WHAT HAVE THE Italians ever done for us? Well, the roads, irrigation, medicine, education, all that.
Their food. We’re hounds for the pasta and wine of course. Who doesn’t love a bit of tiramisu? Coffee? Why not?
And then you have the now departed Salvatore ‘Toto’ Schillaci, who passed away today with bowel cancer.
He knocked us out of the World Cup. His celebration was as bug-eyed and grateful as the goal was a gift. Roberto Donadoni spanked a drive straight at Packie Bonner. He couldn’t hold it but knocked it away at an angle.
Schillaci’s finish was ruthless, full of power and poise. And most of his goals were like that in the tournament; an alert, buzzy wee buck. A fox in the box. In The Wide-Awake club. You couldn’t watch him.
Us? We barely paused for breath. We instantly loved him. That very same summer, Cork hurler John Fitzgibbon earned the nickname of ‘Schillaci’.
It transcended soccer. For the next few years, any slightly balding Gaelic footballer or hurler plying their trade in the more, ahem, recreational levels of the GAA, could find themselves christened ‘Schillaci’ in the event of an unlikely goal.
He appeared in advertisements for Smithwicks. He had a cameo of sorts in Roddy Doyle’s The Van when Jimmy Rabitte wore a t-shirt that declared, well, ‘Fuck Schillaci’, worn by Colm Meaney in the film.
It makes sense that he resonated with us. Italia 90′s significance is only now, 34 years later, arriving at the stage we can properly assess its cultural impact. And it was a time when the country, through soccer, was genuinely happy, excited and united in a cause.
Look back now and such generalisations can always seem frivolous at best, fanciful even. People had their own lives filled with challenges and struggles. But could you imagine anything in 2024 having the same effect on the general gaiety of the nation?
So we clung on to it for longer than was good for us.
To Toto. To the memories of Cagliari and Palermo and Rome. To visits to the Holy See and Big Jack waving at The Pope because he thought he was waving at him.
The sheer lung-filling drama of hearing Nessun Dorma over and over and over. The Cameroon lads who had Roger Milla casting off his Zimmer frame to score goals and get jiggy with corner flags.
Frank Rijkaard and the way he might lob a gob of slabber onto Rudi Völler’s lovely hair. Eamon Dunphy and the way he would top every other use of a digital pen by tracing the trajectory of the spittle.
Gas lads. A gas time.
Let’s be honest too, we loved Gazza and his vulnerability. Not so fussed on Terry Butcher though.
And it’s just as well that we bathe all of this in honeyed memory. Because the football – and not just that played by Ireland – was, well, shite.
The average goals per game was 2.21 – a record low. It still stands. There were 16 red cards — again, a record.
The misery of what was on the pitch was decorated by Toto.
The idea that he arrived out of nowhere was slightly far-fetched, but this was before our Sunday morning diets were enriched by James Richardson sat in a gorgeous piazza with an untouched espresso clutching a copy of La Gazzetta dello Sport and updating us with the latest developments of Italian soccer.
For a start, he had already put down a solid season with Turin giants Juventus. He was bought from Messina after being the top scorer in Serie B. With Juve, he won the Coppa Italia and the Uefa Cup under Dino Zoff.
Added to the national squad, he was sent in against Austria with just 15 minutes left of the first game and the contest a deadlock. He nodded a goal three minutes later.
He had to be content with another sub appearance against USA, but by the third game, he started against Czechoslovakia and scored after nine minutes. He was up and running.
Six goals across the tournament, the Golden Boot and the Golden Ball. And yet others such as Gianluca Vialli might have felt that tournament was for him.
For us Irish, Schillaci had an appeal.
He was Italian, for sure. He might have been the most Italian looking dude on that team. But there was something of the Fredo Corleone to him, rather than the male models such as Paolo Maldini, Nicola Berti and Roberto Baggio, or the sweater-tied-over-the-shoulders chicness of a Carlo Ancelotti or Franco Baresi.
His unlikeliness was the point at which we connected.
It was a pity that they didn’t win it. There was a little bit to admire in the German efficiency throughout, but an oul scuffed penalty in the final, against a crew of Argentinian hackers and an injury-ravaged Maradona, was a limp way to close the thing out.
Italy’s penalty shootout exit to Argentina had little to recommend it and you won’t be advised to give it a look back now. But one thing the streets won’t forget is that for the shootout, Schillaci didn’t take one — although he did, and converted, against England in the third-place play-off.
It would have been fitting for them to win it. With those gorgeous blue jerseys. With their St Christopher’s chains flapping about. With their Lotto boots pushing the boundaries of fashions with a flash of colour here and there.
When we think of Italia 90, we’ll think of Big Jack and Dave O’Leary. Of Sheedy’s drive and net-buster past Shilton. The madness of pubs and nightclubs packed for soccer matches. Of Bonner. Of the homecoming.
All of that. But we’ll also think of Schillaci and how he broke our hearts, before we took him into ours.
