Roberto Baggio

[wicked wizard]

Ye, Steven Gerrard been one of the most overrated players ever while apparently Carrick is the most underrated player ever.

 

[Bergpavian]

Tbh they put Rooney and Stevie G in that list as well so you should be quite happy. Got only this far, media such as the telegraph is all about stirring shit and collecting the ad revenue off of trolled readers.

Even if Rooney f. e. is overrrated, the justification is just ridiculous:

... but his poor goal return in major tournaments for England, coupled with just the one Champions League win, illustrate why he can’t be considered one of the game’s true greats.

 

[J..]

This article is from last summer but it truly describes how dedicated a player Baggio was.

Baggio: 'I wanted to die'

Roberto Baggio confessed he was in such agony due to knee injuries that he asked his own mother to kill him.

One of the greatest players who ever lived, it’s remarkable to think what he could’ve achieved without the constant pain.

“When I hung up my boots for the last time, it was like being liberated,” he told the Corriere dello Sport.

“The physical pain was really torture and accompanied my entire life as a player. In the last few years, it had become more than I could bear.

“When I was playing for Brescia, I struggled to walk for two days after each game. When I got home, I couldn’t get out of the car, as I had to put one foot down on the ground and haul myself up hanging on to the door. The next Sunday, I would play again. Packed full of painkillers, but I’d play.

“I gave everything to football. It might seem a paradox, but at that moment when I retired, I felt happy and fully realised. I could not have done more. At San Siro, on my last Serie A game, and in Genoa on my final appearance for Italy, the fans repaid me for all of it.”

There was never really a time when we didn’t see Baggio affected by injuries, as his first devastating knee rupture was at the age of 18 in 1985.

“That was my ‘introduction’ to football. If I risked getting a big head with people calling me a phenomenon, reality brought me back down to earth. I put my leg down badly and left my meniscus and cruciate ligament on that pitch.

“The professors looked at my knee, shook their heads and said it was unlikely I’d ever play football again. I had six operations on my knees, four on the right and two on the left.

“In those years the meniscus was a disaster, but now it’s almost a routine operation. I had very invasive surgery and each time went into the tunnel, but I never stopped looking for the light at the end of it.

“The surgery in France was the worst. They had to drill a hole in my tibia to anchor the tendon, which had been lacerated. I couldn’t take anti-inflammatories because I was allergic.

“They put in 220 internal stitches. I was in agony. I even told my mother ‘If you love me, then kill me.’ It was the desperation of a lad who was suffering and saw the dream of a lifetime floating away, having touched it with a fingertip.

“In the two weeks after the operation, I lost 12kg. I wasn’t eating and I’d just cry all the time, for emotional and physical pain.

“If I said I never thought about throwing in the towel, I’d be lying. There were some very, very dark moments, but every time I’d react. I told myself I had to go all the way and challenge myself. I wanted to prove I was stronger than my bad luck and this dream was worth more than a knee.

“Football was always my passion. I used to take the ball with me into the bathroom. As a little child, I had a recurring dream that I would play a World Cup Final against Brazil. I am one of those humans fortunate enough to have lived an actual dream.

“I suffered, I cried and was afraid, but that day did come.

“What was my happiest moment as a player? In all honesty, I couldn’t say. Injuries taught me that every happy moment can be wiped out afterwards, so I got accustomed to thinking the next day would be better than the one I just had.

“My best goal was perhaps the lob I scored for Brescia against Atalanta. Or one I netted against Roma, again for Brescia.

“Carlo Mazzone gave me so much at Brescia. He still believed in me, gave me the chance to have another four years in football, full of meaning. He is a plain-speaking, sincere man in a world often full of liars, opportunists and suck-ups.

“I am still fond of all the teams I played for, although the club I really support is Boca Juniors.”

Baggio was also helped during these dark times by his faith in Buddhism.

“I came from a Catholic family, but in Florence a friend who had been practising for some time invited me along. I was sceptical, but within three days realised that was my path.

“I realised when things go wrong, you tend to always blame others and cast yourself as the victim. I was wrong to think like that. There’s no point justifying why you don’t reach your objectives, your desires. It’s a waste of time. Your destiny is always in your hands.”

http://www.football-italia.net/73161/baggio-i-wanted-die

Legend.

 

[Provenzano]

 

[Provenzano]

 

[J..]

Legend.

 

[satubito]

Buon compleanno leggenda.

 

[Bluenine]

Two Italian super talents creating magic...

 

[forzainter257]

well, seems like the man who used to be the "reason of many people becoming interista" had been quite forgotten by fifers He turned 52 this year I guess? Happy belated birthday to the legend and my favorite player of all time! I miss you Roby, the dream to see you in football again never came true...

 

[forzainter257]

Found this old post at fcinter1908.

Giampaolo e il cane di Baggio: “Mazzone dalla furia…ai biscottini”
Marco Giampaolo ha raccontato a Sky un aneddoto su Mazzone e Roberto Baggio

Carlo Mazzone e gli aneddoti da grande decano del calcio italiano. Oggi, l’ex allenatore della Roma compie 80 anni e Marco Giampaolo ha raccontato un aneddoto sul suo passato con Roberto Baggio: “Una volta, al campo di allenamento, Roberto Baggio si presentò con il cane. Mazzone si infuriò e andava in giro dicendo a tutti ‘ma di chi è questo cane? Portate via questo cane’. Ad un certo punto gli dissero ‘guardi mister, il cane è di Baggio’. E Mazzone replicò prontamente: ‘e allora dategli i biscottini’ “.

