Totò Schillaci obituary: Striker who shot to global fame in the summer of 1990

Salvatore Schillaci became the unlikely personification of Italy’s notti magiche, or magical nights

Italia ‘90 Golden Boot winner Totò Schillaci in Dublin in 2023. Photograph: Damien Eagers/Julien Behal Photography

Born December 1st, 1964

Died September 18th, 2024

Salvatore “Totò” Schillaci, who has died aged 59, was one of the greatest one-hit wonders in football history. A useful striker in the Italian second division for most of the 1980s, the Sicilian native suddenly shot to global fame in the summer of 1990 when his one-man goal spree propelled Italy to within touching distance of their fourth World Cup win.

Schillaci’s time at the pinnacle of world football would be short-lived: injuries, a painfully public divorce and an ill-fated transfer combined to drag his life and career off course. Nevertheless, his wider fame endured for decades after Italia 90. His unshaven, balding, boggle-eyed countenance remained one of the defining images of perhaps the most vividly remembered World Cup of them all.

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Schillaci, born in December 1964 in the Palermo district of San Giovanni Apostolo, came from a working-class background: his father was a rubbish collector, his mother a housewife. The area he lived in was blighted by crime and social deprivation, but though Schillaci was a serial truant from school, he avoided being led astray by devoting all his time to football.

His professional career began at 17, when he signed for the fourth-division outfit Messina in 1982. By 1986, when they won promotion to Serie B, Italian football’s second tier, he had become an established fixture in the side. In the 1988-1989 season, he scored 23 league goals, bringing himself to the attention of Italy’s biggest club.

Totò Schillaci of Italy celebrates his winning goal against Ireland. Photograph: Billy Stickland/Inpho

Juventus were still rebuilding after the break-up of Giovanni Trapattoni’s all-conquering side of the 1980s, and many of their signings in this period flopped at great cost, such as the Soviet midfielder Oleksandr Zavarov and the Portuguese attacker Rui Barros. But Schillaci, acquired relatively cheaply for six billion lire, proved a revelation. His 15 Serie A goals helped Juventus to fourth place, and he scored four more in their Uefa Cup campaign, when they ultimately beat compatriots Fiorentina in the final.

Schillaci’s finishing skills caught the eye of Italian national team manager Azeglio Vicini, who decided he would make a good wild-card pick for the 1990 World Cup squad. He made his international debut against Switzerland just days before the competition kicked off. He wasn’t expected to feature prominently in the tournament, if at all; but the failure of Napoli’s Andrea Carnevale to make an impact against Austria in Italy’s opening game in Rome opened the door for him.

As Italy became increasingly desperate to break the goalless deadlock, Vicini threw on Schillaci to replace Carnevale in the final stages. With his very first touch, he met Gianluca Vialli’s cross with a strong header to score the winning goal. He sprinted off to celebrate with his eyes bulging out of his skull, a sight that would become familiar to 57 million Italians over the next four weeks. “Every time I meet people,” he said years later, “they always want me to do the occhi selvaggi.”

Totò Schillaci’s joy was infectious and he was loved in Ireland, despite that goalOpens in new window ]

Pugnacious and hyperactive, looking far older than his 25 years, Schillaci was a different breed from the well-groomed pin-ups that made up the rest of Italy’s team. Though barely 5′7″ tall, he scored with his head again when pitched into Vicini’s starting line-up against Czechoslovakia. “I must be asleep,” he told the media. “Don’t wake me up.”

In Italy’s next game, a 2-0 win over Uruguay, he struck one of the goals of the tournament, a stunning shot into the top corner. He found the net again in the quarter-final, putting Ireland out of the competition with a calm angled finish after Packie Bonner failed to hold Roberto Donadoni’s shot; later in the match, he also rattled the crossbar from long range.

By now, Schillaci had become the unlikely personification of Italy’s notti magiche, magical nights. Another of his instinctive finishes gave them the lead in the semi-final against Argentina, but they then froze in front of a disgruntled Neapolitan crowd who had been asked by local hero Diego Maradona to support Argentina as a protest against the region’s poverty. The game ultimately went to penalties, and Schillaci refused to take one, citing fatigue. Donadoni and Aldo Serena both missed, and Italy’s magical nights were over.

Schillaci did, however, convert a spot-kick against England in the third-place play-off, securing the Golden Boot as the tournament’s top scorer with six goals. For one vivid, unforgettable month, he had been the most lethal forward on the planet. His feats were recognised when he came second in the vote for the 1990 Ballon d’Or, behind only Lothar Matthäus, who had captained West Germany to win the World Cup.

But he would never hit such heights again. He scored only 11 league goals for Juventus in the next two years, and fell out badly with superstar team-mate Roberto Baggio, whom he punched during a dressing-room argument. In another unpleasant episode, he threatened to have Bologna defender Fabio Poli shot when they clashed during a match.

Former Italy striker Totò Schillaci dies aged 59Opens in new window ]

Schillaci’s meteoric rise to the status of national hero after Italia 90 came with an emotional price. As he began to move in glitzier social circles, his marriage to Rita Bonaccorso, a former hairdresser with whom he had two children, soon disintegrated. Wounded by his serial infidelity, she retaliated by having an affair with the Milan midfielder Gianluigi Lentini. The eventual divorce was messily played out in the pages of Italy’s tabloids, much to Schillaci’s regret – and to the stern disapproval of Juventus’s patriarch, the industrialist Gianni Agnelli.

He moved to Internazionale in 1992, but was plagued by recurring injuries at a turbulent, badly run club where even the starriest signings (Dennis Bergkamp, Matthias Sammer, Darko Pancev) were flopping horribly. By this point, his international career had petered out. He scored only once more for Italy in the wake of Italia ‘90, and won his final cap against Bulgaria in September 1991, after which the national team’s new manager Arrigo Sacchi decided to look elsewhere for strikers.

But a financially lucrative move to Japan in 1994 saw an upturn in Schillaci’s footballing fortunes. In the J League, he scored freely for Shizuoka-based club Jubilo Iwata, though an eventual championship win in 1997 came in another injury-marred season when he played in only three games. Two years later, at 34, he retired from the game.

Schillaci’s post-football years were largely spent away from the spotlight, though he appeared on an Italian reality TV show and ran a children’s football academy in his native Palermo. In 2002 he played himself in a TV advert for Smithwicks ale, smilingly popping up in an Irish pub as the astonished local drinkers looked on. A decade later he married for a second time, to Barbara Lombardo, a dentist.

Schillaci died after an illness on September 18th, aged 59. His former club Internazionale led the tributes, saying in a statement: “He made an entire nation dream during the notti magiche of Italia 90.” He is survived by Barbara Lombardo, by their daughter, and by a son and a daughter from his first marriage.