Only the brightest stars come out at twilight, and Roberto Baggio is Italy’s supernova. For the second game in a row, the ponytailed striker waited until the waning moments before rescuing his team from darkness.
This time his goal in the 88th minute Saturday gave Italy a 2-1 victory over Spain, a team that deserved a better fate, and sent the Azzurri into the semifinals of the World Cup.
It was Baggio’s third goal of the Cup, all of them delivered during a game’s dying light and all vital to Italy’s survival. It was a spectacular goal, scored at a sharp angle from the right with Spanish goalkeeper Andoni Zubizarreta sprawled helpless, yards from his goal, after coming out to attempt to stop the shot.
“I was in a tough position,” Baggio said. “He came out and closed the door.” But Baggio forced it open, dancing around Zubizarreta and firing into an almost-empty net.
Defender Abelardo, the only other player back for Spain, tried to act as goalkeeper but couldn’t kick the shot out. Until that moment, Spain had the Italians on the run after trailing 1-0 at the half. A goal by Caminero, deflected off a defender, had tied the score in the 59th minute and Italian goalkeeper Gianluca Pagliuca was under siege for most of the rest of the game.
Just a few minutes before Baggio’s winner, Spain’s Julio Salinas got loose on a breakaway and stormed in on Pagliuca for what could have been a game-breaking goal. But the Italian netminder, justifying coach Arrigo Sacchi’s decision to play him after he had served a two-game suspension, came out and made a sliding kick save.
Salinas is Spain’s top scoring threat, but for the second game in a row he did not start. Coach Javier Clemente refused to criticize Salinas for missing the wide-open opportunity, saying, “It would be unfair to criticize a player who played so hard for one mistake.”
If it was a mistake. When he saw Salinas bearing down on him, Pagliuca said he was “thinking about the trip back to Italy. I made the save and then on the next offensive play Baggio scored, and it was a great feeling.”
But Pagliuca was given no time to savor it. The Spanish kept coming at him and injury time seemed, to the mostly partisan Italian crowd, to go on forever. It went on long enough for Spanish midfielder Luis Enrique to suffer a broken nose when a wayward elbow stretched him out as he was desperately going for a loose ball.
Even Sacchi conceded that Spain had outplayed his team in the second half. And Baggio said, “They were strong, very strong. They easily could’ve scored with Salinas, but instead I scored.”
“They scored a goal on their only opportunity,” said Clemente. “Throughout the second half we were the stronger team.”
“That was a great opportunity for us,” said Jon Andoni Goikoetxea, whose corner kicks had danger written all over them in the final minutes. “It will be a long time before we get another one like it.”
Spain was trying to reach the semifinals for the first time while Italy, a three-time winner, was trying not to go home in disgrace. All during this World Cup, the Italians and their coach have carried the excess baggage of almost unreal expectations.
They also, fortunately, have carried what some might have called an excess Baggio. Dino Baggio, not related to Roberto, is only 22 years old and coming off a disappointing season for Juventus of the Italian league. But he has been the revelation and in some sense the savior of this World Cup for the Italian team. It was his shorthanded goal that defeated Norway 1-0 after Roberto Baggio had left the game, and it was Dino Baggio who provided the spark that finally led to Roberto’s late-game explosion against Nigeria.
Saturday, Dino Baggio scored the game’s first goal on a solo blast from 27 yards away in the 26th minute. The ball whistled past two defenders and into the upper right corner of the net beyond the lunging grasp of Zubizarreta.
“There are two Baggios who are great players now,” said Clemente. “There is Roberto and there is Dino and I can’t distinguish between the two.”
Here’s a hint, Senor Clemente. Roberto is the one you don’t want to see camped on your doorstep when the game is on the line. That’s where Giuseppe Signori found him with a long lead pass late in Saturday’s game. Signori, who is supposed to be a goal scorer, was benched until halftime because he had been shut out, but he justified Sacchi’s decision to return him to action with his well-timed pass.
The attacking Spaniards were all caught upfield. “A monumental mistake,” said Clemente, “but that’s soccer.”
