The Hindu : Sport / Football : Baggio's chance to show he can still `dance'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Apr 27, 2004

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Sport - Football

Baggio's chance to show he can still `dance'

GENOA, APRIL 26. Roberto Baggio does not care if he is injured. Neither do any of his fans.

Italy's beloved striker has been waiting five years for the opportunity he will get on Wednesday night — a long-awaited return to the national team.

The 36-year-old with the greying ponytail was called up by Italy coach Giovanni Trapattoni for a special "farewell match," a friendly against Spain in this northern port city.

Trapattoni maintains that the match is a one-game affair. The rest of the country, however — Baggio included, is thinking otherwise.

The thought, rather the hope, is that Baggio performs so well that Trapattoni cannot ignore him for the upcoming European championships.

The fact that Baggio injured his right thigh muscle in a 1-1 draw against Perugia on Sunday — he scored Brescia's goal on one of his trademark free kicks — is not dimming the hope.

Even on one leg, Baggio is still Baggio.

Sports daily Corriere dello Sport has opened up its pages to fan phone messages, e-mails and faxes in a Baggio campaign.

"Baggio merits to go to the Euros not for his extraordinary career, but because he's playing well and many of our strikers are having problems," the paper said in an editorial, referring to Christian Vieri's apparent unwillingness to play lately, Alessandro Del Piero's slow return from a calf injury and emerging star Antonio Cassano's continual failure to keep his composure.

From Rome to London, the messages are streaming in, printed on a page titled "Baggio without borders."

"Baggio, make us dream," said one, an indirect reference to Baggio's constant allusions to his dreams and two-part autobiography — "A Door in the Sky" and "The Dream Hereafter" — which is dotted with mystical poetry.

"No Baggio, no Italy," said another.

Fans from Brescia are expected by the busload for Wednesday's match and all 35,000 tickets sold out in four days.

"He's very determined, galvanised in a very particular manner by this call up," Brescia coach Gianni De Biasi said. "He's not going to treat it as an exhibition, he wants to do his best to show that he's healthy."

Brescia president Gino Corioni, who signed Baggio four years ago when no big clubs in Italy wanted him, noted how thoroughly Baggio was practicing the past week, when he was always the first to arrive and the last to leave.

"Baggio is the player with the most class of anyone in the post-war period," Corioni said.

Evidence for that claim is available in the videotape showing each of Baggio's first 200 Serie `A' goals that is on sale at newsstands throughout the country.

The tape is titled "All Baggio's Magic: The Legend of the Golden Ponytail."

Trapattoni had resisted pressure to call up Baggio since taking over the national team four years ago and kept him off Italy's 2002 World Cup squad in the face of widespread criticism.

However, since Baggio has indicated he plans to retire at the end of this season, Trapattoni has decided to give in, if only for one game.

Baggio's last match for Italy was a Euro 2000 qualifier against Belarus on March 31, 1999. He has made 55 appearances for the "Azzurri" in all and stands fourth on the team's all-time scoring list with 27 goals.

Baggio has also scored 11 times in the Serie A this season, placing him among the league leaders.

His official line on the Euros, "I don't know, Trapattoni decides," is diplomatic.

But, as one local paper put it, "Baggio is coming to the ball on Wednesday night to show he can still dance." — AP

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