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BY PHIL LEE

In print | December 6, 2007

It’s cold. The trees are bare. The sun sets at 5 p.m. Tests and paper due dates are overwhelming our calendars. Yes, the signs are clear: it’s December at Swarthmore. As your nostalgic (and procrastination-prone) soul longs for the warmth of past days, it’s crucial to retain your sanity through some form of catharsis. My ritual recipe consists of YouTube with a pinch of football.

The beauty of YouTube lies in its ability to preserve moments of the past: Liverpool’s unbelievable overcoming of a three-goal deficit in Istanbul, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s memorable injury-time winner at the Estadio Camp Nou, Ryan Giggs’ unilateral mauling of the Arsenal defense in the 1999 FA Cup semifinal and so on. This brings me to my final topic of the semester: football legends.

Every sports fan has an idol. These days, I have a particular soft spot for Henrik Larsson and Francesco Totti (at right). Growing up, however, my idol was Roberto Baggio, Italy’s greatest footballer of all time.

Renowned for his dazzling coiffure and orgasmic free kicks, “Il Divino Codino” (“the divine pigtail”) remains a cult figure among all football fans. He started his top-flight career in the Italian Serie A with Fiorentina, earning a transfer to Juventus in 1990 for a record-setting fee of 25 billion lira ($19 million).

In protest to losing their young talisman, enraged Fiorentina fans rioted in downtown Florence, resulting in the injury of 50 people, proof that Baggio was destined for greater things. During his subsequent 5-year sojourn in Turin, he won everything that one could possibly win as a player, including the FIFA World Player of the Year and European Footballer of the Year (Ballon d’Or) awards, as well as the Champions League, Coppa Italia and Scudetto (Italian League).

Since then, he has enjoyed successful spells with AC Milan, Bologna, Inter Milan and Brescia, cementing his spot as one of the greatest footballers in history. The statistics do all the talking: he has scored 318 goals in all competitions, 205 goals in the Serie A and nine goals in three World Cups. He joins a long list of formidable trequartista (three-quarters), otherwise known as the second striker position, playing in between the midfielders and forwards. He brought glory to Italian football and is fondly remembered by fans worldwide.

I remember the first time I watched Baggio in action, a group-stage match against Czechoslovakia in the 1990 World Cup. By halftime, Italy had already taken the lead on a goal from top scorer Salvatore Schillaci. And then it happened, a moment of sheer magic that led to the goal of the tournament.

Baggio receives the ball from the left-hand side of the pitch, just inside the Czech half. He plays an elegant one-two, dribbles past a defender, and with two players in front of him, hits a splendid shot into the bottom of the net. I’ll never forget the expression I had on my face, a young Phil Lee mesmerized by such exquisite technique.

Baggio then became my idol, the center of all my conversations. It impacted all aspects of my life including my hair, product of an inspired hairdresser who completed her first “Baggio-cut.”

I retained the pigtail for six years, proclaiming myself as the Korean Baggio ready to wreak havoc on the lives of my playground opposition defense. I never defended, staying true to my trequartista (lazy) nature, and always proclaimed the superiority of my idol in lunchtime “who’s the greatest footballer in the world” arguments. Baggio was my world.

Fast-forwarding to the present day, I still retain a fondness for my childhood idol. Amidst the chaos that persistently terrorizes all post-pass/fail Swatties in December, my homemade YouTube remedy succeeds, once again, in keeping me sane. As we head into the holidays, try exploiting the wealth of exquisite sports moments available via YouTube.

Those memories, I guarantee, will make you smile.

Phil is a senior. You can reach him at plee1@swarthmore.edu.

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