Roberto Baggio has never gotten the respect he deserves.
Nobody would argue that Roberto Baggio is not a legendary player, a player most would put in their top 20 attackers to grace the sport. Still, even these plaudits are too little for a No.10 as gifted as Roberto Baggio was.
We have covered his career before, but ‘The Divine Ponytail’ deserves a second look, as a single moment may have robbed Baggio of the recognition he had more than earned.
Il Divin Codino
It’s unanimously accepted that until Messi, Maradona was the greatest Number 10 of all time, and quite possibly the greatest player of all time period, with only Pele rivalling the Argentine.
But rarely is Baggio uttered in this same sentence. Of course, he is massively respected as one of the great players of the 90s, but few would push for him in the GOAT debate.
It’s time Baggio became more than a ‘what if’ tragedy and a cursory glance over his career tells of an incredibly prolific attacking midfielder.
Baggio never left Italy, spending his whole career there, racking up 291 goals in 643 club games. This was during the late 80s to 90s when Italy was regarded as the world’s top league, leaving him with no shortage of quality defenders to outfox.
In comparison, Diego Maradona boasts a magisterial record of 311 in 589, but when we look deeper, a different narrative unfolds.
It must be said, that 144 of Maradona’s goals came as he broke through the ranks in Argentina, playing 206 over there before moving to Barcelona in 1982.
Baggio’s breakthrough season at Fiorentina coincided with Maradona’s second-best season in Italy.
Head to Head in Italy
The 87/88 season saw Maradona and co narrowly miss out on defending the Serie A title.
15 goals was not enough to crown them back-to-back champions. But while Maradona was earning all the praise for carrying Napoli, a 21-year-old Roberto Baggio was making waves witty Fiorentina.
His breakthrough campaign saw him score 6 in 27 league games, which clearly pales to the prime Maradona he was up against, but come the 88/89 season, Diego had met his match.
15 in 30 for the Italian, with a further 9 goals in 10 Coppa Italia matches announced to the world that a new star had arrived, and this one was born and raised in Italy.
Maradona on the other hand managed 19 in 50, scoring only 9 times in the league that year.
By Diego’s own stratospheric standards, it was poor.
But the Argentine was not done, heading into his 6th Napoli season in a row, Maradona hit with one his best League campaigns outside of his homeland, netting 16 times in 28 games, and finishing 3rd in the race for the Serie A Golden Boot.
However, sitting in second place, with 17, that young Italian, Baggio, who had bested Maradona’s most fruitful goalscoring campaign outside of Argentina.
There’s no question that Maradona was carrying Napoli, and that year would spearhead a brilliant title win, making those around him look much better than they were, but Baggio was scoring 17 in a team that finished 12th…
He’d outgrown the mid-table side, and Juventus saw him as the man to put them back on top of European Football.
Over in Naples, Maradona was entering his final season in Italian football, and the magic seemed to have worn thin.
By the end of this season, he was 31, his 6 League goals only going so far as to help Napoli to an 8th-place finish. They had won Serie A the year before.
In March of 1991, Maradona was slapped with a 15-month ban for doping, his absence a big part of Napoli’s poor position.
Juventus hadn’t faired much better, crawling to 7th on goal difference, Baggio finishing above Maradona for the first time, and at the last opportunity.
Individually, however, Baggio had taken Turin by storm. 27 goals in 47 games, was his best return yet. With Maradona off to Sevilla at the end of the season, the 90/91 season was the end of this face-off.
Maradona leaves having won two Serie A’s and a UEFA Cup; Baggio is set to rule as the undisputed best No.10 in Italy.
When all is said and done, if we consider Baggio’s time at Juventus as his prime, and Maradona’s time at Napoli to be his prime, the stats tell a shocking story.
Playing the same role as each other, Maradona scored 115 goals in 259 games, across 7 seasons. Baggio spent 5 seasons at Juventus and scored… 115 goals… In just 200 games.
