He was 82 years old: he was also a defender in Juventus and Napoli With Herrera’s Nerazzurri he won Scudetti and Intercontinental Cups
the memory
A minute of silence for Tarcisio Burgnich, the Rock of Euro-World Inter Milan and of the first great post-war Italy. Sarti-Burgnich-Facchetti the nursery rhyme of the first, Albertosi-Burgnich-Facchetti of the second: just a generation before Zoff-Gentile-Cabrini, even if the old Dino, a true Friulian himself, was already there at the time of the European Championship ’68 and who knows why, thinking about it, in Mexico ’70 he had to give way to the less young Albertosi. It was the time of the relay races, evidently, which culminated in that never enough execrated between Mazzola and Rivera.
The Rock at the time weighed 81 kilos for 1.75: in the defense of Conte’s Inter between Skriniar, De Vrji, Bastoni and perhaps Ranocchia, he would have seemed like a reformed at the draft visit. Because today’s tonnages are quite different and just look at a group photo of Mexicans to feel a thrill of tenderness. But football was already then a contact sport: and against the Rock even the most powerful and courageous strikers of the time, starting with Gigi Riva, very simply bounced. Luckily for them Burgnich was a relentless but loyal scorer, who only once got seriously angry: one afternoon at San Siro in which Riva’s own elbow knocked out two teeth. He tried and found a way to give back, he would tell years later: and once the scores were settled, he held out his hand.
Rivera’s free-kick from the trocar to Azteca was right for Riva, immediately after the Poletti omelette that had given Gerd Müller the 2-1 ball. But it ended up on the head of a German who rejected it short and badly: and there, in the heart of the opponent’s area where he usually went only by showing his passport, it was the Rock who checked it calmly and sent it into the net with a left. And that was the sign that the mayonnaise was now crazy, and anything could really happen. The other frame of that June 1970 is four days later, at the 18th minute of the final with Brazil: and it is of a completely different sign. On Rivelino’s cross, Burgnich is late and being able to pull off Pele’s header in solitude is a sentence. It was then known, and something can be sensed by reviewing the images, that while Tostão was about to beat the throw-in that triggered Rivelino’s parable, the order came from the bench to change the markings because until then on Pele, who had been backward, there was Bertini state: accustomed to making the opponent feel physical contact on the deadlift, the Rock found himself in no man’s land. And he groped in vain in the air. A few days earlier, with a practically identical header, ‘O Rei had forced Gordon Banks to the then parade of the century, which has remained so after more than fifty years. But in Burgnich, a man-goal scorer by profession, that worry had remained inside: because in the most important match of a legendary career, against the best player in the world, he had not managed to be the Rock ever.
The man had been lost, albeit by a choice not his. In contravention of the first commandment that many years earlier he had learned by heart in the Udinese youth teams. Always look at your opponent with one eye and a half: the ball with the other. He abjured only in old age, when after the Inter epic he went free to Napoli di Vinicio who was experimenting with the area. And he came a step away from another Scudetto, after all those won with Inter, plus the Champions Cups and the Intercontinental. And yes that in his youth he had failed an audition for Catania, which had preferred another Friulian named Bruno Pizzul. Hello Tarci, goodnight Cipe. This is how he and Facchetti greeted each other during the retreat, turning off the light at 10.30 pm. And talking about it, he commented: “between Inter and the national team I slept more with him than with my wife.” –