He appeared like a flash from the magical nights and was immediately Totò, a boy from Sicily transfigured in his eyes and in his plays into a national hero. Italian football says goodbye to Salvatore Schillaci, to whom he suddenly entrusted his world championship dream in 1990: passed away at the age of 59 after battling cancer, which had worsened his condition in recent weeks. He came from Serie B but, touched by the grace of the ball, he played and scored like a champion: he scored six goals in that tournament. They weren’t enough for Italy to win the title, but they were enough for that striker with video game-like movements, he became an idol: with his haunted eyes and arms raised to the sky he represented the dream of those midsummer nights.
Salvatore Schillaci shakes hands with Francesco Cossiga
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The national team led by Vicini came in third amidst many doubts and controversies, eliminated in Naples in the semi-final by Maradona’s Argentina: Schillaci however won the titles of top scorer and best player of the competition. If regrets mark Italian football for that adventure badly conducted on many fronts, he was instead free from them all round: “As a child I dreamed of being a footballer and, together with this, I have achieved all my desires.i: for example, playing for Juve. I would have settled for little, but football has given me everything: fame, victories, money” he said some time ago in an interview. Born in Palermo on 1 December 1964, after having missed out on a move to his hometown team for a few million lire, Schillaci, who played for Amat, was bought by Messina in 1982, when he was yet to turn 18.
Schillaci during Italy-Uruguay
After scoring 11 goals in his first 3 seasons, he scored the same number in the fourth, making a decisive contribution to the Sicilians’ promotion to Serie B. In the second division, led by Franco Scoglio, he played for another three seasons, scoring 13 goals in 1987-1988 and even 23 in 1988-89, when he was top scorer with Zdenek Zeman on the bench. It was that season that launched him into the football that counts, towards Juventus who bought him for 6 billion lire. He became a regular starter in his first season, scoring 15 goals in 30 league games. He contributed decisively to the victory of the black and white club in the Italian Cup and the UEFA Cup. These excellent performances convinced coach Azeglio Vicini to call him up for the 1990 World Cup. Schillaci started on the bench as Carnevale’s reserve. In the second half of the opening match against Austria the match was still 0-0. Totò entered the field and after four minutes scored a header that allowed the Azzurri to win the match.
Inevitably, Schillaci becomes the starter of the Italian attack with Roberto Baggio and scored in all subsequent matches played by the Azzurri. In short, he became the symbol of Italia ’90. But in the following seasons his star faded. He began to score less and less, also tormented by a tabloid-like separation from his first wife Rita Bonaccorso: in a match against Bologna, he threatened the opposing player Fabio Poli by telling him “I’ll make you shoot”. At the end of the 1991-1992 season, with the arrival of Gianluca Vialli in black and white, Schillaci, finding less and less space, left the Turin club. He then moved to Inter for 8.5 billion lire, scoring 11 goals in 30 matches in two seasons and participating in the Nerazzurri’s victorious journey in the UEFA Cup, even though he had left the club in April 1994. Transfer to Japan to Júbilo Iwata where he became the first Italian footballer to play in the Japanese championship. In 1997 he won the J. League with his team, but he also suffered a serious injury that relegated him permanently away from the playing fields, until his official retirement in 1999. After hanging up his boots, Schillaci returned to Palermo where, in 2001, he ran for city councilor with Forza Italia. Elected, he resigned after a couple of years.
In 2004 he took part in the reality show “The Island of the Famous” and in 2008 he took part in the film “Amori bugie e calcetto” together with other former footballers. In 2011 he played the role of a mafia boss in an episode of “Squadra antimafia – Palermo oggi”. The following year he made a cameo appearance in an episode of the series “Benvenuti a tavola – Nord vs Sud”. With Andrea Mercurio, in 2016, he published the autobiography “Il gol è tutto”. In 2019 he improvised as a rapper and participated in the single “Gli anni degli anni” by 78 Bit. In 2021 he took part as a competitor in the television program “Back to School”, in 2023, together with his wife Barbara, he reached the semifinals of the reality show “Pechino Express”: scraps of popularity for someone who in another semifinal, in 1990, had been able to make more than 27 million viewers dream.
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