Now, goals are not the be-all-and-end-all of how good a player was, and assist stats from the 80s and 90s are impossible to come by, so we can’t use that metric.
Outside of living during the time, and scrupulously watching the two players, goals-to-game ratios and limited YouTube clips are the closest we can get to empirical proof as we compare the two.
International Careers
Maradona is undoubtedly most well known for his moments in an Argentina shirt.
That brilliant 1986 World Cup win, driven entirely by his performances still propels Diego into the highest echelon of consideration, but this was the only trophy Maradona ever won with Argentina.
His brilliance was undeniable, not to mention that the Argentine team during his tenure was fairly average outside of Diego. He was everything to that team, in 1986… What is often overlooked is his underwhelming Italia 90, in which he failed to score.
In fairness, most attackers had a poor World Cup in 1990, with the tournament seeing the lowest goals per game of any World Cup ever, but you would hope Maradona could change that.
Then there’s the 1994 World Cup, in which for one game Diego looked to be back, at the ripe old age of 34. A scorching strike against Greece set the world up for an inspired send-off to a great, but it was all a facade.
His celebration clued many in as to the nature of his “return to form”, running to the camera, screaming like a man possessed, eyes bulging from his head with dilated pupils.
Unhinged was one word to describe it. ‘High’ was another. Sure enough, he’d fail a drug test after the game and was banned from the rest of the tournament, and suspended for another 15 months.
It was a fall from grace, to say the least, sullying all the wonder he’d provided.
Now, in 86, he scored 5 crucial goals, all coming in the knockout round, including the greatest goal of all time.
There’s no dispute as to how good he was in that tournament, and if we judged players based on singular tournaments, his prior reputation as ‘The G.O.A.T” would be unquestionable.
However, that’s not how judging a player’s career works. Maradona should be regarded in the highest esteem, but save for 1986, his international career was underwhelming.
Argentina did win the Copa America twice during his career, but he was left out of the squad both times, thanks to doping bans. While actually in the squad, Argentina’s best Copa America finish was 4th, in 1987.
Winning a World Cup does stand on its own, and as I keep repeating, so as not to get totally crucified, Maradona was gifted beyond belief and won football’s biggest trophy. But, perhaps we have collectively overlooked certain parts of his career, favouring the brilliance.
On the other hand, Baggio famously missed out on a World Cup in gut-wrenching fashion. After a 3rd-placed finish in 1990, Baggio and Italy went all the way to the final, before holding Brazil to 0-0 for 120 minutes.
With 4 taken a piece, Baggio had to score to keep Italy in the game but infamously blazed the ball over, earning him the nickname “The Man Who Died Standing”.
Post-Cup Clarity
Outside of those two World Cup runs in 90 and 94, Baggio’s Italy career has very little of note to speak of. He wasn’t in the squad for the 1988 European Championships, as it was his breakthrough season, and Italy failed to qualify in 1992.
He was not in the squad for Euro 96 after Arrigo Sacchi left him out after a conflict between the two.
15 years after the fact, Sacchi claimed it was simply due to fitness issues, but whatever the reason, it proved a poor decision, with Italy exiting in the group stage.
Baggio never made it to a European Championship…
Neither of the two made any impact on their country’s continental competition success.
Neither ever won a European Cup/Champions League.
Internationally, Maradona scored 42 in 106 and Baggio scored 27 in 56.
I think Baggio deserves more plaudits than he gets in world football and had Italy beaten Brazil in 1994, he’d be thrown around in the G.O.A.T debate far more often.
He was consistently performing until the day he retired, keeping Brescia in the Serie A 4 years in a row, hitting double figures every season, even scoring 11 goals in 12 appearances, from CAM, at the ripe age of 36.
Maradona may have had a slightly higher skill ceiling, but Baggio remained a top-top player from 18-38.
Both achieved similar feats, carrying teams on their backs, and both were exquisite to watch and will forever be remembered as two of football’s greatest goal-scoring No.10s.
