Unknowns Come Off Bench to Star Roles

A lot of the fun in major sports tournaments, such as Wimbledon or the NCAA basketball March Madness, is the paradoxical rise of unknowns and fall of giants. The same goes for soccer’s monthlong World Cup, now passing from the busy opening two rounds to this weekend’s quarterfinals.

The goal-scoring leader of the 1986 World Cup, with six, England’s striker Gary Lineker has only one goal in four games this time. And Argentina’s Diego Maradona, who took the ’86 tournament for his own, has not scored at all and, until his fourth game, had not even taken a shot. Although he has saved his team with two game-turning plays, he clearly is not the old Maradona.

Instead, what was logically expected here of Maradona and Lineker and the other marquee players--the Netherlands’ pair of Ruud Gullit and Marco Van Basten--instead has come from Cameroon’s Roger Milla, Italy’s Salvatore Schillaci and Czechoslovakia’s Tomas Skuhravy. Unlikely heroes, to say the least.

Milla, 38, came into the tournament as the oldest field player. (Only English goalkeeper Peter Shilton, at 40, is older.) Having already retired once, Milla was referred to, sarcastically, as being “not quite a hundred years old” by the French sports daily L’Equipe. He has played only in reserve, coming off the bench in each of his team’s four games. Yet he has scored four times and become one of the World Cup’s most lovable characters. In the Cameroon capital of Yaounde, there are plans to build a monument to Milla.

Schillaci, by coming off the bench to win Italy’s first game, and by scoring twice more after the host team moved him into the starting lineup, has prompted the headline: “Toto”--his nickname--”We Want to Hug You!” Also a bench-warmer when the World Cup opened, and a longtime minor-leaguer to boot, Schillaci’s discovery, just when Italy needed to score goals, already has raised him to legendary status.

Skuhravy, meanwhile, has almost quietly become the tournament’s leading scorer, thanks to playing twice against teams from one of the world’s weakest zones--the North-Central America-Caribbean region. With two goals against the United States and three against Costa Rica, the previously unknown Skuhravy has five goals, and a job offer to play professionally in Italy next year.

A star is born; it happens every time.