Italy 1982 - Una Storia Azzurra is a beautiful journey through memory
It has been exactly 40 years since Nando Martellini told us three times that we were world champions. The enterprise of Enzo Bearzot and his boys relives in this beautiful documentary by Coralla Ciccolin, produced by Stand By Me and Vision Distribution, in collaboration with Sky.
In the hall on 11, 12 and 13 July, after having been previewed at the Taormina Festival, it is not just a football story, because after all that world cup is not and will never be just a sporting event .
The national team of a disaster country Talking about the victory of the Italian national football team at the 1982 World Cup has always meant dealing with a sort of monument, even better with a watershed moment in Italian history, which it can hold up very well with dates that we usually find in history books in far more dramatic or "serious" contexts.
It can be safely argued that after all that hot summer evening, that tournament won against all logic and predictions, does not have much to envy to the dates of the Risorgimento, the First World War or the 25th April. Because basically Italy and especially the Italians were created even in those moments, looking at that ball on the screen.
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If this combination seems excessive, or even blasphemous, then perhaps you should ask yourself why for 40 years the protagonists of that blue expedition have always been illuminated by a mythical light, by something atavistic, almost more compliant to what were the winners of the ancient Olympics in Greece than to modern sporting idols.
This is because that victory, the way it took place, the emotion it gave to the Italians, took place in a very historical moment particular, which Italia 1982 - Una Storia Azzurra has the great merit of underlining and bringing to mind.
Italy had just emerged from the heart of the 1970s, and it was a violent heart, which had its peak with the kidnapping and then the assassination of Aldo Moro.
But even in that 1982, our country was going through a moment that was nothing short of dramatic, not only and not so much because of the economic crisis, but because of a deeper moral crisis, the lack of reference points that for decades had governed the country also ideologically.
The suffering was due to corruption and bad politics, with the persistence of the strategy of tension, the mafia wars, the drugs that flooded the streets, the dead of Ustica and Irpinia.
From the "march of the forty thousand" to the assassination of Piersanti Mattarella, from terrorism of every color to that Betting Scandal that even involved Pablito, Italy found pride and unity thanks to those guys. This is because he saw himself in that parable of resurrection that interested a collective, which after three games seemed destined for an inglorious shipwreck.
Among familiar faces and unpublished materials Italy 1982 - A Blue Story takes us back to those unpredictable and unpredictable days. immortal, he does so thanks to the interviews that involved veterans of that company such as Zoff, Tardelli, Gentile, Cabrini, Bergomi, Antognoni, Conti, Dossena, Selvaggi and also Cinzia Bearzot, the daughter of the “Vecio”.
But besides them there is also a lot of unpublished material by Giuseppe Mantovani, Cesare Galimberti and even Daniele Massaro. It is a small treasure that we had never seen, admiring which you really have the feeling of being back at the time when Battiato and his Cuccurucucù reigned in the blue dressing room. That locker room that has become the strongest symbol of cohesion that our sport has ever had.
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Veterans of that undertaking recall the past years with boots and shorts, what it meant for them to wear the blue shirt, but above all the difficulty of that situation, not unprecedented because actually even before the brilliant Argentina '78 World Cup, “Mamma che mal di Pampa” dominated the front pages of our newspapers. Objectively, it is in some ways difficult to understand even today the reason for this hatred and almost hatred towards Bearzot, net of choices that certainly even today can be seen as divisive and reckless. Above all, recall him, Paolo Rossi, back at the time from the long disqualification game due to the betting scandal, and preferred to Pruzzo who seemed to everyone to be the ideal ram for the blue eleven.
Yet, precisely those ferocious criticisms, bordering on defamation, which pushed the blue collective in Spain to an unprecedented press blackout, were perhaps the key moment, created the climate of great business alone against all. Something that materialized for the first time against the reigning champions of Argentina, led by a young but already feared Diego Armando Maradona. Then came the turn of the invincible Carioca army, that of Zico, Socrates, Falcao, Cerezo, Junior, bent against all logic. Perhaps the first moment in which it was understood that that collective would reach the end, until that evening of 11 July against Germany, folded in a 3 to 1 in front of the beloved Sandro Pertini. Something that has passed from mouth to mouth, from generation to generation almost like a Homeric tale or a chivalrous poem.
Being able to understand the importance of Mundial Italia 1982 - Una Storia Azzurra is certainly not the first documentary that honors that magnificent ride, but it is certainly one of the most intimate, it is dynamic, surprising, exciting, also thanks to the contribution of an expert in the field such as Beppe Tufarulo.
It is also so because for better or worse it does not simply talk to us about football, but also shifts its gaze to those kids and their lives, humanizes them by removing the patina of epic and rhetoric, to make us participate in the their fears and the awareness of what was being created.
The result is a whirlwind of memories and also of smiles, it is being able to understand why we will always feel truly inside that scream by Marco Tardelli , Even though we weren't even born yet. It is no coincidence that even today his is perhaps the most famous celebration in the history of football.
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View the gallery Everyone he had something personal about those players, different to bring into that world, and Enzo Bearzot's mastery was to make him understand that only together could each of them achieve their own individual dream. They did it after three horrendous games, settling for better or worse even the sporting myth for which Italy reveals unexpected qualities only when it is in the worst possible situation, one step away from the abyss often arriving at an unexpected and surprising victory. If we think about it, we understand that this axiom was repeated for Lippi's boys in 2006, as well as for Mancini's gang last year. But then the thought can only run to Usa 94, when Sacchi said that “the more we are afraid the more we will go on”, as well as to the beautiful national teams of Zoff and Prandelli.
A Winston Churchil has been credited with the phrase that "Italians lose football matches as if they were wars and lose wars as if they were football matches". But the truth is that, for better or worse, that 1982 World Cup a small war was a real one, that of the Italians against themselves, or rather against what divided them, from north and south, left and right, between poor and rich.
And this is the reason why even today, every time the national team takes the field, we find ourselves hoping for another scream like Marco's, because for better or for worse it is in football that perhaps we really feel like belong to something greater than us. Unfortunately or fortunately.
