Sandro Mazzola Dies at 83, and the Island Reads the Name

Sandro Mazzola, the Italian forward who won two European Cups and four Serie A titles in seventeen years with Internazionale, his only club, has died at the age of 83, the Guardian reported in an obituary published on Thursday. The paper calls him a supremely gifted forward and records that he also won a World Cup runners-up medal with Italy.

The Guardian's account is the only wire item on his death available to this bureau, and it is a football obituary rather than a national news story. It establishes the career, the club and the honours. It does not describe a funeral, a state tribute, or any reaction from the Italian football authorities, and none is reported here.

Mazzola's name carries a second history in Sardinia that the Guardian's obituary does not reach. He was a member of Italy's squad at the 1970 World Cup in Mexico, where the national team reached the final and lost to Brazil. That tournament, and the years around it, are when the island's own footballers began to appear regularly in the national shirt.