Only those old enough to remember the magic nights of “Italia 90” can truly understand what that gaped mouth, what those eyes wide open in disbelief, meant.
Salvatore “Totò” Schillaci looked like a boy living his childhood dream as he celebrated his World Cup goals, leading Italy’s march towards the trophy, one goal after another. It was his dream and OUR dream, the tale of a kid born in the dodgy suburbs of Palermo who finally makes it to the Nazionale after seeming destined to have a mostly unpretentious career in Serie B.
And even though Schillaci and the whole of Italy had to suddenly wake up, even though they didn’t win the 1990 World Cup in the end and Schillaci never managed to reach again the performance peak hit during that hot Italian summer, his underdog story has become an example for a generation of Italians.
Everybody can make it, if they work hard and seize the moment.
For Totò, that moment came at 26 years of age, sudden and unexpected, after just one season of top-flight football. After all, he could already be happy with what he had gotten. Not many kids from the Italian deep South who dream of being a top-class striker make it that far.
Salvatore Schillaci was born from a working-class family in the infamous CEP neighborhood of Palermo. It was a place where making the right or the wrong choices mostly depended on the people you hanged out with, and on how you decided to spend your free time. Luckily enough, Totò’s passion was football: “Football was always on my mind, and so I managed to stay out of trouble”, he said, looking back at his childhood.
He wanted to be a top-class striker but sure, we all want that. He didn’t even seem to be the top prospect in his family. The real talent, the really good one was his cousin Maurizio, who would land a short stint at Lazio, before dropping out due to injuries and addictions. Today, he is said to live as a homeless person in the streets of Palermo. Talk about how difficult it can be to keep your balance in the world of calcio, even when it seems that you have made it to the top.
It was the summer of 1982, Totò was 17 years old and already accustomed to do odd jobs to help his family make ends meet – an assistant confectioner, a street vendor – when Messina came knocking at the door of AMAT Palermo, his youth club. AMAT were a non-professional club, while the Peloritani were fumbling in Serie C2, the then fourth level of the calcio pyramid. The deal was done fast.
In that same summer, Italy won their third World Cup and the young Schillaci celebrated with his friends, standing on the top of a bus. “I was waving the Italian flag and thought: ‘I wonder if I ever manage to watch a game of the Azzurri at the stadium,’” he recalled in a recent interview with La Gazzetta dello Sport. “Eight years later, I was playing for them.”
He started his first season at Messina as a backup. But one day, the starting striker was sent off. Totò came in, hit the net, and never lost his spot – the same trajectory he would follow at Italia 90.
With the Peloritani, he gained two promotions, bringing them back to Serie B with his goals. In those seven years at Messina, his path crossed with that of some of the most iconic, revolutionary coaches in the Italian peninsula, which helped mold his raw talent into an absolute striking force. Franco Scoglio, nicknamed The Professor, said that “there is no one in the world as hungry for goals as him.”
When Scoglio used to hold his pretentious pre-match tactical briefings, Totò was dispensed from joining. “Totò doesn’t need to be here,” he said. “He must be free on the pitch, he must move in the way he feels. As long as he scores.” And Totò did score.
Then, Zdenek Zeman. Zeman’s ultra-offensive style of football was exactly what was needed to exploit Salvatore’s characteristics, his basic instinct for scoring. With the Czechia-born coach at the helm, Schillaci found the back of the net 23 times in the 1988/89 Serie B season. It was his breakthrough campaign. The time was ripe for the quantum leap into the top-flight.
It was Juventus to secure his services. The Bianconeri needed a new attacker to recover from an overly disappointing season and chose to put their cards on this average-looking Sicilian boy.
Schillaci, who is he??? Nobody could know an obscure second division striker in the pre-Internet days. And so, following the footsteps of his many fellow regional countrymen who had migrated to the industrialized North in search of a better life in post War World II Italy, Totò moved to Turin. But not to do some low-income job. This was the real deal, it was about joining the poshest club in Italy, ruled by the powerful, snobbish Agnelli Family. The climb was over.
Or maybe not?
Schillaci could be happy with what he had. But then destiny came knocking at his door, in the form of the much-awaited 1990 World Cup played on Italian soil, perhaps the most iconic football tournament ever for a multitude of reasons. The Azzurri coach Azeglio Vicini could not ignore Schillaci, who had scored 15 goals in his Serie A maiden season, helping the Bianconeri win a UEFA Cup and a Coppa Italia. He aggregated him to the Italy roster for the World Cup. Obviously, as a backup.
