From the archive: Why Italia 90 was not beautiful to everyone, but will always be special

Decades after Gazza’s tears, Pavarotti and Totò Schillaci, the memories of an era-defining tournament still remind us of when even a World Cup was a smaller, simpler affair. 

ROMAN HOLIDAY:  Ireland manager Jack Charlton after the quarter-final defeat to hosts Italy. Pic:  Ray McManus/Sportsfile

To football lovers of a certain age, naming that tune in one second isn’t just easy, it comes with the added ability to transport people back in time, more than a quarter of a century in a heartbeat. Even before Luciano Pavarotti fills his lungs, as the lilting melody of the chorus of Nessun Dorma starts to rise, via musical time travel we arrive smack bang in the midst of Italia 90.

Some critics of the day found it hard to care for that World Cup. For the purists, it lacked the required flamboyance, defending was cynical, and the final reeked of ill-tempered drudgery. But to assess Italia 90 only according to those parameters is to miss all the virtues that gave it meaning. It might be pushing it slightly to say that everything I learned about life I learned at that World Cup, but if all Italia 90 kids don’t admit that month was transformative, I will consider eating my Ciao hat. (That was the very stylish mascot, by the way – a stick man with tricolore colouring and a football head.) It might not have been a World Cup of great games, but it was a World Cup of memorable tales and epic emotions: Roger Milla shook his 38-year-old hips at the corner flag for himself, for Africa, for old people anywhere who don’t give up believing in the unbelievable. Totò Schillaci smashed in shots, wheeled off with his crazed eyes virtually popping out of their sockets, and became an unlikely hero. Frank Rijkaard and Rudi Völler were entwined in a spitting red card fandango. David O’Leary kept his legs from buckling to score a legendary knock-out penalty. Gazza, as everybody knows, cried but the scene gains depth with that concerned glance that Gary Lineker threw at Bobby Robson. Italy wept as they were niggled through the semi-final and left vanquished by Argentina in Diego Maradona’s adopted city of Naples.