Toto Schillaci: World Cup legend’s final Mail Sport interview

Legendary former player Salvatore ‘Toto’ Schillaci has died at the age of 59 after suffering with colon cancer.

The Italian icon, who lit up the nation’s home World Cup in 1990, played for Juventus and Inter in a glittering career spanning 384 matches, scoring 159 goals.

Back in 2020, Mail Sport spoke with Schillaci about briefly becoming one of the most famous people in sport, finishing second in the Ballon d’Or running and his surprise affection for Arsenal.

You need only to see Toto Schillaci’s WhatsApp profile picture to understand how the summer of 1990 changed his life for ever.

Schillaci has just given Italy a 17th-minute lead in the semi-final in Naples against Diego Maradona’s Argentina and is running away in delight, arms raised, with those distinctive eyes gazing upwards at the celebrating fans.

Italy would lose the match on penalties but Schillaci had won the hearts of fans at home and abroad. Following an impressive debut season for Juventus, he was originally picked as the fifth-choice striker in a stellar attack also featuring Roberto Baggio, Gianluca Vialli and Roberto Mancini — and few outside his home country had heard of him. 

Afterwards, he was briefly one of the most famous people in sport as the tournament’s top scorer with six goals and a level of worldwide recognition that still remains.

Ask most fans for their memories of Italia ’90 and, sooner or later, they will describe an image similar to the one Schillaci chose for his WhatsApp account.

Now 55 and living in his home city of Palermo, Sicily, Schillaci has been spending lockdown working on his garden. ‘I love nature,’ he says. ‘I love growing things. I’m lucky enough to have a big garden so I cultivate all the plants I can and grow my own fruit and vegetables.’ He’s also been planning to re-open the football school he runs at AMAT Palermo — the amateur club he joined as a boy — when quarantine rules in Italy are relaxed further.

‘I can’t wait to get back,’ he admits. Remarkably, he almost looks younger now, with the receding hairline of 1990 a distant memory thanks to transplant work.

Schillaci rarely gives in-depth interviews, but over the course of a fascinating hour he discusses his love of English football (he is a closet Arsenal fan), using Paul Gascoigne as an emergency translator and his experiences in politics, acting and reality TV.

As well as running his football school, Schillaci does regular work for Juventus, both as a co-commentator and with their many supporters’ clubs worldwide.

Yet there is only one place to start: the magical nights of 1990 that define him. 

‘Thirty years have passed, and naturally the period of the World Cup is always present in my eyes and my mind,’ Schillaci tells Mail Sport over the telephone from Palermo.

‘Even after all this time, my popularity has never waned.

‘It’s even the case with younger fans, who can go on the internet and YouTube. When I go to different places around the world, I still feel people’s affection and enthusiasm: autographs, photos, Toto this, Toto that.

‘If I’m loved it’s not just because of what I did on the pitch, but also off it — someone can be a world-class player but also a stronzo (a******e). The fact I entered the hearts of Italians is about how I behaved.

‘I always give my time to normal people. I am one of them. I am not fake — fans know with Schillaci that what you see is what you get — and they like me because of it.

‘I came from nowhere to be top scorer, player of the tournament and second in the Ballon d’Or.

‘From nothing, I became one of the most important players in the world at that time, but luckily I have a certain personality, maybe different from lots of other players.

‘It’s not like I sit down in front of the computer and say, “I’ll re-watch Italia ’90” — but I see the goals all the time. Whenever I do TV work or go to Juventus fan clubs, people show them. It’s always there.’

After Juventus, Schillaci joined Inter Milan before leaving Italy in 1994 for Japanese club Jubilo Iwata, where he spent three successful seasons.

While playing in the J-League, he met Arsene Wenger who was coaching Nagoya Grampus Eight. Schillaci followed the Frenchman thereafter and began to cheer for his Arsenal teams.

There are clear parallels with Gascoigne’s career, beyond two seasons together in Serie A when the Englishman was at Lazio. Like Schillaci, Gascoigne was an instinctive talent from a tough background who shone in the No 19 shirt at the World Cup. 

Like Schillaci’s, Gascoigne’s performances in that tournament brought him fame but became a burden when he struggled to repeat them, yet both are still adored by the majority of supporters. No wonder Schillaci feels empathy with one of England’s best-loved footballers, which perhaps inspires his slightly rose-tinted enthusiasm for the Premier League.