Giampaolo and Baggio's dog: "Mazzone from fury ... to biscuits"
Marco Giampaolo told Sky an anecdote about Mazzone and Roberto Baggio

Carlo Mazzone and the stories of a great dean of Italian football. Today, the former Roma coach turns 80 and Marco Giampaolo told an anecdote about his past with Roberto Baggio: "Once, at the training camp, Roberto Baggio showed up with the dog. Mazzone was furious and went around telling everyone 'but who is this dog? Take this dog away. At one point they told him 'look mister, the dog is from Baggio'. And Mazzone promptly replied: 'and then give him the biscuits' “.

 

[Il Drago]

"Agnelli blackmailed Baggio"

Luigino Pellegrini, former legal aid of Roberto Baggio, the legend of Italian football, ex of Fiorentina, Juve, Milan, Bologna, Inter and Brescia, reveals background on the passage of the Divine Codino from Viola to the Old Lady. These are the words reported by fiorentinanews.com:

"Umberto Agnelli said to him:" Do you want to go to the World Cup in Italy '90? And he obviously wants to go there. "Then you must come to Juventus." It was real blackmail because he said at first that he didn't want to go there, although Juventus were offering him twice the salary. Saying no to Juventus at the time meant saying no to the World Cup and for a 21-year-old player. It would have been a hit to his career. I am 100% sure that if Baggio had not been blackmailed, he would not have accepted Juventus. "

 

[brehme1989]

The Cannavaro treatment is actually the Baggio treatment.

 

[Il Drago]

Tanti Auguri Roberto Baggio!

 

[dynasty27]

Btw his docu film "Il Divin Codino" will be streamed on Netflix. Date? "Coming Soon"

 

[brehme1989]

Btw his docu film "Il Divin Codino" will be streamed on Netflix. Date? "Coming Soon"

Yeah for some reason it is undisclosed. It's been announced in October 2019 actually but since this is Italy and there was the pandemic it probably got delayed and I doubt they had done more than 10% of the entire thing by the time it was already announced.

Should be great though.

The Messi before Messi, minus 1.5 knees. Maybe this will give insight to the younger generations who don't know him or those who barely saw him in those Johnnie Walker commercials after that missed 1994 PK.

 

[eduzee]

The Messi before Messi, minus 1.5 knees.

Whats does that mean? Minus 1.5 knees

 

[brehme1989]

Whats does that mean? Minus 1.5 knees

Roberto Baggio before turning 18 had two operations on his knees. He basically had 0.5 a working knee between two legs for the entirety of his career. It happened like the week before Fiorentina signed the contracts. They could have let him stay at Vicenza with no knees but instead paid for his treatment and signed him anyway. His right knee was pretty much gone then. I think he also had an earlier injury with his left knee and he also completely ruined that in his twilight years at Brescia but he managed to keep playing for a few seasons more.

An ACL injury in the 80s meant goodbye football career for 99,99% of cases.

Baggio had 2 disaster ACL injuries on his right knee before he turned 20 and also had suffered a non-major injury on his left knee by then. In his first or second season with Fiorentina he had a far more serious injury on his ACL'd right knee.
The fact that he managed to be able to walk, let alone play professional football in an era where you had to uproot someone's legs to get a yellow card speaks volumes about this guy.

 

[Ethor]

One of my favorite players, when I first started really watching football. Broke my heart when he missed the penalty against Brazil. Great player.

 

[Bluenine]

The fact that he managed to be able to walk, let alone play professional football in an era where you had to uproot someone's legs to get a yellow card speaks volumes about this guy.

True story. It broke my heart when he joined Juventus, he was already my favourite player at that time. I still remember hyping him up to my friends before Italia 90, and the coach kept him on the bench and started Vialli and fuckin Carnevale. And then Baggio started that game against Czechoslovakia... that goal. Baggio playing on top of a midfield of Giannini, Ancelotti, De Napoli and Donadoni. That was magical.

One of my all time favourite sportsmen, and to think his career should have been over before it started. It was destiny. Il Divin Codino. To this day, this pic is my screensaver - when I think of World Cup, this is the first image that comes to my mind:

 

[sdvroot]

"Roberto Baggio was the best Italian fantasista and he was amongst the greatest of all time. Without the injury problems and the difficulties with his knees, he would have been the very best player in history." (Carlo Mazzone about Roberto Baggio)
"When other players run, he stands still. When other players do the predictable, he creates. When other players are stressed, he keeps his cool. He was definitely an excellent footballer, with an aura of melancholy and an extraordinary talent who changed the outcome of the match with a single touch, a brilliant touch" (Jorge Valdano about Roberto Baggio)
"It’s true that in Barcelona I had been lucky enough to play with great players, but I never saw anyone like Roby. Baggio was special in so many ways." (Pep Guardiola about Roberto Baggio)