Roberto Baggio was the most gifted Italian footballer of his generation, and in the 78th minute against Czechoslovakia at Italia 1990 he showed why. The Divine Ponytail picked up the ball in midfield, slipped past three defenders with a series of elegant touches and placed the ball calmly into the bottom corner. The home crowd in Rome went mad.
Italy won 2-0.
Fifty yards through the Czechoslovak defence
The run covered about 50 yards. Baggio's close control and body feints were so quick that defenders simply could not get near him, and each touch seemed to leave another one on the ground. At the end of it he did not blast the ball. He placed it.
The goal made him one of the stars of a World Cup played in his own country. It also said something about Italian football, which the world tended to associate with defending. Here was an Italian producing pure creative genius instead.
Four years later Baggio carried Italy to the 1994 World Cup Final, where his penalty miss became one of the tournament's most famous images. That is another story. In Rome in 1990, everything went right for him, and the finish was ice-cold.
Tomorrow: number 18.
