World Cup Moments: Roberto Baggio vs Czechoslovakia, 1990

April 26th, 2010 | by: Daryl |

baggio-world-cup-goal Roberto Baggio’s preformance at the 1994 World Cup is lauded. Quite rightly too. His goals took Italy all the way to the final, where he played injured and missed the decisive penalty. Tragic but heroic stuff from The Divine Ponytail.

However, four years before his 1994 performance, Roberto Baggio was making his World Cup debut in 1990, when Italy hosted the tournament. He wasn’t such an integral player as in 1994, had some sort of mullet instead of his ponytail and spent a lot of time on the bench. But Baggio played in Italy’s final game of the group stage vs Czechoslovakia (which the Azzurri won 2-0) and scored one of the best Worlds Cup goals you’ll ever see.

Want to see video of the goal? Then step right this way…

The quick one-two with Giuseppe Giannini is nice start, but it’s the dribbling after the return pass that gets the attention. What I really like is that though Baggio is pulling out various stepovers and feints, he basically runs a straight line towards goal. Baggio’s fakes are so good that he doesn’t need to change direction. His shimmies are enough to physically move Czech defenders out of the way. Like a Jedi.

It even works on goalkeeper Jan Stejskal, who you can see buy Baggio’s fake-out and dive the wrong way, allowing Baggio to roll the ball home for one of the great World Cup goals. Bellissimo Roberto.

- More World Cup Moments.

International Football News – World Cup Blog RSS Feed

http://juventus.theoffside.com alessio

Legend.
http://italy.theoffside.com Francesco

My favorite World Cup goal of all time.
Marco

What a legend is Baggio. Idol!
ish

is it just me or does messi’s dribble style remind people more of best and baggio instead of maradona.
LorenzoRosanero

The greatest.

Every idiot who knows nothing about calcio/football/soccer always brings up his penalty miss.

Unfortunately for them, they don’t know the real Roberto Baggio.
http://www.worldcupblog.org Daryl

ish,

I thought the same thing about Messi while watching Baggio above, and we also published this post about the similarities between Messi and Best back in December:

http://www.theoffside.com/world-football/leo-messi-is-the-new-george-best-not-the-new-diego-maradona.html

LorenzoRosanero,

Unfortunately, that’s the most high profile moment in Baggio’s career, just because it was the World Cup final and all. It’s definitely unfair, but it shouldn’t detract from his status as one of the greats.
http://atalanta.theoffside.com Jae

It’s unfortunate that the average fan doesn’t realize how truly incredible Baggio was. Probably because of the miss and that he ended his career with Brescia. If he had stayed at Juve, Inter, or Milan I think more people would realize what a special player he was. Easily, in my opinion, up there with Pele, Maradonna, Zidane, Best as one of the greatest of all time.
Gunter

Baggio is in my opinion one of the greatest players to ever play the game.

I had the privilege to see him play in the States when Italy played Spain and he scored the decisive goal.
http://www.balticbeast.com/ Tony

The greatest.

Every idiot who knows nothing about calcio/football/soccer always brings up his penalty miss.

Unfortunately for them, they don’t know the real Roberto Baggio.