Book review: Piero Trellini revisits the haloed Italy vs Brazil 1982 football World Cup match, the day history was made

The Italians' 3-2 win gave them a generous slice of World Cup history at the Italy v Brazil 1982 match.

In the foreword itself is the story.

A stadium, called Sarria, in Barcelona, now demolished, but what happened inside it on a humid July 5 afternoon is described by Piero Trellini, the author of The Match: The Story of Italy v Brazil 1982 as “Ninety minutes of emotional beauty.”

Trellini was 12 years old when that cutlass of a match was played; a game that cloaked Brazilian fans in the throes of a depression that lasted years, a deep wound, now 40 years later, a dry ageing scab, a reminder nonetheless, that good, great, beautiful teams don’t always end up celebrating at the end of 90 minutes. The Italians' 3-2 win gave them a generous slice of World Cup history, a permanent place in the annals till we humans are kicking a ball on planet Earth. That win propelled them from a team that couldn’t find their feet to one that couldn’t stop scoring and eventually winning the 1982 World Cup.

We saw similar scenes closer home, just last Sunday.  For a billion plus, close to a lakh inside the Narendra Modi Stadium on November 19th, it was painful to see India, supreme, spectacular, unbeatable for ten games on the trot, suddenly afraid of its own shadow. In a match of 93 overs, a dream that would have draped the nation in sparkling, bubbly blue now hangs like a dark, grey memory, a piece of your life you wish didn’t exist. And despite everything, it won’t go away, the wound becoming a scab, yet would remain a chapter, a footnote, a piece of history, you would rather, if you could, erase.

Trellini takes you four decades back, reimagining that game, undoing the framework, like a brilliant Italian mechanic opening a Ferrari, nuts, bolts, neatly assembled on the shop floor, then reassembling it back, trying to figure out why it stalled; the Ferrari in this case being Brazil. I tread softly while writing this but can’t shake off the feeling that Trellini is the written word’s Christopher Nolan, handholding you, making you understand the not so understood nuances of that brilliant, heart-breaking (for Brazil) and the almost God-like status it gave to Italy. It’s like going back in time, revisiting, the sub-plots in Brazil, Italy, all combining, as it drowns you in detailing you never imagined for just one 90-minute football match; a match that still gets analysed, talked, a 90-minute period that Brazilian captain Socrates never spoke about till he lived. Perhaps, only once, after a few pints, Socrates while speaking to the BBC in England said: “Football as we know it died on that day."

The Match is as much about Italy’s tediousness that finally gets its act together, a goal away from plunging down the precipice as it is about Brazil’s misfiring genius, a team that even in that gut-wrenching loss played sensuous football.

Spread across more than 180 small chapters in a voluminous 500-page book, it’s Trellini’s homage to a match almost staggering in its scope, a book that goes back to 1499. “Italy and Brazil are linked by destiny, history, and affection. The navigator who first sighted the Brazilian coast was an Italian, the Florentine Amerigo Vespucci, in 1499. He too was struck by the trees: ‘They are so beautiful that it seems as if we are in paradise.’”

And the back story of the match referee Abraham Klein, The Man Who Came from Haifa. Klein trains every day. “Ten kilometres of running, two hours of gymnastics, strict diet, heart rate checks.” Now 48, afraid that he may not be at his physical best, Klein hires a fitness trainer and “lost nine kilos in four weeks and trained his body to withstand a load of physical stress for 120 minutes so that he would also be ready for extra time, should it prove necessary.” It’s also a story of three phone calls, before and during the World Cup that would alter Klein’s life forever.

Trellini’s research blows you over; he goes back tracing team selections and the drama surrounding Paolo Rossi’s involvement in the 1980 match-fixing scandal with his two-year suspension ending with only two months left for the World Cup. At times, it reads like a thriller: “On 9 May 1978, in Rome, at the same time that a red Renault 4 was parked by the Red Brigade in Via Caetani with the body of ex-Italian prime minister Aldo Moro locked in the boot, Enzo Bearzot delivered to the Italian Football Federation the list of the 22 players who would play in the World Cup in Argentina. The same day a telegram arrived at Vicenza football club: ‘We confirm that your player Rossi has been called up and we kindly ask him to be at Villa Pamphili in Rome by 18.30 on Friday 12 with his game clothes, valid passport and vaccinations.’ It was the official invitation.”

While focusing on the match, Trellini goes back and forth, it’s a swing, he makes you sit on as a reader, flipping through history, time, before that July 5th game that would alter the history of both nations.

When Rossi scores the opening goal for Italy, it is his first goal ‘after 777 days in limbo’. “Rossi and Peres are facing each other, in the same moment and in the same symmetrical position. Waldir Peres is immortalised in the act of falling to the ground. Sweat trickles down his jugular, his jaws creak, his left arm is weighed down on the grass, his right arm, still raised, carries the echo of an attempt."'

You feel for the Brazilians, a defeat that was never envisaged, dreamt, or imagined. Trellini writes about Socrates: “At home he has left his ideals, his two beloved books – Kafka’s The Trial and One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez – three children and a wife, Regina, who is about to give him Mariana. He confessed to Falcão: ‘I hope he is born after the final, so he will already be champion.”

Even the press box is detailed, exact numbers spelt out. “The press box is a deluge of noises and chattering. Violent and heated. For Brazil there are 610 accredited places: 164 print journalists, 220 radio-telephonists (public and private), 40 photographers, 44 assistants, 104 technicians, 7 administrators, 15 managers, 16 cameramen. Italy’s army has 304 taking part in the Spanish World Cup, half the number from Rio de Janeiro. The Italians have 160 journalists, 32 photographers, 40 RAI reporters, 32 technicians, 16 administrative staff, 8 managers and 16 cameramen. Overall, the press box and the pitch-side area has 1,600, almost four journalists for every hundred spectators.”

Before the prologue, there is a quote of Italian coach Enzo Bearzot: “My greatest passion is jazz, particularly Dixieland. That doesn’t stop me getting goosebumps every time I listen to Stelutis Alpinis, but it’s the voice of the blood: jazz...Here, I would like a jazz team, great ensemble work, a lot of teamwork and suddenly the soloist comes out.”

Bearzot’s words, 40 years later, make you understand the 2023 Cricket World Cup final: The Australian team (great ensemble work), a lot of teamwork and suddenly the soloist comes out (Travis Head).”

It’s a narrative about one match, two great teams, players that will be remembered for generations, revered, two of the greatest coaches, thinkers in Tele Santana and Enzo Bearzot.

Brazil lost 2-3. Was there a weakness?

Trellini describes: “Its weakness was in the very condition of beauty. Fragility.”