Captains of Italy and the USSR greet each other before the start of the match (Ansa.it)
The world of football is full of expressions and topics. One of them, to be heard on numerous occasions, It's of 'The fate of the champion’. Today find the origin of this phrase that emerged, basically, for a fact happened in the Euro 1968.
Every good lover knows the beautiful game stereotypes of each of the major football teams. The Spanish fury (who moves to the tiki-taka), Total Football Dutch, Uruguayan claw or fortune Italian.
The selection of Italy has historically had great teams, but nevertheless, his victories are usually based on a surprising survival.
Italian teams have become accustomed to amateur rounds you spend in extremis and finish campeonando after having given up for dead on more than one occasion. penaltis, goals in the discount, parade Salvador, extraordinary extensions... Italian survival is dressed in different ways but always keeping a common pattern: the competitiveness; something seen from the street, the defeated, like a huge luck. But, When I began to carve such fame?
To find the first example of such clairvoyant "Italian fortune" we must go back to summer 1968. It is held the third edition of the Euro in soil transalpino. A tournament that will achieve lift the home side displaying a large fortune, despite having a team of big stars like Sandro Mazzola, Gianni Rivera O Dino Zoff. In the final itself made a show of this quality to the win a playoff game to Yugoslavia. But the decisive event which will make the Azur in the "lucky" occurred in the semifinals of the tournament, when he managed to eliminate the dreaded USSR -after finishing the match in a draw- in a surprising way: by a coin toss. That day he was born "the fate of the champion”.
But the fate of Italy at that European Championship 1968 He did not stay there. The azurra Yugoslavia had rival in the disputed final Naples. Balkan won by 1-0 Lacking little for the end, but it lacks the edge of the area for the home side meant the tie which ended with the meeting.
The final needed a replay, this time played in Roma, and Italians were victorious by two goals to nil. Thus, based survival, Italy achieved its first and, till the date, only Euro.
