5 min readJun 2, 2026 09:54 PM IST
The popstar knew before the pundits did.
Madonna, sporting her own scrunched power-high ponytail and a No 15 Italy jersey, had already made her call on Roberto Baggio. On her Blonde Ambition Tour in Rome, just two days after the 1990 World Cup, she had spoken proper football: “That goal against Czechoslovakia was marvellous.” Football snobs scoffed when she added, “I didn’t know his name then, but that goal and his big green eyes conquered me.” By 1994, she had anointed him the “Cutest.” The rest of the world was catching up.
The footballing flock called him the Divine Ponytail – Il Divin Codino – after he embraced Nichiren Buddhism in 1985 following a career-threatening knee injury in Campania so severe he was told he might not walk normally again. The faith he found in recovery was not incidental – it became the stillness you could see in him under pressure, the composure that looked almost unreasonable given the moments he was asked to produce it in. Unlike 2026, Norway had pestered the Azzurri plenty in the group stage, but it was the non-related Dino Baggio – no connection beyond the surname – who scored Italy’s only group win. By the knockouts, coach Arrigo Sacchi was being hectored to bench Roberto. He had struggled to score. Italy had scraped through.
What followed over the next three matches became something else entirely.
It started against Nigeria in the Round of 16. Italy trailing 1-0, 88th minute, tournament effectively over, Sacchi’s selections being loudly questioned, one man left to answer. Roberto Mussi, the versatile defender who could swap full back for centre back, turned to play the ball back, and Baggio used the inner foot – the calcaneus, cuboid and metatarsal working together – to rifle an equaliser into the side netting. He then converted the overtime penalty to send Italy through. Four of his five goals at that tournament were angular strikes aimed at the side meshing – geometrically the most efficient way to beat a goalkeeper with the inner foot. The precision was a pattern, not an accident.
In the quarter-final, Spain dominated the second half. Spanish striker Julio Salinas had a one-on-one and missed. “We controlled the game,” he would say afterwards. “But Italy got only the one play.” Dino Baggio floated a pass over midfield, Giuseppe Signori picked it up and redirected it a moment before being tackled, and Roberto moved with sudden sharpness to get onside. Zubizarreta, considered among Europe’s best goalkeepers, came out to close the angle. Baggio drifted past him as if the decision had already been made, and found the corner. Italy were in the semi-finals.
“We started this tournament suffering,” Signori said. “I think we will suffer until the very end.”
Story continues below this ad
At Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, 77,000 watching, semi-final stakes, against Bulgaria. Baggio produced the tournament’s finest goal. He turned past Yankov, left Hubchev behind with a feinting dribble, and curled the ball around Ivanov into the bottom corner – Mihaylov beaten again. Three of his four knockout goals had come when Italy needed them most, in the dying stages, the pattern of late rescue so consistent it stopped feeling like luck. Three quarters of the Italian squad were cramping by the final whistle. Brazil waited in the final.
When the goalless final went to penalties, context matters. Franco Baresi and Daniele Massaro had both missed – the third and fourth kicks – making it Brazil 3, Italy 2 going into the fifth. Had Baggio scored, Italy would still have needed Brazil to miss their last kick to win. It was not, in the arithmetic, decisive. But Baggio, who had been finding corners and side netting all tournament, shellacked it over the crossbar. The image – hands on hips, jersey half tucked, head hanging – went around the world and never really left.
“I’ll never forgive myself,” he would say.
Italy went out on penalties in all three World Cups he featured in. The wound stayed open. Italy tried, in its way, to help him close it. Sonnets and songs were written about his odyssey. Advertisers made films with alternate endings where he scores. Sitcoms had priests solemnly chanting his name alongside Alessandro Costacurta – “grant unto them eternal rest” – delivered with entirely straight faces. Italian creatives wrote him into the Mickey Mouse universe, into Duck Tales. Japan, his spiritual home as a Buddhist, worked him into the iconic Captain Tsubasa manga – and gave him a different ending.
In 2010, Shakira’s Waka Waka, the anthem of that year’s World Cup, montaged his 1994 heroics prominently – penalty miss included. Not erased. Included. Because by then the world had decided that the miss was part of the story, not the end of it.
Story continues below this ad
Madonna had seen it first. The ponytail, the green eyes, the goals. She just didn’t know yet what the penalty would add. Just short of Divine, he became the people’s adored Ponytail.
