That is very low for a player of such historic ability, especially one who was so clearly the best in the world for at least two years from 1992 to 1994 and played for all of Serie A’s major clubs, but there can’t have been too many players anywhere who offered so many truly inventive and distinctive goals; as impossibly smooth as they were impressively spectacular. How does it feel to be you now when you look back and think of your career?“I think it’s a bit melancholy because even though I had so much time in the game, time itself has flown by so quickly and things have passed so quickly that I wish I could have stopped at some point during my playing the career and taken more of it in. Hence the power of that picture as he stood crestfallen with hands on hips while Brazilian goalkeeper Claudio Taffarel threw his into the air, the linear symmetry of the white lines on green pitch in such brilliant sunshine only accentuating the emotional extremes of their reactions. Less than three weeks after his infamous penalty miss in the USA '94 Final, Roberto Baggio was asked about the incident that should be seen as the defining moment of the competition. Maldini, who had given Baggio a recall in an April 1997 qualifier against Poland – his first game in blue for 18 months, ruled Baggio out. Do you still get that fire and that urge to play like you did as a kid?“Absolutely yes. Yes, the final went as it went, but I probably would have won the Ballon D’Or again had it gone another way. I remember when I was six years old there was only one idol for me: Roberto Baggio. Do you have a special attachment to them?“I have always felt very close to Diadora. - It’s two weeks before the start of the 2000-01 Serie A season and Roberto Baggio is without a club and training alone in Caldogno, his quaint home town to It was almost 6,000 miles from the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, and almost four years since the final of USA 94, but one of those moments that sport manages to so fully imbue with almost fictional thematic importance - and so much consequence. Baggio followed it with the winning penalty in extra-time, an elusively precise 88th-minute winner against Spain in the quarter-finals, and then both goals in the 2-0 semi-final win over Bulgaria. “Oh of course,” he says, the blue eyes still sparkling, the goatee still there, but the hair now grey and noticeably short. [laughs] I would need to new knees though!”Speaking to SoccerBible as Diadora launched the ‘Match Winner Italy’ at the Pro:Direct LDN19 store, you can pick up a pair here.Photography by Elliott Wilcox for SoccerBible. How would you describe the way being out on the pitch made you feel?“It was something really wonderful and it is difficult to put into words but the idea of having these people around you who had made sacrifices to be able to buy tickets to come and watch us play - that made me feel like we had to do everything possible to entertain them and make them happen and that’s what I always looked to do out on the pitch.”Naturally with Diadora being such a proud Italian brand, what was it like to play in their boots? First of all because I come from the same area of Italy where they do. “I remember exactly. It’s somewhat cowardly to justify something that is not true.” Still at the end of the tournament, despite how it ended, we came out pretty well from that and we can be proud of our performance in that tournament.”How does it feel having hung up your boots? “Of course I was thinking about it. Prices from £60.00 - £190.00, Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies. I would always try very hard to get my head in the zone. 1:05. Roberto Baggio remains an engaging and overwhelmingly happy character, Baggio's infamous miss is one that almost defined his career, The moment still lives with him but he has learned to live with it, The 1994 miss took four years to overcome, Baggio's career saw him represent the best of Italy, Brescia was perhaps Baggio's happiest time, Baggio says his only goal was to make those watching him happy (ProDirect Soccer), {{#verifyErrors}} {{message}} {{/verifyErrors}} {{^verifyErrors}} {{message}} {{/verifyErrors}}. He was allergic to painkillers. An icon to a generation, Roberto Baggio relaunches the Diadora Match Winner at a special event hosted by Football Italia Legend James Richardson. I still feel that link - it hasn’t gone away.”What are the characteristics of a player who wears Diadora? “It went too fast, that was the bad thing about it! Roberto Baggio is the type of player that evokes an outpouring of flair. It just happens. Roberto Baggio didn’t want to leave Fiorentina and join Juventus, but in the summer of 1990, he did. 