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Tarcisio Burgnich in 1970: He embodied Italian defensive football like hardly anyone else
Photo:
Rolls Press / Popperfoto / Getty Images
Tarcisio Burgnich was already a famous footballer when the ball fell in front of his feet on June 17, 1970 in the opponent's penalty area.
With Inter Milan he had already celebrated three championship titles, twice the European Cup and once the World Cup, with Italy he became European champion in 1968.
But with this scene in the eighth minute of the extension of the World Cup semi-final between Germany and Italy, when Burgnich scored 2-2, in the game that went down in history as the "game of the century", the whole world finally knew him.
In any case: all of Germany.
On Wednesday, the emotional world of the Inter fans was shaken by two reports.
First they had to cope with the death of their defense memorial in Burgnich, who died at the age of 82.
They later learned that their current master coach Antonio Conte announced his departure from now on.
Conte, the project worker who can bring a team to peak performance within a short period of time and then say goodbye, represents the opposite of what Burgnich stood for: an era shaped over many years by the joint work of a coach and a team.
The coach, that was the Argentine Helenio Herrera, if not the inventor, then at least the master of catenaccio football.
That football that did not aim to score one more goal than the opponent, but to concede one less goal.
To do this, he needed defenders who were as consistent as they were iron-hard, and he found them in his captain Armando Picchi, in Giacinto Facchetti - and in Tarcisio Burgnich.
In his homeland, Burgnich was called "La Roccia", the rock.
And on this rock Herrera built his church.
Master of the Catenaccio
Burgnich, Picchi and Facchetti, they formed the framework of the team that made football history as "Il Grande Inter".
Never again did Inter play as successfully as they did under Herrera in the 1960s, and fans of beautiful football say: Inter has never played as destructively as it did back then.
The followers revere Herrera, the critics called him the "gravedigger".
Anyone who dismisses the catenaccio as anti-football forgets how revolutionary Herrera's tactics were in the 1960s, how much attention and understanding of the game this type of football required of the defenders.
When it had to, Facchetti dashed forward to support attackers Jair and Sandro Mazzola.
The Catenaccio also invented the first modern full-back.
To dash forward, that was not Burgnich's style. Even before his stints at Inter, Juventus Turin and FC Palermo, pure protection, the desire to destroy, was his passion. At Juve, however, they were of the opinion that his style of play did not suit the team. They were also bothered by the fact that Burgnich was cross-eyed and believed that because of that, he couldn't become a top player. A fundamental mistake. At Inter, Burgnich then only looked for titles.
From 1963 he took up his title hunt in the national team, initially with moderate success.
In the squad for the 1966 World Cup, he experienced the greatest disgrace of the Azzurri when the team failed to North Korea.
One of the biggest sensations in world football to this day.
Since then, the name Pak Doo-Ik should not be carelessly pronounced in Italy, who shot Italy out of the tournament with his goal.
Heaven and Hell in Mexico
Four years later, Burgnich and his teammates experienced heaven and hell within a few days at the World Cup in Mexico.
In the semifinals it was against Germany, the game of the century.
Up until then, Burgnich had not scored a single hit in the Squadra Azzurra in seven years.
In this 98th minute he couldn't help it.
Opponent Sigi Held had let the ball drip off with his chest in the six-yard area and thus presented it to Burgnich both involuntarily and perfectly.
Burgnich pushed in to make it 2-2, Italy was back in the game, won 4: 3, and Burgnich has been a hero at home since then.
Defender as goalscorer, that was still rare back then.
The opponent's penalty area was not their territory.
Berti Vogts, the defensive legend on the other hand, scored his first (and only) international goal in 96 games in an 8-0 win against Malta, Burgnich at least in the game of the century.
Only four days later, the exhausted Italians experienced a state of fainting.
In the final against Brazil they were chased 4-1 off the field.
Gérson, Rivelino, Jairzinho, Tostão and Pelé, this Brazilian miracle offensive, they had nothing more to offer.
Burgnich had been given the most ungrateful task of stopping Pele.
After the game he said the famous sentence: “Before the final I said to myself: Pele is only made of flesh and bones, like me.
Then I realized that I was wrong. ”Flesh and bone, that was his defensive world, it wasn't Pelé's world.
By 1974 Burgnich played a total of 358 league appearances for Inter, he was part of the team that was defeated 7-1 on the Gladbach Bökelberg in 1971.
Seven goals conceded for the defense rock Burgnich, what a humiliation.
It was the famous rifle throwing game, Burgnich collected the legendary football games like other people collected postage stamps.
Unlucky as a coach
He finally took part in the World Cup in Germany, which ended as shamefully for Italy and Burgnich as the World Cup in England eight years earlier.
Burgnich was also not very successful as a coach, he, who symbolized loyalty to the club at Inter, became a migrant worker on the Italian boot.
He coached 15 clubs in 23 years, no engagement lasted longer than two years.
This is the Conte cycle.
Except that Burgnich wasn't nearly as successful.
The coach Burgnich will not be remembered.
To the man who scored his very first international goal in the semifinals against Germany.