The Party Has Already Started in Italy : Scene: Sophia Loren and Pele turn out to help host nation set a dazzling stage for the World Cup draw.
The 1990 World Cup drew one Roman Circus closer Saturday. It was a high-tech show, with rock music and an aria replacing gladiators for a live television audience in 80 countries, but in the end it was a young American soccer team that got fed to the lions.
The Americans, the last to qualify, were the first to be assigned in the glitzy draw here to divide 24 national teams into six groups for play in the event beginning June 8.
In its first Cup appearance in four decades, the United States will play Czechoslovakia, Italy, and Austria. Thud. Crunch. Bang.
The good news is that the Americans are assigned to historic, high-tone Florence, a Renaissance jewel that, bad news, is no stranger to elegant assassination.
Sophia Loren did the damage in a knee-length dress of sinuous red to start a blind draw of the 18 unseeded teams. The first ball she picked said “U.S.A.” The Americans became team No. 3 in pressure cooker Group A headed by Rome-based Italy.
The United States opens against Czechoslovakia in Florence on June 10, plays Italy in Rome on June 14, and returns to Florence against Austria on June 19. Arrivederci. The Americans have about as much chance of reaching the tournament’s 16-team second round as the fire marshal had against Nero.
Italy is the Cup favorite. Czechoslovakia and Austria are clockwork teams of vast international experience that is bound to weigh on an American team whose average age is 23. Czech, Italian and Austrian television interviewers who clustered around American officials after the draw were respectful--but, boy, were they in a good mood.
U.S. soccer officials had dreamed of being based in the northern city of Verona in a low-key division headed by seeded Belgium. Their worst fears were to find themselves as the also-ran in a division behind one of the six seeds, and dangerous draw teams.
Sophia’s choice was not that cataclysmic Saturday, and, in its aftermath American Coach Bob Gansler strode manfully into the arena.
“Italy is favored and the Czechs and the Austrians are very capable. They have a big edge in experience, but their style of soccer is no stranger to us,” Gansler said. “At this level there are no poor teams, only good teams and better ones. We’re delighted to be here. This is a fantastic experience for us: the excitement, the tension, the level of competition. We need the challenge, we need the experience.”
To have realistic hopes of surviving the first round, the Americans will need at least three points from three games: a tall task in such rarefied climes.
The United States will automatically qualify for the 1994 Cup as the host country, but Keith Walker, secretary general of the United States Soccer Federation, insists that Italia ’90 will be more than a walk-through for the American team. “We will come not simply to appear, but to compete,” he promised. “This is an important step in our player development and in exposure for soccer at a high level in the U.S.”
In Italy, where nearly everybody is Catholic but everybody is a soccer fan, the exposure for the World Cup is total. There are 700,000 requests for the 79,571 seats at the July 8 final in Rome’s Olympic Stadium.
Arrival of the actual World Cup from Buenos Aires last weekend, 12 pounds of gold, was stage-managed with drama equaled only by the performance at Saturday’s draw of the aria “Nessun Dorma” from Puccini’s opera “Turandot” by tenor Luciano Pavarrotti. The aria ends with a triumphant “I shall win!”
For the Cup arrival, Italy mobilized legions of police and phalanxes of motorcycles to escort an armored van sweeping in from the airport along an expressway lined with the flags of competing nations.
With cameras whirring, the Cup was locked safely in vaults of the Bank of Italy, where 60 million Italians believe, it will remain for another four years.
In the month-long round of play--48 matches--the tournament, but not the Cup, will visit 12 Italian cities from Udine near the Yugoslav border, to Palermo, in Sicily. Seeded England’s soccer hooligans will be banished to Sardinia for the first round, and so will their drinking mates from Holland and Ireland, thanks to a draw Saturday that pleased security-minded organizers.
After the June 8 Cup opener in Milan against Cameroon, defending champion Argentina will play in Naples, where its star Diego Maradona plays his professional soccer. Second favorite West Germany will base in Milan, and mighty Brazil in Turin.
In all, Italy will spend around $5 billion in infrastructural improvements for the games, including overhaul or new construction at stadia in all 12 host cities. Rome, where construction has further snarled already legendary traffic, will get not only roads, but also a new rail link from Leonardo da Vinci Airport that will be the point of arrival for most Cup visitors.
Around the country, construction has thus far been plagued with delays and hurry-up demands that have cost 12 lives and brought fresh protest from labor unions Saturday at the draw in a south side arena.
Italy had been hoping to find the Americans in its division. For one thing, as Italian sportswriters were quick to note, it improves Italy’s chances of winning Group A and thereby advancing into the second round at home in Rome.
The American presence in Rome and Florence, an easy two hours’ drive to the north, is also expected to boost tourism for a tournament that expects to turn a profit of around $100 million. Last year, more than 1.5 million American tourists came to Italy.
In advance of the Cup, Italians already know--even if Americans don’t--that it was an American of Italian ancestry, UCLA’s Paul Caligiuri, whose miracle goal against Trinidad-Tobago put the United States into the Cup finals.
When the young Americans trot onto the field at Olympic Stadium against Italy, they can expect no mercy, but against Czechoslovakia and Austria in Florence, they will be playing before friends.
WORLD CUP DRAW Saturday’s draw for the 1990 World Cup soccer finals in Italy.
GROUP A (Rome, Florence)
Italy, Austria, United States, Czechoslovakia
GROUP B (Naples, Bari)
Argentina, Cameroon, Soviet Union, Romania
GROUP C (Turin, Genoa)
Brazil, Sweden, Costa Rica, Scotland.
GROUP D (Milan, Bologna)
West Germany, Yugoslavia, United Arab Emirates, Colombia
GROUP E (Verona, Udine)
Belgium, South Korea, Uruguay, Spain
GROUP F (Cagliari, Palermo)
England, Ireland, Netherlands, Egypt
