falls away.

Gadsby is on twitter, where he posts ridiculously long tweets that people only read half of anyway. If that’s your thing, which it should be, follow him @FJGadsby