IT’S THREE DECADES today since the curtain was brought down on Italia ’90 – a conclusion of German glory, Argentinian dejection and an Irish milestone after a defining tournament.
Andreas Brehme tucked home the late penalty to settle the issue in the final and on the 30th anniversary of that strike in Rome, a recent project born out of lockdown to chronicle the events from Italy will draw to a close.
The 2020 sporting summer was meant to take a different course yet the shutdown of activity sparked the idea for a podcast series, ‘Italia ’90 – One Day at a Time’.
After diligently rewatching every match, today marks the end game.
“You couldn’t do something like this without the lockdown,” says Rob Murphy, the driver of the project, who normally would have been focused on sporting matters involving Mayo football and Connacht rugby over the last few months.
“Myself and Ciaran O’Hara (Sky Sports GAA producer) are big fans of the West Wing weekly podcast. I’d heard someone suggest they should re-run Italia ’90 on RTÉ and that got us thinking about looking back at the tournament. We were anxious to see what we could do.
“We got Mick Foley, Billy Joe Padden and Colin Sheridan involved with us, and got to it. And yes we did rewatch all the games, the lads enjoyed it, I don’t think they would have done it otherwise.”
NEW EPISODE - No Prizes for Third
— Italia '90 - One Day at a Time Podcast (@italia90odat) July 7, 2020
On the day of the third place play off, we take the opportunity to talk #Italia90 legacy with @MalachyClerkin
+ What might have been for Italy....
On🎙️@colinivan @MickFoley76 @ciaranoheadhra @murphyrob
https://t.co/joc9jm3qpj
The matches are not the sole focus, they serve as tentpoles to explore some of the intriguing tales for the tournament. Lubomir Moravcik, a creative midfield genius in the eyes of Celtic fans, is one of the guests as he recalls the travails of his Czechoslovakia side who reached the quarter-finals.
“We wanted to make the retelling of the tournament interesting, the stories were key. Lubomir talks about how those young lads made a bond for life and that he never got a chance with Slovakia thereafter to express himself at a similar international level.
“There was loads of other stuff like we found Colombia were brilliant to watch, all the Argentinian stuff was fascinating. Some of the football was actually quite impressive, it’s not a tournament fondly remembered for that, but the real problem we found was that the finishing was so awful and goalscoring was a problem.
“Schillaci came out of nowhere for Italy but the quality of number 10s was amazing. Scifo, Valderrama, Matthaus and Gascoigne all vying for attention. Lacatus as well for Romania.”
And mention of that side who exited at the last 16 brings us to the journey best remembered in these parts from that tournament.
Ireland’s games predictably sparked plenty reactions when examined again all these years later.
“I think emotionally the Romania episode was the most stirring we did,” says Murphy.
“For instance we hadn’t known what the Romania manager was dealing with as his daughter was caught up in protests back home at the time. Speaking to Vincent Hogan really captured the emotion of the day, best summed with his story of veteran soccer journalists around him in tears at seeing Ireland progress after so long waiting for them to do something.
“And then the game that was the biggest chore to watch was Ireland Egypt. We’d jokingly built it up but it was as frustrating and bad as we thought it would have been. The broadcast we found was an American one so the commentary was at least entertaining.
“But we got Eamonn Dunphy on to talk about everything that happened around that and he was great. He talked about his regrets from the coverage of that time as it had an impact on his kids and how he was misrepresented and what he felt the whole tournament meant to the country.
“Looking back at Italia ’90 was all about those key stories and digging deeper into them. It’s been brilliant and there’s been a huge listenership as well in a younger bracket. Whether you remember it or are hearing about stuff for the first time, we’ve tried to show it was a seminal moment for football in terms of rule changes, country changes afterwards and of course for everyone in Ireland.”
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Check out @italia90odat on Twitter for more info and search Italia ’90 One Day At A Time on podcast charts to listen in.
Why do you live in Dublin if you dislike it so much?
