With Comunardo Niccolai, who passed away at 77, another protagonist of black and white football has passed away. And a few months after Gigi Riva, Cagliari, the team that won the 1970 championship, has lost another hero. “He leaves behind the memory of a great sportsman, a polite, kind, respectful, cordial man who knew how to make himself loved – reads a note from the Sardinian club – Goodbye Comunardo”.
The Man of Impossible Own Goals
Born in Uzzano, in the province of Pistoia, he arrived in Cagliari at a very young age after a year at Torres: he remained there from 1964 to 1976 before moving to Perugia. He went down in history as the “king of own goals”, some of them impossible (but Riccardo Ferri and Franco Baresi, with 8, would later score more than him). The most famous one was scored by Niccolai in Turin: an early header to the near post that surprised Albertosi in the match between Juventus and Cagliari in 1970, decisive for the championship and which ended 2-2.
He struggled to get used to the label of own-goal scorer, but then he ended up joking about it: “At first it bothered me but then I got used to it,” he said. “There are players who have had an excellent career but no one remembers them; at least I left a mark on the history of Italian football.”
Scopigno’s famous joke
After his extraordinary run in Cagliari, which won the Scudetto, the national team also took notice of him and coach Ferruccio Valcareggi, after having made him debut in a friendly in Portugal in May, immediately launched him among the starters in Mexico. Legend has it that seeing him on the pitch, the histrionic coach of the Sardinians, Manlio Scopigno, uttered the very famous phrase: “I would have expected anything from life, but not to see Niccolai on world television…”. However, his career in the national team ended early. His World Cup lasted the first 37 minutes of the match against Sweden: then an injury excluded him from the games. He returned to the national team only once, in October 1970 in Bern, in a friendly match that drew 1-1 against Switzerland and went down in history for an extraordinary goal by Sandro Mazzola.
A career as a federal technician
After his career as a footballer, he was also a federal coach, launching talents such as Gianluigi Buffon and Francesco Totti into the youth teams of the Azzurri and later also coaching the women’s national team.
2024-07-02 09:40:51
#Comunardo #Niccolai #Cagliaris #scudetto #heroes #dies #Football
