Goodbye to Antonio Valentin Angelillo, like few other champions loved and idolized by Inter fans, who for more than half a century held the record for the most prolific goalscorer in the 33-team championship. And he would have had one more if – as the older and hardened Nerazzurri Inter fans like Prisco recall – the football gods, on that distant afternoon of 18 December 7, instead of preparing for the first night at La Scala, hadn't wickedly enjoyed downloading in the basin of San Siro, where Inter-Juventus was played, loads of gray and dense fog to make even the trajectories of the ball disappear.
First Edwing Firmani, the cold turkey, then Angelillo on penalty they were signing a peremptory 2 to 0 but half an hour from the end of the second half the referee suspended the match. It was repeated on 18 December and the winner was Charles and Sivori's Juventus 3-1. For Inter he scored for Bicicli. Angelillo remained speechless. Inter lost contact with Milan who will win the Scudetto, six points ahead of their cousins.
Angelillo continued to score but with that "revoked" goal he could still have been the player with the most goals with Meazza (39 scored) in a single season between the league and official cups. That year was fantastic for the Argentine champion, who at just 21 set the stadiums on fire by scoring avalanche of goals. An authentic god of football: even Gianni Brera, never tender with the heroes of the kick, melted into memorable paeans. “His feet – wrote the famous journalist – leaned on the ball like a paintbrush on a palette. His stride varied according to his instincts and competitive needs. His kick was really a dance now excited now light, now violent now bland and almost sweet in tone ”.
I've always followed Inter and I don't remember among the Nerazzurri people an enthusiasm bordering on delirium like the one that exploded at San Siro when, with an impossible bicycle kick, Angelillo scored the third goal against Roma leading Inter to win a match which they lost 2-0 at the end of the first half. And to think that only the year before Angelo Moratti, Massimo's father, who had bought him from Boca Juniors thought that they had given him a bad copy of the Argentine striker who with Sivori and Maschio had formed the trio of dirty-faced angels, a formidable attack that had led the Argentine national team to beat Brazil and triumph in the America's Cup.
In 1957-58 it was still the Inter of Benito Lorenzi and his clan. Poison didn't look kindly on the natives, much less the one who had happened to play with him, a "stranger" and nothing more to whom he didn't even want to pass him a ball in the game. Angelillo suffered under that mustache that gave him more years than the few he had, regretting everything: Buenos Aires, his parents, the warmth of the Argentinean fans' applause. So saddened that Moratti himself called Fongaro and Masiero, two players chosen from among the bachelors of the team most inclined to party, so that in their evening outings they would also join that melancholy companion with them.
And here the football gods, who for Antonio Valentin Angelillo had already decided to make him a protagonist of Osvaldo Soriano's "Triste,solitaire y final", took him, in the guise of the two Nerazzurri defenders, to a nightclub in Piazza Diaz where exhibited a certain Attilia Tironi, alias Ilya Lopez. And the spark of passion flared up. Angelillo trimmed his mustache and began to feel more Milanese. In the summer Lorenzi left Inter to go to Alessandria. And he, the handsome Antonio, magically regaining his soft and feline step, began to score a deluge of goals.
The thirty-third, the one of the record, he achieved on the last day against Lazio. He entered the myth. The fans, mimicking a hit by Tony Dallara, the king of our local screamers, sang "Who are you Valentin, you make all full-backs tremble". Moratti pampered him but wanted to win the Scudetto which had been missing from the bulletin board for too long. So in the 1960-61 season Helenio Herrera arrives at Inter, overpaid like no other at the time, who had made havoc in Spain with Barcelona. He is Spanish-Argentinian but his football is muscular and offensive. One wonders how he will reconcile it with that of Angelillo, Firmani, Lindskog who have other qualities and what's more they don't like the retirements before and after the match that the new coach wants to introduce.
The start of the championship is high-sounding and seems to erase the anxieties of the eve. Inter scored five goals against Atalanta in Bergamo, then scored 2-1 at San Siro against Bari, another 6-0 away from home in Udine: "MilanInter", the old Milanese fan weekly, headlined "Non c' è Santi che tenga”, playing on the name of the Udinese goalkeeper. On the fourth day it was Lanerossi who succumbed to the goal machine built by Herrera, in which Angelillo, even if less of a leader but still captain, played his part. But after Vicenza came the fatal Padua in which Nereo Rocco gave a football lesson to the Wizard. Inter lost badly, much more than what the 1-2 score said: the Paduans compared to the simpering Nerazzurri were lightning fast. Herrera on the train that took him back to Milan began to meditate on the great tactical conversion: to arrange the defense with the free kick that would have been Picchi.
But in this new attacking formula there was one player too many who had to be sacrificed: the choice fell on Angelillo. The magician already had it in mind but fate made the choice easier for him as it was Angelillo himself who put himself out of the squad by stealthily getting off the train when the train stopped in Brescia: his Ilya lived there. That the magician and his "taca la bala" went to hell. Since then he played more in the reserves than in the first team. The captain's armband was also removed from him and passed to Picchi. In a country where an idol like Coppi had been excommunicated and massacred for loving a married woman, could the great footballer who fell into sin with a dancer be saved?
Today, between showgirls and discos, between cocaine and crazy nights, Angelillo's story would make you smile. But then it was another drama, for him, an angel repudiated by the magician and forced to leave Inter, and for the fans who lost their favorite idol. Angelillo emigrated to Rome where he stayed for four years, playing less and less as a goalscorer and more and more as a prompter for big footed Manfredini. But he never touched the peaks of the record season again. In fact, for Herrera's supporters, who grew with the wizard's successes, he did little to prove that it had been a mistake to sell him. At the age of 30 he returned to Milan, AC Milan side: he played very little but with Nils Liedholm's Milan he won the Scudetto that he had never managed to capture when it was in vogue.
Then he kicked again in Lecco and Genoa, in a sad sporting sunset, almost forgotten by everyone. The roaring times of the record were long gone. Even Ilya was a closed chapter. He tried to be a coach but he didn't have much luck even if he managed to bring Arezzo back to Serie B. He returned to the stage of Serie A and San Siro with Pescara but it was a flash of light that immediately went out . The romance with Ilya had also closed for some time. Angelillo was talked about less and less, practically disappeared. But on the very day of his disappearance, lovers of beautiful football - not just those of the Inter faith - realize that a legend has gone too quickly forgotten.