@paulocon: The FBD League is the ‘pre-season’ tournament in Connacht . Munster has the McGrath Cup, Leinster the O’Byrne Cup and Ulster the Dr McKenna Cup in football. It’s kind of ironic that some teams treat the ‘pre season’ tournaments more seriously than the League or the Championship. But that has been the way of it since ‘professional amateurism’ (or is it ‘amateur professionalism’? – I can never tell) got hauld of the Gah in the late 1990s.
Great use of the word ‘flukey’. Oh, and it’s the Allianz Natonal League by the way and I’m quite fine with my mental instabliity – when you come from Louth, you’ll take football whatever time of the year you can get it.
Ps On the mental instability bit. My home club has been trying to win a Junior A Championship for many years (even when we were Junior B we were trying to win it!), yet we have never even got to a final! Every year our local press tip us to break the hoodoo and every year we fall flat on our arses. We seem to have a Jekell and Hyde relationship with Gaelic Football – on our day we are like Arsenal (including the showboating short passing mullarkey) but the truth is that our day is seldom. Our championship graph for the last decade is like the cross section of a Tour de France Alpine or Pyrenean stage; consistency is our bugbear, even within 60 minutes of games! Trying to make sense of this Newcastle Utd yo-yoing (yes, I’m a fan!) has left many of our die-hard clubmen (and women) close to nervous breakdowns on occasion. Watching our team struggle and depart out of the championship last Saturday night (at about the same time as Murph’s beloved Galway) was yet another chapter in the soul destroying experience of following them. Of course, when your self-proclaimed ‘star player’ (and Cork junior regular to boot – there’s a clue in there) up sticks for what would be considered an average senior football team in the city at the end of last year then ’tis all over apparently. Memo to Murph, have a look at the Southern Star on Thursday!
I wholeheartedly agree with you Paul. Go to any League game (inter-county or Club) and the atmosphere is totally different. The clientele are more knowledgeable (especially if your brother is doing stats for one of the teams involved), the chat is better and the banter can be heard over a mile away! As someone who once togged out for a Junior C league game following a severe night on the tiles, only to be outshone by a team-mate who turned up 5 mins before thrown-in having pulled an all-nighter, League matches are definitely where it’s at!
Thanks for the clarification John although I’m not sure I’d categorise the O’Byrne Cup as ‘pre-season’. For Louth, it’s a very big deal. By the time we get to the final (as we have done on occasion recently), we are right in the middle of our season-proper. This year for example, we ran a handy Kildare side ragged in Newbridge for 35 minutes before retreating into our shell for the 2nd half in a style reminiscent of Inter v Barca at the Nou Camp in the Champions League semi-final 2nd leg of 2010. However, whilst Louth have always had a Diego Milito or two in the forward line, we don’t have a back line comparable with Maicon, Samuel, Lucio and Zanetti so our ‘parking the bus’ tactics failed to see us over the finishing line on that occasion. The O’Byrne cup leaves us in good shape for the National League and as I am sure you are aware, any GAA fan worth his salt will tell you that the League is precisely where it’s at. I feel for the GAA fan whose only experience is chomping on over-priced hot-dogs in a sunny Croke park in July or August. Go to any league match around the country, take a good look around the ground and you will see a pretty rare specimen of the human race, a specimen who go into hibernation come May. Ask them why they are there and they probably won’t be able to give you an answer – all they’ll know for sure is that they are travelling to Dungarvan, Aughrim or Castlebar the following week. For me, the championship is kind of like those meaningless friendly games Ireland play 3 or 4 weeks after the Premiership is finished when most of the good players are on holidays and the ones who can’t afford a holiday come over to Dublin for a few days craic. My final word is to issue a warning to those who cant help but ‘flirt’ with the championship – looked what happened to us (Louth) last year when we decided to take it seriously! I’m glad that normal service was resumed this year with defeats to Carlow and Meath in quick succession and I look forward to the resumption of the season proper come January. Like Guinness, GAA is best enjoyed very cold.