Roberto Baggio trots up the stairway outside the Bologna dressing room at the club's unpretentious Casteldebole training ground, just beside the ring road round around Bologna city. As usual, there are a number of people waiting to button-hole the one time `Little Prince' of Italian soccer.
A man from Senegal is organising an anti-racism charity game and wants to know would Baggio be available. Baggio gives him his agent's phone number and tells him to sort it out with the agent. Another man and his eight-year-old son have stood patiently for an hour, and when Baggio appears, they ask for the ritual photo-opportunity. Throughout, Baggio is the very picture of relaxed, physical well-being. When he sit to be interviewed though, and the World Cup comes up, he suddenly gets very serious indeed.
The point is that Baggio desperately wants to go to the World Cup finals in France this summer but he himself is the first to acknowledge that competition for places in the Italian front line is very hot indeed.
Last Friday there was bad news when he heard that he was not in the 19-player squad summoned by coach Cesare Maldini for Italy's World cup warm-up friendly against Paraguay in Parma tomorrow night. At 31, and after a career which has seen him play in two World Cup tournaments, one World Cup final, not to mention winning a UEFA Cup medal and two Italian titles (with Juventus and AC Milan), Baggio could be forgiven if the competitive fires had died somewhat. After all, his career has also been an injury interrupted one, particularly in his early days at Vicenza when a serious knee injury put him out of competitive action for nearly two years. A one time European and FIFA Player of the Year, 47-times capped Baggio could hardly be reproached if he had opted out of international soccer, pleading a tired mind and weary body. Such reasoning, however, does not take on board the fiercely competitive persona that lurks inside most successful athletes.
Not surprisingly, he immediately confessed that the memory of that missed penalty kick in the shoot-out which saw Brazil beat Italy in the USA '94 final still lingers with him:
"I don't know what chance I have of going but I desperately want to go (to France '98), it's my last chance... Even if I had a good World Cup four years ago, what remains with me is the disappointment of losing the final on penalties... Even at the distance of four years, I still find it hard to accept that loss and harder to accept my penalty miss."
Since that World Cup, of course, Baggio has won only four more international caps in the course of four seasons during three of which he was so regularly injured that neither Cesare Maldini nor his predecessor Arrigo Sacchi had much opportunity to use him. Significantly, however, on the one occasion that Maldini has summoned him, he came on as a second-half substitute (for Chelsea's Gianfranco Zola) to score a brilliant goal in Italy's 3-0 World Cup qualifying win against Poland in Naples one year ago.
The intriguing aspect of today's Roberto Baggio is that, according to both himself and many commentators, he is back to his very best. 14 Serie A goals with a modest Bologna side show that he hasn't lost his touch while he claims that life in the small pond of Bologna has been beneficial. "I could have gone to England last season, we were very close to signing a deal with Derby Country but when Bologna came in for me, I jumped at that because for me it was vitally important to stay and play in Italy where I could be seen. "What has been good this season at Bologna is that I have trained more consistently and more thoroughly than at any time in my career. I'm fitter, stronger and more robust than ever."
All of that may be the good news but as the squad list for tomorrow night's Italy v Paraguay friendly reminds us, coach Maldini is not short of choice when it comes to strikers. In particular, Baggio finds himself in competition with at least four other players for the "second striker" role alongside a big target man - Zola, a certain Alessandro Del Piero, Enrico Chiesa and Filippo Inzaghi. Maldini is unlikely to name more than two of the above to play alongside one of the favoured central strike trio - Christian Vieri, Fabrizio Ravanelli and Pierluigi Casiraghi.
Roberto Baggio, arguably the most famous contemporary Italian international, may well be about to miss out on the World Cup. That will be a pity for him, and for us.
