Italy’s most human hero. A player who made Italians dream.
A player who represented what the game might be capable of when you go beyond structure, beyond systems, beyond tactics. A player who simply played.
It was always his way. Barely out of school, he shone at Vicenza before Fiorentina came calling. Five years later, Juventus broke the world transfer record for him. A Ballon d’Or followed. He lit up a physically brutal league with nothing more than his touch and imagination. The pressure on him to repeat the trick on the international stage was immense. Everything led to USA ’94.
Rewatch that World Cup and you’ll see Italy come alive every time he touches the ball. In those matches, Baggio shrugs off defenders as though shaking free the very shackles of Italian football. To watch him in that tournament is to watch a modern player trapped in the past. Everything he did was quicker - not just in movement, but in thought. Many argued he was the player of the tournament. He was, undoubtedly, ahead of his time.Yet Baggio was defined by what he didn’t do. He didn’t score a penalty. Italy had already missed two, but those are forgotten. The World Cup defeat, cruelly, became Baggio’s cross to bear - a career of artistry boiled down to a miss instead of a masterpiece.
Not quite. After Juventus came Milan, Bologna, Inter, Brescia - and more reinventions. Even as his body began to betray him, his mind never did. The artist still found ways to create. He was back in Italy’s 1998 World Cup squad at 31. At Bologna, he scored 22 goals in a single season. It was a scandal, given his form, that he didn’t make the 2002 World Cup squad at 35.Roberto Baggio’s genius is testament not only to his talent but to his persistence - the sheer will to step back onto the pitch. A player said to have played his entire career on one and a half knees was voted Italian Player of the Century in 2000. He fell out with almost every manager, he was positionless, he could be lazy, but he always wanted the ball. And when he got it, a country inhaled and leant forward.
Imperfect. Immortal. Irreplaceable.
The Divine Ponytail. One of one.
We also think you'll like...