‘I saw Gascoigne again at an event in London a couple of years ago,’ he recalls. ‘We were on an open-top bus. He still speaks very good Italian and was acting as my translator that day.

‘His hair was white and I noticed he had lost a lot of weight — but nobody can forget his quality as a player. He had magic, he was technically excellent, he entertained people. He was a showman as well as a player.

‘I love English football to death and if I’d had the chance I would have gone to play there. I like Arsenal because I got to know Wenger and I always admired his teams and their style of play.

‘I’m passionate about the Premier League. English players, when they’re fouled, get up and get on with it. It’s not like Italy where players surround the referee. Teams fight to the end, even if they’re losing 4-0. The referees allow the game to flow.

‘If I’d played today, I would have scored quite a few more goals. In my day, you were man-marked by players who kicked you, followed you for 90 minutes. Now it’s much easier. Teams play with a higher line and I’d have used my pace to take advantage.’

The elephant in the room is that Schillaci did not end the tournament with a gold medal around his neck. Italy won the World Cup in 2006 and reached other major finals in 1994, 2000 and 2012, yet the failure on home soil still stings.

The defeat by Argentina, on spot-kicks after a 1-1 draw, featured the only goal Italy conceded in the finals, aside from David Platt’s strike in the third-place play-off. Like England, they were eliminated without losing a match under normal playing conditions.

The pain of the semi-final endures. ‘Don’t talk about it! Don’t talk about it!’ Schillaci snaps when invited to go into greater detail. No wonder: how could a team containing Franco Baresi, Paolo Maldini and Baggio — three greats of their era — fail to win the trophy in their own back yard? Most players from that side soon escaped the shadow of Italia ’90, yet Schillaci was affected more than most. 

Injuries, combined with turbulence off the field, meant he never rediscovered the form of his first season at Juventus, and he scored only one more goal for Italy, finishing his international career with just 16 caps. He never played in another major tournament.

‘I was in such good form that summer, so focused even in training, and everything I touched turned to gold,’ he recalls. ‘I was at the peak of my powers and then when you score the first goal, the second, the third, everything starts to come naturally.

‘When you play with that simplicity, everything becomes easier and pretty much everything you do is decisive. I was always on the move, I was quick, smart, sharp in the box and I had a great understanding with Baggio.

‘We were good friends off the pitch and we were room-mates during the tournament. We had a great team, one of our best ever, but unfortunately that guarantees you nothing. Games are decided by a few moments, and against Argentina, one of those went against us. We had everything required to win it and I still regret that we didn’t.

‘Was it mentally difficult after the tournament? Certainly, yes. Only a year earlier, before I joined Juventus, I was with Messina in Serie B (Italy’s second division) and nobody knew me. Suddenly, everyone did.

‘I never expected what happened. If someone had predicted it for me, I’d have laughed at them. At a certain point, you stop for a minute and you ask yourself, “Is it really true, everything that’s happened?” And all this pressure that’s on you, it becomes heavy, unmanageable. I wasn’t used to dealing with it.’

No matter what he has done since — be it as a local councillor in Palermo in 2001, a contestant on Italy’s version of I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here, or playing a mafia boss in a TV drama — Schillaci’s name will always go hand in hand with Italia ’90.

Speaking to him now, you sense he is a man who has found peace with his past and present, and is looking forward to the future with calmness. He lives with his wife, Barbara, and her son in Sicily, and has three grown-up children — a daughter in Verona, another on the Italian-Swiss border and a son in Portugal.

‘In life, you have to make hay while the sun shines,’ he reflects. ‘I had a childhood with a lot of ups and downs, I hardly ever went to school — but I had a passion for football and that gave me a target from a young age.

‘I grew up in an area where there were good and bad people and I could have allowed myself to be led astray by bad friendships. But I always tried to avoid what might have been a different kind of life.

‘In the future, the memory of what I did may fade, but while it’s like this, I’ll enjoy it. If people ask me for autographs and photos it means I’m still relevant. The problem would come if they stopped.

‘So many players in the Italian league had good careers but perhaps they’re forgotten now. I am still spoken about, though, and let’s hope it can continue for as long as I live.’