The sidekick centre stage

EARLY ON in our interview at a Dublin hotel, Marco Tardelli offers an apology.

“My English is very bad,” he says. “I hope to improve it.”

He does himself a disservice. The chance to learn the language, he admits, was one of the bonus attractions of the package when the newly appointed Ireland manager Giovanni Trapattoni asked him to be his assistant. And he’s made fair progress since then, even surviving the considerable dent to his confidence of an early trip to Glasgow to watch Aiden McGeady playing for Celtic.

“At half-time, I went in to the room where they have tea and coffee and I tried to understand something, but I don’t understand nothing,” he says, eyes wide in mock horror at the memory of his first encounter with the impenetrable Scottish brogue.

An FAI interpreter is on hand to help on this occasion but, while Tardelli is generally well able to get his essential points across, one suspects that the full complexity of his seemingly larger than life personality remains partially hidden behind the language barrier. Happily, football is a universal tongue — and World Cup winner Marco Tardelli is undeniably fluent in that.

During his playing days in Italy, they used to call him ‘Schizzo’. The word means ‘spurt’ and referred to the tough-tackling midfielder’s trademark forward bursts. And that kind of tenacity was evident from early in his life when, as a boy growing up in Tuscany, he began to make his mark both as an athlete and a footballer.

“My father was a very good fellow and if I want to play football, no problem,” he recalls. “But my father was not a fan of football, he didn’t know the game. I liked running too and ran the 800m for my school. But my mother didn’t like me to run or play football because I would sweat too much. The doctor told her that I was a delicate child and, one time, she even burned my football jerseys. But I liked to run because I am not a very good player technically. Always running, always running, for the other players — for the Platini, for the Liam.” (I asked him a bit later did he really mean that he thought he lacked good technique as a footballer. “No, that was a joke,” he deadpanned).

Tardelli was a calcio-mad 15-year-old when Italy played their part in what was, arguably, the greatest World Cup of them all, in Mexico in 1970, even if they were brought crashing down to earth at the final hurdle, demolished 4-1 by Pele’s incomparably brilliant Brazil.

“That summer I was working as a waiter in a hotel and the World Cup was on television,” Tardelli recalls. “I remember the owner giving out to me because I was always looking at the screen. I remember that tournament very well. But, for me, the final was not as exciting as the semi-final between Italy and Germany, when Italy won 4-3. I remember Gigi Riva, I remember Pele. Riva now works for the Italian Federation, as the team manager of the national team.”

Luigi Riva, a prolific centre-forward famed for his dying swan goal celebration, was an idol of the young Tardelli who, interestingly, began his own football career as a striker.

“When I started to play football, I played like Riva and scored many goals in the junior championships, 18 or 20 a season. Then I played in midfield for Pisa in Serie C — to play for Pisa was my dream then, not playing in the World Cup — then in defence for Como in Serie B and after that I moved to Juventus in 1975.”

Bought as a full-back, it was at Juve that manager Giovanni Trapattoni re-converted Tardelli to the middle of the park. “For one year, I played right-back for the national team and in midfield for Juventus,” he says. “And then I played in midfield for the national team.”

Just eight years after watching from a distance as Italy reached the World Cup final in Mexico, Tardelli was himself a member of the national team which, under the great Enzo Bearzot, again qualified for the finals, this time in Argentina. The hosts famously went on to win that tournament in 1978 but, along the way, were beaten by the Azzurri in a game which, perhaps surprisingly considering all that was still to come, Tardelli selects as the most memorable of his career..

“For me, the team played better in 1978 than in 1982,” he says, “even though we only finished fourth in Argentina.”

As well as being his first experience of the World Cup finals, Tardelli’s all-action performances in Argentina were something of a personal vindication for a player whom the Italian press had insisted should not have been selected for the tournament.

“I was the sort of player that, during the league, I played too much,” he says. “My way of playing was very strong, very physical, very stressful psychologically. So when I finish the season, every season, I am dead. But after the preparation in the World Cup training camp, I am fresh again, a new player. But the journalists were very difficult, even nasty to me. When I was young, if the journalists wrote something that was not correct, I would confront them, f***k off, you know (laughs). It’s okay, I was young. Now I understand some things I did not understand before.”

Come the next World Cup, in Spain in 1982, the national team’s always prickly relations with the media reached an all-time low. After much coverage and criticism of the decision to allow players’ wives to visit the team camp, the squad retaliated by imposing a media boycott throughout a wonderful tournament which climaxed with Italy lifting the trophy by beating West Germany 3-1 in the final. And it was in that game that Marco Tardelli staked a claim to immortality, his goal sparking an ecstatic personal celebration which has become one of the most iconic moments in the history of sport.

