Sports - where memories are created

SPORTS - the arena that turns mortals into immortals or drags them down to the abyss of public ridicule.

SPORTS - the birthplace of unforgettable moments that stay with you throughout your life.

I am sure that each and every one of you has your collection of 2 or 3 moments from different sporting events that just refuse to turn old no matter how many times you rewind them in your mind’s video-recorder. It is a part of growing up I guess!
I have a chosen few, too. . . .

All of them are from football world cups. More specifically, all of them are from documentary movies made on the football world cups. . . .

The most cherished one is from the official 1998 FIFA football world cup movie. All of those official movies, starting right from the 1950 or 1954 world cup, were shown in ESPN and Star Sports during the build up to the 2006 football world cup.

This was from the 2nd round knock-out match between Italy and Chile, and it involved Roberto Baggio - the most expensive player in world football at one time. Baggio was the blue-eyed boy of the Italian football squad during the previous world cup in 1994. He was their main striker, play-maker, star attraction. But in the final match against Brazil he made the biggest mistake of his life. He shot the ball over the crossbar of the goalpost during the tiebreaker – a miss that immediately handed Brazil the world cup. And turned Baggio into the biggest villain in Italy.

Now, four years later, Baggio was nearing the end of his international career. This was his last world cup, and in it he was playing the role of a once-great-but-now-in-the-sidelines hero-turned-villain-turned-nobody. This time, Italy was no longer being supported by his shoulders. Alessandro Del Piero was the new ‘Baggio’.

Baggio was playing as a striker in that match against Chile. At one time, as he attempted to pass the ball inside the Chilean penalty-box, it struck the hand of a Chilean player. He appealed for penalty at once, and got it. Now I’ll narrate the scenes as shown in that documentary. . . .

Baggio immediately bends down, hands on his knees, as if for support. He stays that way for some time, as one or two Italian players run to him and say something. Then he stands up, takes the ball, and proceeds towards the area from where the shot is to be taken. Four years after that fateful afternoon in Pasadena, USA, Roberto Baggio is again going to take a penalty kick for Italy.

As he places the ball on the ground and steps back, images from the build up to that infamous shot start flashing in the screen. We see a Chilean player shouting vehemently in the left ear of Baggio, as he is about to start his run. Images start to flash again. But his face is like stone, not a single muscle showing any movement. He runs, takes the shot with his right foot, sees what happens and calmly runs away. The next shot shows the Chilean goalkeeper getting up from the ground, looking dejected. Meanwhile, Italian players run to Baggio, congratulating him. In one last shot, we finally see him from the front as a teammate runs up and embraces him. Even now, Baggio stays eerily calm, his face displaying the least amount of emotion possible. But you can feel it is there this time – like an underwater volcano, ready to burst to the surface at any time. I would not have been surprised one bit, if at that moment Baggio had broken down in tears on the ground. But helped by some Herculean will power, he didn’t - and that suppressed emotional torment is what has gotten stuck to my mind. Later Baggio said that he finally got rid of the ghost of ’94 in that one penalty kick. That beautiful video (augmented by a superb background score) is there at YouTube – go find it out and have a look!

Italy won that match and curiously, my next memorable moment involves Robert Baggio during the tiebreaker between France and Italy in the quarter-final match. The first shot was to be taken by Baggio. Again he coolly took the ball, placed it on the ground, stepped back, waited for the referee’s whistle, then ran up, took the shot and scored. But right after that, as he was running away, Baggio placed his right index finger on his lips and gestured as if to tell someone to shut up. Actually the crowd behind that particular goalpost was mostly made up of French supporters - and they had been constantly booing Baggio during his penalty kick. But he silenced them in one shot and then took time to explicitly make the point! However, Italy lost the tiebreak, and the Italian player who missed the last shot had a name that also ended in ‘Bazzio’, though not as spelled as ‘Baggio’. . . .

My last two memorable sports moments come from the next official FIFA football world cup movie in 2002. They took place during the first round group match between defending champion France and Denmark. The French team was in deep trouble by then – securing only one point from their first two group matches. They needed to beat Denmark at least 2-0 in that last group game, to have a chance of advancing to the next round. But unlike the previous two matches, this time they had their talisman with them – Zinedine Yazid Zidane, though he was carrying an injured left leg and had bandages over his left thigh. Just four years ago he had single-handedly demolished the formidable Brazilian side in the final match and handed France the world cup. Handling Denmark should have been a walk in the park compared to that!

The whole of France was counting on Zidane to pull their side through to the second round. It is in this context – ideally suited for a hero, more so for the two-time FIFA world player of the year – that I remember those two incidences. The first was when a high long ball was played to Zidane as he was running inside the Danish penalty box. He received it right enough with his right foot, but then lost balance as his injured left leg couldn’t handle the speed of his run and gave way. Zidane tumbled onto the ground, rolling as he hit it and came to a stop lying with his face buried in the grass. As he took a deep breath and looked up lying down, the camera showed in a close-up shot the sweat running down his contorted face betraying the pain and frustration. France was probably 1-0 behind by that time.

The second scene was more poignant, although strangely I couldn’t locate it in the official film any more when I searched today at YouTube. I’m sure about having seen it, perhaps not in the official film version but in some other documentary that used the same footage. It showed Zidane from behind as he took a shot from distance at the Danish goalpost. He hit the ball with his good right leg, but in the ensuing motion lost his balance again and started to fall. As the ball climbed higher, curled leftwards and began descending towards the upper left corner of the crossbar, Zidane was still falling in the foreground. Finally as he hit the ground, the ball went past the post, missing it by inches. Zidane’s fall was complete, and that of France as well because instead of winning the game 2-0, they lost it by the same margin. The injured star failed to rise to the occasion, with that collapse onto the ground symbolizing his country’s exit at the very first round of the tournament. France managed just one point and not a single goal. It was and still is the worst performance by a defending champion team in a world cup. . . .

So while in one case Baggio went through agony for four years and finally redeemed himself in the best possible way one could have planned, Zidane went from being the guiding force of a world champion team to being reduced to a fallen hero returning home after a disastrous performance by his side. And you know what – the first shot in the tiebreaker on behalf of the French team in that 1998 quarter-final against Italy was taken by Zizou, after Baggio, and successfully. One can only wonder if the two players had spoken to each other after the match, and what, if anything, Baggio said to Zidane. . . .