The three world championships of the greatest striker in blue football “In 1970 Brazil was strong, but the 4-1 was too severe”
There is a forty-year-long thread that unites the World Cup from 1966 to 2006. That thread is in the memory of Gigi Riva, protagonist for better or for worse in most of those world championship tournaments. He was a promise of Italian football, a staggering 21-year-old, when Edmondo Fabbri took him as a tourist to the ruinous countryside of England for the Azzurri. He could have helped to avoid the collapse with North Korea and an elimination that is part of the history of our football. Today, Gigi Riva takes it with philosophy. That memory is distant, almost forgotten. «In football it’s like this – he says -, when you are young they neglect you, and you can’t think of playing by force. Then I suffered, anyway ».
There is no bitterness, now for him almost 76 years old, it is better to cherish the beautiful memories. Like those of Mexico ’70, in which the striker and his Cagliari brothers were key players in the set-up designed by coach Ferruccio Valcareggi and he scored three goals.
«We won that world championship – Riva remembers – by beating Germany 4-3 in the semifinal at the end of an extraordinary match. It was an unspeakable effort, but the satisfaction was immense. I also scored a goal in those crazy overtime. In short, that game is truly one of the most important and most beautiful I’ve ever played ».
A victory at a great price. Then paid in the final in which Brazil won 4-1, taking home the Rimet Cup for good. “We certainly paid for the effort made to beat the Germans. The Mexican altitude took our breath away. And then that Brazil was really strong. Pele, and then Jairzinho, Rivelino … in short, a team of champions who won all the games like a steamroller. I am left with only one regret, the dimension of defeat. Italy was also a strong team and between us and them there was not all the difference that tells the result of the final ».
The third world championship as a footballer, for Gigi Riva, was that of 1974 in Germany. A review to forget, for the result, given that we returned home after the three games of the eliminatory round, and for the bitter disappointment suffered by the Italian fans who emigrated to Germany, who dreamed of a winning national team and had instead to resign themselves to the teasing of the Germans.
Riva played his last two matches in the national team in those World Cups: first the match won, 3-1, against the Haitian amateurs, then the draw with Argentina for 1-1: it was June 19, 1974. In the following game, which Italy lost with Poland who condemned us to be eliminated, he and Rivera were not used by Valcareggi, almost scapegoats for the defeat. Riva shrugs: “We have to understand – he says – that you can’t always win”. Thus ended a legendary blue career seasoned by 42 appearances and 35 goals that make him the blue goal scorer of all time.
Riva returned to the national team as an accompanying executive, since the 1990 World Cup in Italy. Since then he has been the most listened to adviser of the players, the one the Azzurri often leaned on to smooth out tensions, anger and fears. Riva also participated in the 1994 World Cup in the USA, when he also had to console Baggio for the mistake from the spot in the final with Brazil, and again in France in 1998 and in Japan-Korea in 2002. Up to the extraordinary adventure in Germany, in 2006 Almost an appointment with history. There Riva had suffered one of the most concurrent disappointments of his career, there he took the greatest satisfaction as a manager of the national team, winning the world championship. A success that the Azzurri players have also attributed to him. Captain Fabio Cannavaro has always said: “Without Gigi to be our father and shoulder, we would never have won that world championship”. And Riva, shy as he is, takes no credit. He limits himself to saying: «Well, I think that even without me they would have won. I was there to talk, I liked to explain, to help. They often confided in each other, knowing that I would keep my mouth shut. I would say that the credit was mainly due to Lippi, a great coach. However, that of Germany is a really good memory ».