DOES HE ever get tired of being asked about it? “No, never,” he answers with a broad smile. “I am happy to talk about it. I think it’s important for me but also for my family. It’s important for my daughter and my son to remember me after I’m gone. My daughter was only four in 1982. For 20 years before 2006, television would always show me and my goal in that World Cup. But, thankfully, now another Italian team has won the World Cup. And now they show Grosso.”

Fabio Grosso struck the decisive spot-kick when Italy beat France on penalties in the 2006 final in Berlin. But it was his breakthrough goal in the 2-0 semi-final win over Germany in Dortmund and the resultant explosion of joy on the part of the scorer which reminded many of Tardelli’s eruption 24 years earlier — on Youtube, you can even watch a split-screen video of both, with the ‘82 and ‘06 commentaries mischievously transposed.

Yet, while Tardelli might be happy to share the historical load, his own ineffable reaction after his shot found the German net in Madrid still reigns supreme as a completely spontaneous expression of raw emotion on a football pitch. The lung-bursting run, the shaking fists, the contorted face, the tears, the scream — there was nothing choreographed about this celebration.

“It was just emotion,” says Tardelli. “For a footballer to play in the World Cup is an achievement. But to win it and score in the final is the ultimate dream. Some times when I see it on television, I think, ‘crazy man’. I don’t know what I shouted. I don’t remember. It’s incredible.”

While experiencing the ultimate high at international level, Tardelli was also enjoying massive success with Juventus — including five Italian titles and European Cup, Cup Winners Cup and UEFA Cup medals. And, sowing the seeds of a future relationship, it was at the Turin club where, under Giovanni Trapattoni, he got to play alongside ‘the Liam’.

“I first encountered Liam Brady when we played Arsenal in a European Cup Winners cup match (in 1980) and when we knew he was coming to Juventus we were very happy,” he recalls. “He was a great player. And we were very sad when he left. He scored the penalty that won us the Championship, even though he knew he was on his way.”

The reason Brady was on his way was because Juve had already decided that he would be replaced the following season by Michel Platini. So an easy question for the affable Tardelli: if there was one midfield place up for grabs in his team would he want the Irishman or the Frenchman?

“My heart at that time would certainly have said Brady,” he replies, “but when I got to play with Platini it became clear how important he was for the team — for three years running he won the golden boot. And he became a good friend too.”

BUT, as Tardelli says, “football is funny” and so after all these years in the game, first as a top player and then as a rather less successful coach — he did well with the Italian U-21s but flopped with Inter, Bari and Egypt among others — the last thing he expected was to wind up in Ireland, at 54, working again with the old tag team of Trap ‘n’ Chippy.

“It was a big surprise for me,” he says of the call from Trapattoni. “I didn’t say yes just because it was Giovanni. For me it was good opportunity for a new challenge, a new adventure. It was a good opportunity for me to learn new things. In the six, seven months I work with Trapattoni, I understand much more, including my mistakes when I was a coach. You always learn, not only in the game, but in life.”

So what are the big lessons he’s learned about life in Ireland?

“The Irish way of life is different to the Italian way of life,” he smiles. “The Irish people drink a lot compared to Italians. And the weather is different. But when I arrived here and began to speak with people, I realised that the Irish and the Italians have the same kind of passion, especially for their country. That is why I don’t understand why some players don’t come to play for their national team.”

Tardelli insists that the recent loss to Poland was not a significant blow to the confidence of a side which remains unbeaten so far in the World Cup qualifying campaign.

“We had new players in the squad against Poland, and they played well,” he says. “If it had been a World Cup match, we would have played differently. Maybe Giovanni would have changed some things. We didn’t have important players like Robbie Keane, Steven Reid and Steve Finnan but the new players are very important for us. We know now that there are other options. And that’s very important for the future.”

But while the assistant manager is determined to accentuate the positives, he doesn’t attempt to minimise the loss of Blackburn Rovers midfielder Reid to long-term injury.

“He’s a big player,” he concedes. “He has a big personality and that is important for the group. But Trapattoni can’t stop because Steven Reid is out. We need to find other players. We are sad that he is out but, football is football, there is no point in crying because he won’t play for six months.”

And Tardelli remains confident that Ireland can not only qualify for South Africa 2010 but do so by overtaking Italy at the top of the group.

“If we win against Georgia and Bulgaria next year, we can go with confidence to beat Italy,” he says. “In football, everything is possible.”

Naturally, he’s looking forward to the meeting of his native and adopted countries on April 1.

“It will be good. I am Italian, not Irish, I haven’t changed that. But I am a professional and my work is for Ireland now. And I want to win. But when I stand for the national anthems, I will not sing either the Irish or the Italian anthems. Because I respect both.”

Well, alternatively, I tease, you could always sing the two of them.

Marco Tardelli lets loose a booming laugh.

“I know very well the Italian anthem but not the Irish one,” he says. And then adds: “Not yet.”