Pivotal Pivatelli: how random events helped elevate two grea

You can plan, you can plan and you can plan some more and then something happens over which you had no control, that you couldn’t reasonably have been expected to foresee, and everything changes. That’s not to say that there’s no point in coaches and directors planning, but it is to say that there are times when entirely external events take control – and that doesn’t have to mean something as enormous as coronavirus. Football can turn on events that seem random, unconnected, unpredictable – the bounce of a ball, the shape of the goalposts, the eruption of an Icelandic volcano – or on the unlikely influence of one man w88 mobile .

Take, for example, the case of Gino Pivatelli, a forward for Bologna, Verona and Napoli who was top scorer in Serie A in 1955-56 and won seven caps for Italy. At the end of his career, he played 37 games for Milan, by which time he had lost some of his pace and sharpness in front of goal. He never managed them. And yet without him, the first two of their eras of European pre-eminence may never have come about.



Milan’s meeting with Benfica in the 1963 European Cup final was one of those rare crossroad games after which football history takes a decisive turn in a particular direction. Bela Guttmann had left (and cursed) Benfica the previous year in a dispute over his bonus for leading them to successive European titles. Under Fernando Riera, their football remained of the old school, attacking and individualistic. Nereo Rocco’s Milan played a form of catenaccio and it was the mentality that underlay this that led him to pick the 30-year-old Pivatelli rather than Paolo Barison, who had scored six goals in their run to the final. Pivatelli’s job was to mark Mário Coluna, Benfica’s left-half and playmaker. It was an overtly negative move. “He had practical intelligence, common sense and was extremely intuitive,” said the forward Gianni Rivera. “He always knew where the least expected danger would come from w88 line .”

Eusébio put Benfica ahead after 18 minutes. José Altafini levelled 13 minutes after the break. A minute after that came the decisive moment. Coluna intercepted a Pivatelli pass inside his own half and advanced. Space was opening up. If he’d been able to play the pass, Benfica would have been three on two. But he wasn’t allowed to. Pivatelli closed in, clipped his back leg and brought him down. The attack was thwarted, but worse than that, Coluna had broken a bone in his foot and was forced off. In the days before substitutes it was a decisive blow. Coluna did hobble back on with 10 minutes remaining but it was a gesture, no more. Altafini had added his second 11 minutes after his first, and Milan won 2-1 .

On the 24th anniversary of the final, RAI, the Italian state broadcaster, gathered Coluna, the Milan captain that day, Cesare Maldini, and the journalist Gianni Minà in a studio to watch the game again. “Awful challenge, eh?” Minà said after the foul, before broaching directly the suspicion that has always lingered. “Lads, after 24 years, can we say whether that foul was ordered or not https://www.w88thais.com/ ?”