Dion Fanning: Italia 90 was the peak for Ireland fans – sadly the same was true for ‘Toto’ Schillaci
Salvatore ‘Toto’ Schillaci broke Irish hearts in Italia 90. Photo: Getty
Dion Fanning
Today at 13:56
If you weren’t around for Italia 90, you will undoubtedly have formed the impression that this was a time of unreserved joy. Your view will have been shaped by Nessun Dorma, The Van and footage from Dublin’s Walkinstown roundabout after Ireland beat Romania .
You will tell yourself that this was a time when people were happy. You may even lament that such simple emotions are unavailable to us in the modern uncertain world.
If you support the Irish football team in 2024 but don’t remember Italia 90, these feelings will be even more acute. You will believe you missed out on paradise and have been condemned to the temporal punishment of purgatory, otherwise known as watching Jayson Molumby play in midfield.
I would like to tell you now not to fall into this trap. Some of us who were there for Italia 90 remember it differently. Sure we were happy some of the time, but what is forgotten is that we were also extremely stressed. And Salvatore ‘Toto’ Schillaci was the source of much of that stress.
He scored the goal that knocked Ireland out of the World Cup in the quarter-final, but he played more of a role than that. The stress came from hoping somehow that this player who went into the tournament as a relative unknown could be overlooked by the Italian manager. We hoped that Azeglio Vicini could somehow fail to notice that he wasn’t picking his best team.
I would liken this to the plot of a thriller, but sadly in reverse if you were Irish. Instead of Vicini working feverishly to find a solution before the world ends, we were hoping that the obvious talent he was ignoring would somehow continue to be overlooked beyond the quarter-final. Today, somebody would probably give us a talk about controlling the controllables or trusting the process, but back then we were surrendering to superstition and trying to control everything.
Vicini had given us hope by initially overlooking not only Schillaci, but Roberto Baggio, who Juventus had bought from Fiorentina for a world-record fee a month before the World Cup. Vicini was sticking with the late great Gianluca Vialli and the workmanlike Andrea Carnevale.
Memory persuades me that this air of uncertainty persisted until close to Ireland’s game against Italy, but the facts are different. Through injury to Vialli and the determination of Schillaci to make his mark, Italy had landed on their best forward line by the end of the group stage.
When they beat Czechoslovakia 2-0, Baggio delivered one of the great World Cup goals. And Schillaci, who had come off the bench in the opening game to score, finished a move with one of those goals that were coming to define him.
“Baggio and Schillaci scored goals that could be put in a picture frame, they were that good,” Vicini said later.
Schillaci scored again in the round of 16 and we know what happened in the quarter-final in Rome.
His goal has become part of folklore, the subject of party pieces and one-liners. It is part of who we are. Schillaci is part of who we are. That he was Sicilian of course added to the sense of theatre he brought to his ruthless business of scoring goals. He played with the intensity of a player who was going to take this opportunity.
It is easy to imagine a counterfactual where Vicini stuck with his original strikers. In this alternative reality, Packie Bonner parries the ball to Andrea Carnevale, not Schillaci, and Carnavale shoots tamely wide before Ireland go on to win on penalties. But this doesn’t feel right.
Schillaci’s crazed eyes as he scored are as much a part of Ireland’s experience of Italia 90 as a nation holding its breath, Eamon Dunphy throwing a pen and Bonner’s grimace.
It’s true that those days can feel more authentic. Things became so commodified since that Schillaci himself featured in a (very good) Smithwick’s ad in 2002.
He was 25 at that World Cup. He had signed for Juventus the year before following a career outside Serie A.
He would score one more goal for Italy in his career. Nothing he achieved in football ever came close to that summer. We would probably say the same, which might explain the enduring bond.
There was another connection. Both Ireland and Schillaci were taken by surprise by all that happened. Today it is hard to believe that anything can be spontaneous, unexpected or, when it comes to Irish football, joyous.
Today we watch videos on YouTube with titles like How Ireland Became Bad At Football and then boo whoever gets man of the match.
Sure, we might have been stressed as we thought of what Schillaci could do, but we were also free of expectation. So when Nessun Dorma plays and you experience that involuntary Proustian rush, it takes us back to that time when everything seemed simple. And in the memory it was, which is probably all that matters.
At least it was until ‘Toto’ Schillaci appeared on the scene.
