At 8pm on a warm June evening in Mexico City, Brian Glanville of The Sunday Times and Gianni Melidoni, the football writer for Rome newspaper Il Messaggero, leave the Azteca Stadium. The year is 1970, and they’ve just filed their copy from what would soon be described as the “Game of the Century”.
ALF RAMSEY WAS ASKED WHO WERE ITALY’S BEST FOUR PLAYERS. “RIVERA, RIVERA, RIVERA, RIVERA,” HE REPLIED Melidoni turns to Glanville, a look of exhausted disbelief still etched on his brow, and simply says: “Pallacanestro.” Basketball. The Italian scribe is alluding to the end-to-end madness of Italy vs West Germany, and more specifically extra time of a game that had swung both ways like no other at a World Cup.
The Azzurri had eventually come out on top,…
