OUR CHAMPIONS

Roberto Baggio has been one of the Italian best and most beloved players ever, to date he is one of the most renowned Italian athletes in the world. As a creative midfielder and, when necessary, also as an attacker with extraordinary technical skills, Baggio has delighted both the Italian and the foreign football fans for twenty years.

Still, at the beginning of his stunning career football did not seem to fit into his destiny. As a young player Baggio was dogged by injuries that might have compromised his football future right from the start.

Baggio starts playing with his town football team, then, at the age of 15, he moves on to Vicenza Calcio, a Serie C1 club. He makes his debut with the Veneto club A-team in 1983. During the 1984/85 season he scores 12 goals in 29 matches and helps his team to gain the promotion to the Serie B league. Unfortunately, during that season he suffers a right knee serious injury that forces him to the sidelines for a very long time. The doors, that should have allowed him to enter the great football stage, seemed to shut him out earlier than expected.

After two tough years, he makes his Serie A debut on 21 September 1986 with AC Fiorentina, which, because of the trust they have in him, decide to run the risk and not to dump him after his injury because they choose to comply with the contract already signed with the player. Baggio scores his first Serie A goal against that SSC Napoli team which has among its players another outstanding number 10, i.e. Diego Armando Maradona, on 10 May 1987, that is the very same day when the "Pibe de Oro" team celebrated their first "scudetto" victory.

With the Viola shirt, from 1986 to 1990, Baggio stands out for his absolutely faultless talent that allows him to drive a second-rate team to get to the top positions of the league table and to reach the 1990 UEFA Cup final, eventually lost to Juventus FC. Just in that year he is elected Europe's Best U-23 player, he receives, in fact, the "Bravo" award. But 1990 is also the year of the World Cup hosted by Italy…

Baggio had already made his debut with the Italian national selection in 1988 and gets to the Italia 90 World Cup as a young promise after great and already well-known forwards such as Vialli, Carnevale, Serena and Mancini. However, Baggio and Schillaci (8 goals scored by them in all) are the ones who lead Italy to gain the third final position. The goal scored by Baggio against Czechoslovakia is memorable, one of the best ones in the World Cup history.

In the same year he joins Juventus FC for the record figure of 18 thousand million liras (at that time Antonio Caliendo, World Champions Club chairman, is Baggio's agent). Meanwhile in Florence AC Fiorentina supporters riot against his transfer. With the Bianconeri team he gains international success. He stays in Turin for 5 years until 1995, during those years he wins the Ballon d'Or and the FIFA World Player of the Year title in 1993 and is nicknamed "Divin Codino" (Divine Ponytail) because of his particular hair cut and outstanding class on the pitch. With Juventus FC he makes 201 appearances and scores 116 goals, the club turns out to be definitely the one where he has played for the longest time and scored most goals in his career. With them he won a UEFA Cup, under Trapattoni's guidance, in 1993, and a scudetto (national title), with Lippi as a coach, in 1995.

In 1994 Baggio plays another great World Cup in the USA. In the first leg round he plays badly and becomes the scapegoat of a team, guided by Arrigo Sacchi, that is not convincing. From the 1/8 finals on, however, Baggio gets over it: two goals against Nigeria, one against Spain, two against Bulgaria, all of them decisive to make Italy reach the final. That final will be remembered as the historic and unfortunate challenge played against Brazil, that will win the World Cup once again after 24 years. A match that Italy lose on penalties, one of which is missed by Baggio that kicks the ball high over the bar. That mistake, paradoxically, nourishes the legend of the courageous but unlucky Italian champion, who played the final in spite of a thigh contracture.

In 1995 Juventus FC decide to sell him as they think to have his successor (Del Piero) in their team. Therefore, 28-year-old Baggio joins AC Milan, where, actually, he wins a scudetto (in 1996) but never gets a regular spot and the esteem of coach Fabio Capello. Consequently, in 1997, after only two seasons, he moves on to Bologna FC where they give him the certainty of a regular spot and where he can play in order to get the call-up for France 98 World Cup. With the Rossoblu shirt Baggio does really very well and Italian selection coach Cesare Maldini gives him a spot, well-deserved, in the team that plays the World Cup. In France Baggio gets close to the legend once again scoring two goals and delighting the public with exceptional pieces of play. Once again, however, the penalties bar the way to the World championship title in the match against Zidane's hosting side (France), that eventually wins the World Cup.

His first-rate performance at the World Cup gives him another chance to join a great club. So Internazionale FC become the new loving club of the champion from Vicenza. His second experience in Milan, after the one at AC Milan, lasts two seasons, studded with terrific flashes of skill (just like the two goals scored against Real Madrid CF during 1998/99 Champions League) but also with lack of understanding with Marcello Lippi, blameworthy for not trusting him enough and for lining him up only every now and then.

In 2000 Baggio joins small club Brescia Calcio. It seemed the beginning of the end of an extraordinary career, but the football star, even though on the downgrade, keeps on playing for four more high-level seasons. At the age of 33, at the Lombard club Baggio plays 100 matches and scores 46 goals, an average that only a real forward in the most successful part of his career can get. He is able to reach the 200 goals mark in the Serie A league (by the end of his career his goals will be 205) but cannot play his fourth World Cup (in fact, coach Trapattoni does not name him in the list of the players that would play the 2002 Korea and Japan World Cup). Still, he is the only Italian footballer who scored goals in three different World Cup editions (1990, 1994 and 1998).

In 2003 Baggio was the first player who won the Golden Foot award: actually, among the group consisting of 10 nominees he got almost half of the total votes.

In 2006 the extraordinary story of Roberto Baggio's career, during which there were failures but never surrenders, comes to an end, but the Italian champion's talent and courage allow him to get both into football history and into the football fans' hearts all over the world.