Liam Brady has claimed Paolo Rossi ‘was like Gary Lineker or Sergio Aguero’ adding he ‘was the best pal, who was always happy and forever smiling.’
Brady had only played three games with the Old Lady alongside the 1982 Italy World Cup winner who died on Wednesday aged 64.
Liam Brady has claimed Paolo Rossi ‘was like Gary Lineker or Sergio Aguero’ adding he ‘was the best pal, who was always happy and forever smiling.’
Brady had only played three games with the Old Lady alongside the 1982 Italy World Cup winner who died on Wednesday aged 64.
“I’m glad we had those three matches together. But more glad he stayed in my life afterwards. As great a striker as he was — and I can name few better — I’ll remember him best as a pal who was always happy and forever smiling,” Brady wrote in the Irish Examiner.
“Of course I knew all about him before I knew him. He announced himself at the 1978 World Cup, scoring three goals for Italy aged just 22. But I was really charmed by that marvelous one-two where he set up Roberto Bettega against Argentina. A goal that oozed Italian class and sophistication.
“Then came the dark cloud of Paolo’s two-year ban for allegations of match-fixing. He missed the 1980 European Championships held in Italy, which he always carried as a deep regret.
“I’d been in Turin for a year when he joined us. Even though I knew well how good he was, it was a surprise to a lot of us that Juventus signed him then, since he still had the best part of a year left on his suspension. But they wanted to secure one of the best strikers in Europe.
“He’d come to our matches on Sunday, and we’d go out after for a meal. Myself, Tardelli and him, a few friends outside football, our wives. After, we’d go back to someone’s house and watch the football — the Italian Match of the Day. Paolo liked a cigarette and one or two glasses of wine. But he was a man for moderation.
“I played against him with Sampdoria. And in a couple of derbies at the San Siro when he’d moved onto Milan and I was at Inter. We remained good friends. Wherever we were, Turin or Milan, one of us would stay over and the gang would reunite.
“Don’t underestimate him, he was great at link-up play as well. Good awareness and touch. If you knocked it into his feet it stuck.
“But he was a killer in the six-yard box. A lean, agile predator. Always on his toes for a spill or a rebound. Like Lineker, or Aguero of the modern stars.
“Paolo was a very good friend and this terrible news came as a real shock,” he continued.
“I didn’t know he had been ill. Straight away I rang Marco Tardelli, who was his great pal, and Marco hadn’t known either that his situation had been that serious.
“Marco told me Paolo was working three weeks ago as a pundit on Italian station RAI. So this news has rocked all of Italy.”