Italy in Ecstasy After Agonizing Game : Reaction: Nationwide celebration heralds semifinal victory over Bulgaria; three die in related incidents.
Roars resounded throughout Rome on Wednesday night, breaking the otherwise uncanny silence that prevailed while most Romans stayed glued to their television sets watching the national soccer team work its way to the World Cup final.
The punctuating sound came after Roberto Baggio’s two goals in the first half and after the final whistle, which ended the national agony of watching an exhausted team defend its one-goal lead.
Only seconds later, Rome’s streets were awash with the customary cheering crowds, honking horns, trumpets, streamers and banners. The scene was repeated in the streets of every city throughout the country.
This time, joy-riding and cheering fans inadvertently caused three deaths. One exuberant Roman fell off a moped into the path of an oncoming car; in the fireworks-happy southern city of Bari, a group preparing a homemade celebration inadvertently set off an explosion of their cache and one person was killed; and in a small town near Rome, a girl was fatally struck by the car of a soccer fan speeding home to watch the game.
After each step that Italy has taken toward the final, the jubilation has been more intense. Baggio’s tears of exhaustion or pain or joy were seen and shared by fans and sports editors all over the country.
He was proclaimed the hero in all of the headlines and news reports Thursday. “Baggio tears of joy and sorrow” was the headline over the sports page in the Milan daily, Corriere della Sera.
“I have already said that my Karma was suffering. But you can change your Karma,” the player, a Buddhist, was quoted as saying. “I don’t think, however, that this was my best game. . . . I especially want to play a better one: the final.”
Italy’s most-read sporting daily, the Milanese La Gazzetta dello Sport, carried a front-page editorial by Candido Cannavo, summing up the trials and tribulations of the national team.
”. . . Drunk with all the joys, criticisms, contradictions and paradoxes, Italy drops anchor in the paradise of the World Cup final. And moors triumphantly. This time, what is by now unavoidable suffering is mixed with an irresistible wave of bravura. We are still wide-eyed and breathless. Our national team offered us half an hour of sublime soccer . . . comparable only to Brazil at the early second half of their game with Holland.”
Baggio’s two goals, wrote Cannavo, should be framed in diamonds.
“Baggio explodes, Azzurri in the finals” exults the front-page headline of the Turin daily La Stampa, calling his achievement “two fairy-tale goals.”
