WORLD CUP USA ’94 / QUARTERFINALS : For Italy, It’s in the Baggio : Star Forward Saved the Day Against Nigeria, and Tournament Might Not Be the Same Again

Clemens Westerhof, the affable Dutchman who coaches Nigeria’s national soccer team, will catch the rest of the World Cup in Florida on vacation with his family.

The proximate cause of Westerhof’s overnight transformation from coach to tourist was plain when he left Foxboro Stadium the other day.

“We allowed Baggio free for five meters, and that was the problem,” Westerhof said.

Yes indeed. After a lackluster three, almost four, World Cup games in which he seemed more burden than burner, Italy’s Roberto Baggio suddenly ignited at Foxboro. He zapped a bold, ambitious, but fatally inexperienced Nigeria with an 89th-minute equalizer, and added a penalty shot in overtime.

The goals ended a prolonged national team drought by the slender Juventus striker who was Europe’s 1993 player of the year. Baggio had played more than 800 punchless minutes for Italy since scoring against Estonia last Sept. 22.

By virtue of two narrow victories in which it scored three goals with only 10 players on the field, a skilled but can’t-finish Italian team has staggered into the quarterfinals. If, at this belated juncture, Baggio is truly back, the Cup tide could flow Azzurri blue. Saturday’s game against Spain in Foxboro should tell.

“Baggio is like (Brazilian forward) Romario,” said Raffaele Ranucci of the Italian Soccer Federation. “He might even sleep for the whole game, when suddenly he finds a happy spark which lights up the whole team. You’ll see, now that he’s unblocked. He can carry us toward a goal which, until the equalizer against Nigeria, seemed closed forever.”

As all of Italy’s 57 million soccer

experts know, Coach Arrigo Sacchi built the Italian team around the introspective,

pony-tailed convert to Buddhism whom everybody calls “Roby.” Il Manifesto, which speaks for the extreme political left in Italy, hailed victory over Nigeria with a wry banner headline: “Forza Buddha!”

“No doubt he’s our best man, who can solve every match,” Sacchi said in Italy as he assembled Baggio and a supporting cast of 21 after having tried more than 70 high-caliber aspirants.

What is manifest after four inglorious Cup matches is that when Baggio slumbers, Italy struggles. There have been flashes from Daniele Massaro, but little to cheer about from fellow strikers Pierluigi Casiraghi and Giuseppe Signori. Like the rest of the team, they seem contaminated by Baggio’s dour play.

“Now that I have scored I feel much better,” said Baggio, who, at 27, has many notches on his shoes. He has scored 109 times in 219 Italian League games with Fiorentina and Juventus and now has 21 goals for the national team. Riots broke out in Florence in 1990 when Fiorentina sold the 5-foot-6, 155-pound Baggio to Juventus for a record $26 million.

From the outset, this was supposed to be Baggio’s Cup. But--like the Italy he rescued--he showed little until last-minute heroics against Nigeria that must rank among the most dramatic moments of World Cup ’94.

A reporter asked Baggio if Italy, down 1-0 against Nigeria with time ebbing, was mentally already on the plane going home.

“Let’s say that I was on the runway and that I pulled them off,” he replied softly.

Seeking stronger defense and to rest his star’s aching Achilles’ tendon, Sacchi pulled Baggio out of the game against Norway when Italy’s goalie was ejected and the team was forced to play a man short.

Baggio said later he understood why he had been taken out, but he left the field in fury apparent to all.

“That wouldn’t have happened to Maradona,” he told Italian reporters later.

Italy lurched to its sole goal against Norway with Baggio on the bench. Commentators said Sacchi had been right to pull him, that he was physically and mentally exhausted from the rigors of Italian League and postseason play. It might be better to bench him once and for all, some analysts suggested.

There was worse to come. Another poor showing in a dispiriting tie with Mexico left Italy a by-the-fingernails third-place qualifier in a group it had been favored to win.

Fiat’s Gianni Agnelli, owner of Juventus, was quoted by Italian newspapers as saying that when Baggio came off the field after the Mexico game, “He looked like a wet rabbit.”

“Mexico was great suffering,” Baggio said later. “I’ve never been able to express what I have inside me, and it’s terrible,”

Against Nigeria, Baggio seemed disoriented. His passes went awry. Combinations never developed. Zealous, run-all-day defenders stripped him of the ball. Baggio was limping, running as little as possible.

In the press box, reporters for the Rome newspaper Il Tempo, grading players on a nominal scale of 10, had given Baggio a humiliating 4.5 and were ready to go home. Then lightning struck.

“Sacchi had the courage to leave him in the game and he was repaid,” said Il Tempo. Baggio’s final, rewritten grade: a not-bad 6.5.

Said Antonio Matarrese, president of the Italian Soccer Federation: “We finally found Roberto Baggio when we wanted him. He is a force who will come forward as we advance.”

After the goal, a fresh, loose Baggio blossomed. He forced the penalty in overtime with a pinpoint pass, and he took the the penalty shot with the calm of a master tailor taking a stitch.

“Despite cramps, I was quite calm and sure of my shot,” Baggio said.

He might have been the only one, as it bounced in off the post.

Nigerian goalie Peter Rufai didn’t try to outguess the shooter.

“I respect Baggio a lot,” Rufai said. “You don’t give him any kind of chance. I waited until he made his move. He’s a very crafty guy.”

And a very different kind of hero--shy, thoughtful, more whisperer than shouter. He was more consumed by the arrival in the United States of his wife, his 4-year-old daughter and his mother than he was by the disparagement heaped on him and his team by Italian nonbelievers.

“Life is more important than any game,” Baggio said before the Nigeria game. “I want to win and advance in the Cup. But I haven’t lost the dimension of what is around me.”

Afterward, he dedicated his goals to Juventus teammate Andrea Fortunato, a 22-year-old defender who has leukemia.

Baggio heads into Saturday’s game with newfound confidence that could spell finis for Spain.

“Despite all the problems, we are still going ahead,” he said. “We are beginning to believe that we can do well.”