'Roberto Baggio', it's a name that is attached to the very greatest in the game. Baggio took his moment of redemption, four years in the making, in his stride. February 23, 2021 by Harry Kettle. “That got the house off my back”, he says, and it also opened the door. Inside Roberto Baggio, there is still something cracking – it could be the dream of winning a cup, or the tired shiver of a missed penalty. No, it was more a thought process than instinct. Want an ad-free experience?Subscribe to Independent Premium. He had this rare delicacy to every touch that still wrought extreme destruction. It’s inevitable you would, and I also knew I had to score. “Time never stood still for me,” he laughs. He brought supreme style to an era of football where the game was royally turned on his head. Baggio’s career took him to a lot of places, from Vicenza to Fiorentina to Juventus to Milan to Bologna and onto Inter, but it’s often thought he was happiest in his final four years at Brescia, where he hit 46 goals in 101 games and twice took the lowly club into the Uefa Cup. Call me Alessandro.’’ ‘’Alessandro, why did you ask me to come here? We were just a few miles apart so I always felt we came from the same values and that we expressed the same values on the pitch as well. Baggio: The Divine Ponytail, aka Il Divin Codino, is “coming soon” according to the official Netflix Italia account. With Roberto scoring twice, the Baggio boys annihilated the Germans 6-1, the highest ever aggregate scoreline in the final. Sitting in a football boot shop in Carnaby Street and speaking in that understated and quiet but evidently contented manner, Baggio also confirms another story, that makes that feat even more impressive. Roberto Baggio drew attention with public acts of great imagination but that is long over. With signature boots still looking strong, we sat down with the man as he donned a classic Diadora get up. From a very young age, Lewandowski said that he most admired Italian striker Roberto Baggio and Alessandro Del Piero. His side were 2-1 down to Chile with six minutes to go of their opening France 98 group match in Bordeaux, and the then 31-year-old was stepping up for a penalty. “It bothers me that you say one does not play for physical problems. Roberto Baggio is like that: introvert and serene in his new post-football daily rhythms. Now, with that penalty against Brazil having been discussed more than anything else in his 50 years, he has distilled his thoughts on it to a simple but very meaningful few words: “It felt exactly as you would expect.”. baggio's interview. Baggio on putting the beautiful in the beautful game, Booking.com promo: 10% extra with Level 1 Genius membership, Use this Debenhams discount and save up to 70% on men's lines - Spring offer, Exclusive Ideal World promo code: 20% saving on fitness, Up to 70% AliExpress discount on super value deals this week, Argos promo: Up to 50% off in the Tu Kid clothing sale. Interview: Alan McLaren on man-marking Roberto Baggio As Scotland prepare for their match against Italy, former defender recalls marking Roberto Baggio out of the game in 1992. Roberto Baggio (Italian pronunciation: [roˈbɛrto ˈbaddʒo]; born 18 February 1967) is an Italian former professional footballer who mainly played as a second striker, or as an attacking midfielder, although he was capable of playing in several offensive positions. Do you think you played in one of the greatest eras of football ever?“It’s difficult to say of course, that could be the case but it wasn’t exactly in either periods. Baggio was first of all so impressionistic a footballer that he became generally defined by image, by aesthetic. Triboldi-‘’ ‘’Please, Roberto there's no need for such formalities. Exclusive: The Italian icon tells Miguel Delaney about his career, his happiest moment and why he does actually prize the memory of Pasadena despite that infamous penalty miss, Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile. He actually only won four major trophies, with just two of them league titles and none of them a Champions League or international trophy. Having missed Euro 96 through injury that derailed his career, and having missed what was perhaps the most famous penalty ever taken in that California stadium against Brazil, Roberto Baggio was back up front for Italy in their next World Cup match and back in a familiar situation. “If I had to say one time, it would be the 1993-94 period. The beauty of watching Baggio was that he would just make things happen, and they were so often exquisite. It’s another interesting question about his career, one that did see him have a certain amount of difficulty with Italy’s more systemic coaches like Marcello Lippi and Sacchi: when was he actually happiest? Baggio afterwards said the strike “killed the ghost of 1994”, and that the miss had genuinely consumed him for four years. There was just an exuberant joy to his play. Netflix has confirmed that a biopic exploring the life of Roberto Baggio will soon hit the streaming platform. Would you say they are confident and classy?“Other people are probably better to judge than me but for me, simplicity is something that really defined the class of the brand throughout my career.”It's a bit different in today's game but the charm of icons like you and didadora will never go. It’s sad, and that sadness stays with you, but I always enjoyed the game.”. Report. The result is the thing that matters the most so spectacle and showmanship gets a little lost in today’s game perhaps.”What do you think your greatest moment was out on the pitch while wearing Diadora was?