Brazil Beats Italy for World Cup in Dramatic Penalty-Kick Showdown : Soccer: First tournament in U.S. is also first with championship game that ends in a scoreless tie.
In a dramatic finish to the first World Cup in the United States, two teams with long and proud soccer traditions seemed to give everything they had for 120 minutes in the Rose Bowl on Sunday. Then they were asked to give more to decide which would become the first four-time world champion.
Ultimately, Brazil was rewarded, but the game was so close and the method of determining the winner so fickle that it would have been difficult for the crowd of 94,194 or the worldwide television audience estimated at 2 billion to find fault with Italy as champion.
For the first time since the World Cup originated in 1930, the championship game ended in a scoreless tie as both teams, acknowledging their respect for each other, played cautiously for 90 minutes of regulation time and 30 minutes of overtime.
The tension then was turned up a notch as the weary teams engaged in a penalty-kick showdown, a controversial system of settling tie games that many coaches and players believe is as fair as roulette. Introduced into the World Cup in 1982, this was the first time it had ever been required for the final game.
With the grueling battle reduced to a game of chance, the gods of soccer anointed Brazil. Italy scored on only two of its five shots from the penalty spot 12 yards in front of the goal, eliminating the need for the Brazilians even to take their fifth shot after they had converted three of their first four.
The last man with a chance to keep the Italians alive was forward Roberto Baggio, who had scored five goals in his last three games to enhance his status as the nation’s soccer hero. He did nothing to alter that Sunday, running all afternoon with a strained hamstring that had threatened to keep him on the sideline for the championship game.
But when it came time for him to face Brazilian goalkeeper Claudio Taffarel in the shootout, Baggio was spent. His shot sailed high over the net.
While Brazilian players gathered in the middle of the field to celebrate, Baggio stood on the penalty spot with his head down for several long moments before sagging to one knee.
“Brazil is again No. 1,” said the Brazilians’ coach, Carlos Alberto Parreira, of their fourth championship, their first since Pele led them to titles in 1958, ’62 and ’70.
The Italians, champions in 1934, ’38 and ‘82, did not argue the point, but they knew that it could have just as easily been they who were holding the World Cup trophy at the end.
“It was only luck,” Italian defender Luigi Appolloni said. “Unfortunately, it is more difficult to lose this way.”
No matter how the championship game is judged as a test of strategy, tactics and skill, soccer enthusiasts no doubt will conclude that the one-month, 52-game World Cup--played at nine sites in the United States--was a triumph for the sport.
In a country with little soccer tradition, the total number of spectators was 3,567,415. That is more than a million more than the previous record set four years ago in Italy. The average attendance also was a record, 68,604 as compared to 53,675 in Italy.
The eight games at the Rose Bowl attracted an average crowd of 89,478. Those who attended Sunday, including Vice President Al Gore and George and Barbara Bush, were treated to an American-style pregame ceremony that featured a flyover by Air Force jets, fireworks and six songs by Whitney Houston.
Then they sat back in anticipation of a game that figured to have as many high notes as the one Kenny G hit with his alto sax near the end of the “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
It did not seem too much to ask. The first 51 games had produced considerably more action than there was in 1990 in Italy, a tournament so devoid of excitement that even the sports purists in the international soccer federation, FIFA, recognized that rule changes were necessary.
The changes worked. Through Saturday’s 4-0 victory by Sweden over Bulgaria in the consolation game at the Rose Bowl, 30 more goals had been scored than in Italy. More significantly, the ball was in motion seven minutes more per game.
But neither Italy nor Brazil was completely committed to the attack Sunday. Perhaps it was because the six previous games had taken their toll, or perhaps it was because of the heat on the field at the Rose Bowl, or perhaps it was because both teams were undermanned. While Baggio had the celebrated hamstring injury, another crucial Italian player, defender Franco Baresi, was playing only three weeks after undergoing arthroscopic knee surgery. Brazil lost one of its most versatile players, defender Jorginho, in the 21st minute.
If the game had been scored like a prizefight, the Brazilians would have won on points because they were more aggressive. But even they did not allow their midfielders and central defenders to advance in support of forwards Romario and Bebeto as often as usual in fear of the Italians’ dangerous counterattack.
There, however, was nothing very dangerous about the Italians on Sunday. They mustered only eight shots, two by Baggio. The Brazilians took 22, but no more than four tested Italian goalkeeper Gianluca Pagliuca.
Fifteen minutes from the end of regulation time, a hard shot by midfielder Mauro Silva glanced off Pagliuca’s hands and toward the goal. But the ball bounced harmlessly off the left post, which he gratefully kissed.
When the game was finally over, Parreira admitted, “It was not the most eloquent way to win.”
Bebeto agreed, saying that it was “sad that the game was decided on penalty kicks.”
But, he added, there will be no sad faces in Brazil.
“I hope this lifts the morale of all of Brazil,” he said. “The economics and financial picture there is bad. The lack of jobs and the poor children are a very big problem. I hope this victory will stimulate the government to improve the economic conditions.”
* WORLD CUP COVERAGE: A8, C1, C6-C15, Section W
