World Cup Heroes: Marco Tardelli

Wonderful World Cup / Ari Last / 24 February 2010 / Leave a comment Free £25 Bet

The fact that he scored a crucial goal in a World Cup Final was largely irrelevant; it was the way he celebrated it that truly counts...

In recent years, the worthiness of international football has come under increasing scrutiny. With the global popularity of European and domestic club competition soaring and with revenues earned via these streams also increasing, the desire and appreciation for the international game amongst clubs, players and fans alike appears to be on the wane.

The multitude of meaningless friendlies, and the tedium of what are often compete mismatches between the 'haves and have-nots', is arguably to blame for an era where it has become easy to forget exactly what international football has to offer.

That is until one is presented with the clip from the 1982 World Cup Final when Italian midfielder Marco Tardelli showed the world just how much representing one's country can mean.

With his side 1-0 up against West Germany, Tardelli picked up a pass from Gaetano Scirea on the edge of the box and after a heavy first touch, he hooked the ball across Germany's Toni Schumacher into the bottom corner. Pandemonium ensued.

Exploding with a mixture of exhaustion, pride and delirium, Tardelli set off on a manic charge towards the Italian bench, his arms swinging furiously, his face teeming with raw emotion. It was to become an iconic moment in World Cup history, and is one which perfectly sums up exactly what is at stake when this tournament comes around.

What makes Tardelli's celebration so poignant today is that in an era where players come up with the most ludicrous pre-meditated post-goal routines, it is nice to look back at a goal where the scorer simply reacted with nothing more than spontaneous and unbridled joy.

Players partaking in limp finger-wagging, pathetic cart-wheeling and massacring the innocent crowd with imaginary machine-guns are part and parcel of modern football, and quite frankly it's a shame that the game has gone down this path.

To make matters worse, those rare few who do decide to celebrate via passionate means - the run into the crowd, the ripping off of the shirt, and the demented kicking of the advertising hoardings - are punished by the referee.

It should be the opposite surely? Next time Stoke City's Ricardo Fuller sends an 'air grenade' into the Stoke crowd he should be off, and the same should go for Robbie Keane every time he displays that queer piece of gymnastics that makes us all wrench.

Football unquestionably needs more Tardellis. The closest we have to him right now are his fellow Italians Filippo Inzaghi, and Alberto Gilardino. And while opinions on their abilities may be split, there is a unanimous consensus that in terms of celebrations, the two are peerless.

Inzaghi's international career is seemingly over, but Gilardino should make it to South Africa. He's [40.0] to finish as the tournament's top-scorer, and his goals, if they do come, will undoubtedly be followed with a response that should - like Tardelli's - leave football purists only too willing to celebrate.

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