WORLD CUP ’94 / 24 DAYS and COUNTING : ’90 Shooting Star’s Fame Is Fleeting
The last time World Cup frenzy gripped Italy, ecstatic fans wrote songs about Salvatore Schillaci. This year, they have written him off.
“I’m sleeping, don’t wake me up, let me enjoy the dream,” the square-cut striker sighed four years ago at the crest of a gossamer summer that turned a Sicilian slum kid into a national hero.
“Toto” Schillaci is awake now: The closest the high scorer of Italia ’90 will get to USA ’94 is his television set--with a translator.
If you’ve a yen to see Toto play this summer, try the J-League highlights from Japan and look for a dynamo striker wearing a Jubilo Iwata jersey.
“Everybody remembers Toto’s piercing eyes. They haven’t changed, but the legs have,” said sportswriter Giorgio Tutino, who has covered Italian soccer for 30 years. “He had a boom. He gave us nights of magic but he never flew so high again.”
What nights. What magic. In 1986, Schillaci, who grew up in a Palermo housing development, labored for third-division Messina as an acrobatic, dribbles-too-much attacker. Promoted to first-division Juventus, he scored 15 times in his first season and won a place on the 1990 national team bench.
There he sat for most of Italy’s opening game against Austria. Then, entering a scoreless game in the 78th minute, he headed a deep pass into the net with his first touch.
The rest is history. He scored against Czechoslovakia, Uruguay, Ireland, Argentina and England, leading all Cup attackers, and carried Italy to a third-place finish.
Italy danced to Schillaci’s beat. In choruses of 70,000 they sang: “To-to! To-to!” When wife Rita back in Sicily gave Toto a son, all Italy cheered.
Throughout it all, Schillaci never lost touch with who he was, or how far he had come. The poor boy who’d made good was humble, too.
“My secret? It’s no more than the fact I never feel sure of my place; not with the national team, not with Juventus,” he said at the time. “I don’t feel important. I’m not a star. I’m different this year because I’m playing with the stars.”
Sadly, Toto Schillaci was right.
“The myth ended,” Tutino said. “He returned to being the player he really was.”
Not the fame, or more money then he ever dreamed of, or a sprawling nouveau riche mansion in Sicily bought Schillaci happiness. It wasn’t long before the tabloid press blossomed with “Rita Tells All” stories of a marriage gone bad. It was a nasty divorce. And along the way, for Toto, a procession of injuries--and slumping production. Schillaci last played for Italy in a friendly match against Bulgaria in September, 1991.
When Italy failed in the European Championship tournament the next year, 1990 World Cup coach Azeglio Vicini was fired and Schillaci went, too, one of the players purged in the housecleaning.
In 1992, Schillaci moved from Turin’s Juventus to Internazionale of Milan. Injuries went with him, notes sportswriter Enzo Palladini. In 21 games last year, mostly playing off the bench, he scored six goals. In the 1994 season, he played in only nine games, scoring five times.
Then, this spring, 29-year-old Toto Schillaci became an explorer.
Japanese promoters building a professional league came with a fistful of dollars: $3.1 million to Inter, and $2.5 million for a two-season contract for Schillaci through the end of 1995.
“They give me a house, a car, an interpreter, and a lot of money,” he said. “Let’s be frank. In the end, this is what we play for. I’m certainly not stupid. This can be an important experience for me and I’d be crazy to refuse. It will mean making a sacrifice for a year and a half, and I will hardly see my children. But I have no regrets.”
Exporting a player is role reversal for the Italian first division, long the magnet for foreign stars. Schillaci is the first Italian professional soccer player to go to Japan, but he will not be the last, says Palladini. He offers a powerful drawing card, and skills and experience to an ambitious young league short on both.
Judging from the early returns, Schillaci is enjoying himself more on the field than off. In his first two games, he had an assist and a goal.
“He finds the living difficult, though, having to go everywhere with an interpreter,” Palladini said. “And he can’t get used to the traffic there--driving on the left--so he has to have a driver, too. He’s with his new girlfriend, Prisca Rossi, but it’s a tough transition.”
Although Italy accepts him as a flash-in-the-Cup who will probably never again play on a national team, there remains an enormous reservoir of affection for Toto Schillaci.
He says he plans to come back to it with a voluntary demotion to the second division.
“If I like it, I might stay longer,” Schillaci said as he left for Japan. “But my dream is to finish out my career with my hometown club, Palermo.”