“Probably the World Cup in 1994 because I had recently won the Ballon d’Or and so there were huge expectations on him and his performance as well as the whole Italian team. The Swede swapped Rome for Florence ahead of the 1987/88 season, and inherited a precocious young 20-year-old by the name of Roberto Baggio. One of the more interesting aspects of players of such invention is what goes through their mind at moments of such creation, let alone moments like the penalty against Chile. If the idealised approach to such moments is to clear your mind, was he thinking of USA 94? The TGU Interview: Designer Gavin Hall talks Hallyink and Calcio Art T T Read More. Onur Bilgic recounts his first trip back to Florence in April 1991, and the penalty he didn’t take. If it similarly feels harsh that a player of such brilliance has been so defined by one moment of failure, it is partly because of the obvious historic significance, partly because of the very distinctive nature of that career. Baggio refused to give an interview or comment about anything after the match. IMDb's advanced search allows you to run extremely powerful queries over all people and titles in the database. All of that ensured he became one of those rare players like Diego Maradona to completely define a World Cup and make the tournament his, all the more so because of how it ended, just as his career somehow feels all the more cherished because it was so gloriously flawed. Later Alessandro Del Piero became my role model, I admired him a lot. Hundreds of people looking for interviews, thrills and stories keep knocking on his door, in vain, protected by his loyal friend and manager Vittorio Petrone ... Etichette: An, Baggio, interview, with. Roberto Baggio on USA 94, playing through the pain and putting the beautiful in the beautiful game Exclusive: The Italian icon tells Miguel Delaney about … “If I could try to do the magical thing, I would,” Baggio says, “but always in an effective way. Perhaps, as those Buddhist teachings suggest, he had the knowledge that he would score. For all the fame of later events in his career, he now says that was his greatest feat: “proving that doctor wrong”. Some like Dennis Bergkamp have spoken of how it was as if time slowed down. Roberto Baggio is the type of player that evokes an outpouring of flair. Find exactly what you're looking for! Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? He had been asked to give an interview for the club, he’d expected more people, some cameras, maybe a journalist or two. "Roberto Baggio is one of the most incredible players I've played with," Guardiola said. It’s actually none of that for Baggio. Five of them came in USA 94, and it is remarkable to think the first was an 88th-minute equaliser against Nigeria in the second round after what had been a torrid group stage. I lost a lot of finals, so it was difficult. To view the website properly, please turn it on. Dino picked up the first winner’s medal of his career. Netflix announces plans for Roberto Baggio biopic. It was his opportunity to create, to express himself, to do something different. They were decisions I would make in the moment, based on what was going on before, what was happening around me. That is a sentence with multiple layers of meaning, because of what happened in his career as well as how much of it was curtailed by injury, and because he was one of those players who so evidently enjoyed the game. “I always had that joy of the game in my eyes everywhere I played, because it was the best thing, but Brescia probably had less pressure. He brought supreme style to an era of football where the game was royally turned on his head. He more than played through pain. “It was to make people happy.” It sums his career up as much as any penalty. Lewandowski names Baggio, Del Piero, and Henry as idols Wed 17 March 2021 | 18:14 Bayern Munich striker Robert Lewandowski reveals the names of his childhood role models who played in Serie A, Roberto Baggio and Alessandro Del Piero. It was something that was very satisfying, to take someone there.”. So simple an action, such stark potential consequences, as he knew all too well. The new-look Roberto Baggio has returned to take up a role with the Italian football federation. By The Newsroom. In the post-game interview, Baggio denied that he had any physical ailments, clearly contradicting Lippi’s claims. He was a relatively simple person who could stun a stadium, a nation, with sudden feats -- a gift, a blessing, like the goal from nowhere that saved Italy in the 89th minute against Nigeria in 1994. It appears you have javaScript turned off. Douglas Baggio is named after Italian former footballer Roberto Baggio. He is the former president of the technical sector of the Italian Football Federation. Baggio was just returning to full fitness after suffering two career-threatening knee injuries in as many years, and had just scored his first Serie A goal the previous May – against Maradona’s Napoli. Baggio: The Divine Ponytail 1h 31m | Sports Movies A chronicle of the 22-year career of soccer star Roberto Baggio, including his difficult debut as a player and his deep rifts with some of his coaches. 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