Toto Schillaci was the Italia 90 star who won hearts, including mine

The legendary forward left an indelible mark on a generation of football fans, writes Jasper Rees, who details how the Sicilian forward inspired his own journey in journalism during Italy’s iconic run at Italia 90

Schillaci was the breakthrough star of Italia 90 and became an icon of Italian football (AFP/Getty)

I have virtually nothing in common with Salvatore Schillaci, aka Totò, the Sicilian footballer whose death at 59 was announced yesterday, other than that we were both born in the first week of December 1964. If you know your football, you’ll know who he is. He came from nowhere – which in a footballing sense is what Messina was and is – and snuck into the Italian squad at the last minute for the 1990 World Cup, which Italy was hosting.

Something similar happened to me. I was newly infatuated with everything Italian, having spent 1988 living in Florence where I worked up to mid-level functionality as an Italian speaker. Then I came home and started trying to be a freelance journalist. Some time in the autumn of 1989 it occurred to me that maybe, armed with an ability to get by in Italian and a standard addiction to football, I could land a gig at Italia ’90.

Approaching an established newspaper was off the cards, but all young journos knew that the Independent on Sunday was launching soon so I somehow contacted its founding sports editor Richard Williams, who was a very Jupiter in that area of journalism which I aspired to enter – music, culture, sport etc. Richard summoned me to lunch at Joe Allen’s in Covent Garden and did something that struck me in my callowness as lordly and cool: he ordered a dish that wasn’t on the menu (the chopped steak, if you please).

Then he asked me if I could interview Gianni Agnelli in Italian, should the occasion arise. Yes, I lied, knowing that it certainly wouldn’t. I had to write him a trial report. This is so long ago that I can’t remember if I actually went to Wembley to see a friendly between England and Italy, or just watched on the telly. Surely the former.

But I duly became one of several young poshies recruited by Richard to be weekly reporters, in support of proper press box grandees Norman Fox, recruited from The Times, and John Moynihan, author of a classic 1960s book The Soccer Syndrome. Few of us were to stick with football writing. Alex Spillius became a foreign correspondent. By the end of the decade Matthew Sturgis had published his first biography.

The World Cup came round and off I went, third string to Norman and John, with a new light-coloured suit that would now look ridiculously wide and flappy but was very sharply on trend 34 years ago. In Palermo, where I was stationed to keep an eye on Jack Charlton’s Republic of Ireland, it was far too hot to wear the jacket anyway. And then one day in transit my bottle of Plax mouthwash leaked iridescently onto the trousers, so that was that for the suit.

Anyway, to Totò. The great thing about being a Sunday reporter back then is you were allowed to fly all over Italy to watch games but didn’t have to write much. This worked well for me as it turns out that at 25 I wasn’t very adept at writing thoughtfully and analytically about football. For this reason I can’t bear to go back to my cuttings to see what I did file back then. Apologies as ever to Simon O'Hagan, by now the sports editor who had to make do with the jejune crap I was cobbling together on my office-issued Tandy.

Salvatore Schillaci in action against Republic of Ireland’s Ray Houghton during Italia 90 (Getty Images)

What I do remember is that I was asked to write about Schillaci because he was an instant sensation. Totò wasn’t meant to play much, but the superstar Vialli, who was known in Italy as L'Insostituibile – The Irreplaceable – couldn’t hit a cow’s arse with a banjo up front for the Azzurri, but every time Totò came on he got the winner and he’d set off on a wild celebratory run, barging around the Stadio Olimpico pitch like a bull in Pamplona. His eyes popped, his arms waved, and the whole world fell instantly in love. Italy has never, before or since, been a land of natural goalscorers. They don't grow on trees like tenors or blood oranges. But here was a forward who collected goals for fun and, for one brief glorious tournament against the best opposition, he did so with astonishing ease and liberality.

By the third group game Vialli was out, Schillaci was in the starting line-up and he formed a mobile partnership with Roberto Baggio. This other young titch was a gilded prodigy whom I’d watched weaving spells for Fiorentina. I don’t remember how many of Italy's six World Cup games I saw in the flesh, but it was probably two, possibly three. One of them, Totò’s first start, was the last group game against Czechoslovakia, in which Baggio got the ball on the halfway line and dribbled his way forwards as if working out how to exit a maze and scored a wondergoal. He was destined to become a footballing god, but back then all Italy was more obsessed with Totò.

Schillaci wasn’t perfect. I remember in one game he was caught ceaselessly offside. This time his eyes would pop in exasperation, and he’d do that gesture at the ref, compressing a thumb and two fingers that Italians, especially southern ones, use to semaphore frustration and disbelief. It made me wonder if those crafty Argentines had worked out that the raw enthusiasm of this Sicilian colt could be weaponised against him.

Schillaci against Argentina in the 1990 World Cup (AP)

There’s plenty more I could say about that World Cup. Being there for the first game in Milan when Cameroon wonderfully overcame Argentina. Going to Cagliari to watch Bobby Robson’s initially lumpen England draw with the gifted but squabbling Dutch. Seeing Ireland beat Gheorghe Hagi and ten other Romanians on pens in the thick heat of Genoa. Watching Frank Rijkaard aim gob at Rudi Völler’s greying perm as the pair of them, who clearly loathed each other, were ordered off the pitch in Milan. Jumping up in the Bologna press box when David Platt scored that swivelling last-second volley to beat Belgium while all other reporters remained professionally seated. Seeing Diego Maradona and Dragan Stojkovic, the two generalissimi, fluff their pens in a Florence so stifling my fingers all but stuck to the keyboard. Later heading to Bari to see the third-place play-off. At 40, this was Pete Shilton’s 125th and last game for England. The very last goal he conceded as an international keeper was a penalty in the 86th minute. The winner. It was scored by Schillaci, whose international career despite having barely started was also nearing its end. He had one more year and got one more goal to add to the six that earned him Italia '90's Golden Boot.

I left Italy with a Totò Schillaci T-shirt which I kept for years until eventually his face started to fade and the cotton to fray. We both had just the one World Cup. The next was in the USA, where Baggio, the divine ponytail, missed the penalty that lost the shootout in the final with Brazil. By then the paper had better and less dilettante reporters, ones who wouldn't get trapped in Roman traffic returning from the beach and turn up ten minutes late for the final.

In mitigation, I wasn't working, just watching, though that didn’t stop the gentle chief football correspondent Norman Fox from giving me a proper dressing down. I carried on writing about football for roughly as long as Totò carried on playing it until I decided to get back my Saturdays and concentrate on culture.

Totò won hearts, including mine. In both senses, he was a true shooting star. He’d have been 60 on 1 December, six days before me.