Italy mourns a World Cup legend

As football icons go, Paolo Rossi always came across as an approachable guy. Rossi, who died in early December at the age of 64 after a losing battle with lung cancer, was a living legend, a national hero, one of the most celebrated of Italians, but he dealt with all that very lightly.

I moved to Italy in the winter of 1985, three years after his moment of crowning glory in the summer of 1982, when his six goals power-blasted Italy to an unexpected World Cup win in Spain. Even at the distance of three years, the echoes of that triumph were palpable, be it through TV ads featuring the heroes of1982 or through well founded sports media concern that there would be no repeat show at the following year’s 1986 World Cup in Mexico.

A four-year-old child could have worked out that many Italians still felt