On June 9, 1990, Italy made their World Cup debut at the Stadio Olimpico. It was expected to be a walk in the park for the Azzurri, who needed an easy win to set their home campaign off to a good start, but Austria had a different idea. Italy kept attacking and attacking, but the gritty Mitteleuropean wall held.
With 15 minutes to go and the score still set at 0-0, Vicini decided to substitute one of his strikers, Andrea Carnevale. In came Schillaci.
Just four minutes later, Gianluca Vialli whipped a cross in the middle of the box, the ball connected with Totò’s head and ended past goalie Otto Konrad, much to the relief of the 73,000 fans at the Olimpico. The stalemate was broken. Italia 90 and the Notti Magiche could start.
In the immediate aftermath of the game, Totò Schillaci became a national hero. The images of his celebration, a wild run with his mouth open and those spirited eyes, instantly made his feat as famous as another iconic Azzurri celebration – Marco Tardelli’s shout after scoring Italy’s second goal in the 1982 World Cup Final, that same game that Schillaci had watched as a teenager before going out to celebrate with his friends.
That look of astonishment, of disbelief, told the story of a Sicilian boy who had just fulfilled his childhood dream, but still struggled to believe this was really happening.
But it was happening, and it was just the beginning. In the following few weeks, Totò morphed into a football King Midas who turned into a goal every ball he touched.
In the second game against the U.S.A., Vicini once again sent him in to replace Carnevale. This time, the Napoli striker blatantly gave his coach the f- word, basically ending his World Cup experience there. From then on, Schillaci became an indisputable starter.
He scored again. And again. He opened the scoring against Czechoslovakia in the final group stage game, before Roberto Baggio would set the score at 2-0 with a formidable solo run.
He found the net against Uruguay with a fantastic shot from outside the box, paving the way for the Azzurri’s success in the Round of 16. In the Quarter Finals, he netted the only goal of the game as he pounced on the rebound from a Roberto Donadoni shot saved by the Irish goalkeeper.
Even the Semi Final against Diego Maradona’s Argentina was embellished by one of his goals. But then, the Italia 90 fairy tale ended abruptly. Italians are still not over it: Walter Zenga’s mistake, Claudio Caniggia’s equalizer, the game decided on penalties – where it was another underdog to shine, the Argentinian shot-stopper Sergio Goycochea.
There was still time for Schillaci to score once more, a decisive penalty in the third-place match, to bring his personal tally to six, win the prize for the best player of the tournament and propel him to the second place in the Ballon d’Or standing, only behind German legend Lothar Matthaus!
Then, Italia 90 ended and so did Salvatore Schillaci’s magic moment. The country woke up from a short, intense summer dream and its instant hero became a “normal” player again.
The next few Serie A seasons were a disappointment. Despite partnering upfront with Roberto Baggio, Totò only scored five goals in 1990/91 and six in the following year. He then moved to Inter, enjoying little more success.
After the 1990 World Cup, he wore the Azzurri jersey in only eight more occasions, scoring his only additional goal in a 1-2 loss to Norway.
In 1994, he made a surprising choice as he decided to join Japanese club Jubilo Iwata. He closed his career three years later, after having been slated to star once again in the country of the Rising Sun, although in a totally different fashion.
Schillaci spent the second part of his life in his native Palermo, where he opened an academy to give kids from the poorer neighborhoods a chance to play football. Now and then, he was seen on TV, participating to some reality shows. Until a colon cancer took him away this morning at just 59 years of age.
Salvatore Schillaci was a good player, not a fuoriclasse. He was not the fastest. He was not the strongest.
“Yeah, I know I am not built like a Rialto bronze,” he once said, a blunder that made him even more loved because the little education he had had only made him closer to the Italian average man of the streets (at least, those kinds of streets that he was born and raised in). He meant to refer to the Riace bronzes, the famous ripped Greek statues displayed at the Reggio Calabria Museum, but mistook their name with Rialto, which is a bridge in Venice.
But he had something that made him stand out, which his old coach Scoglio recognized, and which is so rare to find in young kids approaching football nowadays.
He had a hunger for glory and the willingness to put in the work. He showed us that, when the right times comes, and the stars align, everybody can be a hero. But that look in his eyes, those crazy runs to celebrate yet another goal scored at Italia 90, also taught us to never forget the kid in ourselves, even when the childhood dream is fulfilled, and to enjoy that very moment in the best possible way.
Even if it’s going to be short, and it will quickly fade away.
Thank you for everything Totò, you were one of us.
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