The Dance of Our Time

What struck you first about Italia ’90 was the carnival atmosphere. How would I have appeased my fun-seeking conscience if I had missed out on this? Jeez!

Here, humanity bestirred itself like an animal and hit the road of history, leaving unprintable droves of footprints as its reckoning. The World Cup gave Italy this fun mood, this bubble that was so charged. Perhaps too electric to be said of Italy. Antiquity’s Italy, hitherto only reputed for relics of history.

You were reminded of a typical Paris Circus carnival where clowns and ministers taunt decency and move out in brightly assorted styles like riding on a rhino, a giraffe or an elephant. The fever caught up with everyone, young and old, who all became youth for Italia’90’s sake.

The organising committee and FIFA achieved their aim of getting the fans seated during the matches. Except in Cagliari and Palermo, where you could hardly find all spectators seated, all was relatively peaceful. The best you could expect of such a setting with a high concentration of English vandals was neither symphony nor cacophony. A mélange of both. Cacophonous Symphony.

Teenagers had the fun of driving around in excitement because they were prepared to watch world-class football. It was not as if they had not seen the likes of Diego Maradona, Caniggia, the Dutch trio of Gullit, Rijkaard and Van Basten, et cetera, who play in the Italian League. Their biggest delight was that the world was staging a Peace War in Italy, and like me, no one wanted to miss out.

The stadia were perfect in the modern sense of the word because they had various inlets and exits, which made it possible for fans’ traffic. Perhaps it might just take U.S.A.’94 to surpass the spellbinding Italia ’90 facilities.

All the venues had a press centre each complete with communication gadgets, fantastic enough to aid your message across in any form. Wire. Wireless. Fax. Telex. Etcetera. It was a display of daring electronic whiz with anchormen and ballpen journalists beefing against magic moments home to receptive millions waiting at the other end for the relay.

Of course, the journalists were spoon-fed by the development of automation, which brought each covering journalist seated behind a television screen in their individual cubicles, complete with team data recall on the key boards. This new technology is marvellous.

The teams had special treatment as far as transportation was concerned. From the hotels to their training pitches and to match venues, players had nothing to complain about.

Talking about individual players, those expected to seize the tempo could not. It was like substitute players considered only fit to be played after 30 minutes of benching seized the lead. Roger Milla came in as a substitute to send Romania and Colombia packing. The star-studded Argentine team gave Coach Bilardo the problem of choice. The same accounts for why Vialli took the bench the moment Italy’s coach, Vicini, saw the magic of Schillaci.

Maradona’s victory touch was mostly felt in Argentina’s victory ride over mighty Brazil. And no thanks to Mexican referee Codesal Mendez, the way the Argentines played to frustrate the Germans. It was only a mischievous dive by Voeller that could steal away the cup for West Germany.

At Italia ‘90, the stars did not make the difference, but rather, the tide made the stars different. Either way, you could savour the excitement still.

I call this fun-Italiano because it is the dance of our time. A celebration of youth.