ROBERTO BAGGIO:
Soccer Player Extraordinaire!

Roberto Baggio was born in Caldogno (VI) on the 18th of February, 1967. He started his career as a professional player with the team of Vicenza in C1 series when he was only 16. After only 2 championships he was sold to the Fiorentina team of Florence, and he began one year later because he had to recover from his first tragic knee injury (in his career he had 6 knee operations). As he began to play in the A series, people immediately understood that they were in front of a never-seen-before soccer player. After two years in Florence he was sold to one of the greatest Italian soccer teams, Juventus. When people of Florence found out that Baggio was going to leave their city to Turin, they got crazy and there were lots of riots.

Baggio spent five amazing seasons in Turin, and in 1993 he reached the highest award a soccer player could ever dream of, the golden ball. Suddenly, Roby turned into a soccer-pope; he became one of the most loved players in the world because of his sincerity and his unique style. People went to the stadium just to see Roby playing. He became sort of a Michael Jordan of soccer.

In 1995 Baggio was sold to A.C. Milan because Juventus hired a coach that wasn’t going to let Roby play because of envy. In A.C. Milan, he had some problems with the coach he met, Fabio Capello. All comes from the affection and love the people hasve always given to him. People always wanted to see Baggio in the team, and this let grow envy in several coaches and players.

The year afterwards, Baggio decided to go away from Milan because in that year there was the world championship (1998) and he needed to show the national team coach Cesare Maldini that he was still Roberto Baggio. So he went to a smaller team, Bologna FC, where he would have a certain space in the team.

In fact, he played all the season and it was one of his best: 27 goals scored in 34 matches played, best forwarder of the championship. Well, the calling for the national team was right on his way. Unfortunately, Italy lost against France at the final.

The year after that, he played with Internazionale of Milan, and in 2000 he was hired by Brescia where he played 4 amazing seasons between lots of goals, injuries and unbelievable recoveries.

The 16th of May 2004, Roby played his last match as a professional player. AC Milan-Brescia. The venue was S. Siro stadium in Milan, the theatre of Italian soccer: 80,000 people were standing and clapping for the last time for Roberto Baggio, who left the field in tears.

 

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