WORLD CUP USA ‘94: QUARTERFINALS : Baggio Makes a Last-Minute Decision Again : Italy: Star forward comes through with a late goal for the second game in a row. Spain is the victim this time, 2-1.

The bedsheet flapped wildly through the afternoon mist, its black lettering framed by hundreds of bouncing bodies and answered prayers.

“Vola Roby Baggio, Vola.”

In Italian, vola means fly.

In the dialect of the 1994 World Cup, Baggio means little miracle.

For a second consecutive game, Roberto Baggio awoke in the final minutes to carry exhausted, cramped Italy to a better place Saturday.

His game-winning goal, in the 88th minute, gave the Italians a 2-1 victory over Spain in the World Cup quarterfinals before 54,605 at Foxboro Stadium.

After juking the goalkeeper, Baggio’s perfect strike from six yards at a near impossible angle eluded a sliding defender and sent the diminutive, ponytailed hero into a somersault.

And the crowd into a bleacher-rattling uproar.

And Spain into the ground.

“A tragedy,” forward Julio Salinas said.

“I cannot describe it to you,” goalkeeper Andoni Zubizarreta said softly. “It is just something you have to live through.”

The Italians somehow found the words.

“Everybody was criticizing us, everybody wanted us to bench Roberto Baggio, everybody was saying things about (Coach Arrigo) Sacchi,” said Antonio Matarrese, president of the Italian Soccer Federation. “But we are now at the peak of world soccer. . . . so there! “

After winning only one of their three first-round games, the Italians are only one game from the final.

They will compete in the semifinals Wednesday at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., against the winner of today’s game between defending champion Germany and Bulgaria.

If the opponent is Germany, the battle will be enormous and historic, matching teams with two of the top three all-time World Cup records.

Which is fine with the Italians. They say they want the Germans to be tough. They want the temperature to be 90 degrees and their own hamstrings to ache.

And they say they want to be either tied or trailing going into the final minutes . . . because that is all they have known.

Their only first-round victory, over Norway, came on a goal by Dino Baggio (no relation to Roberto) in the 69th minute with his team playing one man short.

In the second round last week, Roberto Baggio, voted best player in the world in 1993, scored in the final minute of regulation and again in overtime to give them a victory over Nigeria.

And now this , this victory engineered by two of the few remaining Italians who in those final dehydrating moments could still walk normally.

“We started out this tournament suffering,” said Giuseppe Signori, who set up Roberto Baggio’s goal. “I think we will suffer until the very end. I guess we just like it that way.”

The Spaniards, who have won only six of 23 meetings (there have been eight ties) between these old rivals, feel they have suffered enough.

This is the second time in three months that something like this has happened to them. The professional team from Barcelona, featuring nine of these players, was whipped by AC Milan in the European Champions Cup game in May.

By now, they say bitterly, it should be obvious the Italians are more blessed than good.

Perhaps they were trying to tell them that in the final moments of this defeat, when an elbow by Italy’s Mauro Tassotti caught Luis Enrique in the face and broke his nose.

Enrique and Italian defender Alessandro Costacurta began shoving each other. Then Fernando Hierro jumped into Costacurta’s face and began shouting and pointing.

Soon it was Jorge Otero’s turn to bump Costacurta and scream.

After 60 years of grudge matches, the sniping continues.

“We lost, but not because of the way we played,” Salinas said. “We lost because of bad luck. We dominate Italy in the second half, we control the game. But they get the one play.”

And the Spaniards blew their one play, five minutes before the game-winning goal, when Salinas found himself one on one with Italian goalkeeper Gianluca Pagliuca five yards from the goal.

Salinas hesitated for an instant, undecided whether to go left or right. It was all the time Pagliuca needed.

The goalkeeper charged, forcing Salinas to punch it straight and off Pagliuca’s foot, the ball and Spain’s chances bouncing harmlessly away.

“I will live with that for the rest of my life,” Salinas said.

Just as he and his teammates must live with what happened late in a game that they were dominating.

After being outplayed in the first half, falling behind, 1-0, on a 27-yard bullet shot by Dino Baggio in the 26th minute, the Spaniards toughened and tied the score in the 59th minute on a 17-yard shot from Jose Luis Caminero.

Italy, which had three fewer days’ rest before this game, suddenly looked haggard.

The Spaniards, who took only four shots in the first half, only two from inside the penalty area, suddenly had three good shots in a span of three minutes.

“In the second half we had command,” Spanish Coach Javier Clemente said. “The Italians only had one opportunity.”

But look what they did with it. Catching Spain with seven men on the attack--Clemente is one coach who was not playing for penalty kicks--Dino Baggio lofted a beautiful pass across midfield.

Signori, who started the game on the bench, picked the ball out of the air with his feet and turned that pass into another beautiful pass just before being tackled.

That was the pass that Roberto Baggio found. The Spaniards claimed he was offside. But they also admitted he is awfully quick.

Running from defender Abelardo Fernandez, Baggio found himself on the right side with only the goalkeeper in his way.

Waiting until Zubizarreta had come out to challenge, he swiftly dribbled past him, jumping over the goalkeeper’s left leg and racing for the corner of the goal.

Just before Fernandez could cover the net, Baggio shot, and Italians will spend the next four years talking about it.

“The goalkeeper made the right choice to come out,” Baggio said. “I had to wait to find the right spot.”

He found that spot, but it wasn’t on a soccer field: It was in hundreds of thousands of Italian hearts. Two more games like this, and he will be there for good.