It’s become one of the most iconic images of Italian football in the 21st century. Roberto Baggio is taking a corner for Brescia at a sold-out San Siro on a beautiful Milanese day in May 2004. Baggio’s looking to his left, the game’s most famous ponytail — graying, thicker and more bountiful compared to its 90s predecessor — resting on his slender shoulders, scanning the penalty box to see which teammate to pick out. The sheer scale and concrete beauty of the Giuseppe Meazza is on full show in the background. Surprisingly, considering the amount of individuals on a pitch during a match, there’s scarcely anyone else in the frame except for referee Antonio Giannoccaro in the distance and two Brescia players so far away it’s impossible to make them out. The picture gives off the impression Baggio is in the San Siro alone, with a paying audience of 80,000 here solely to see him. In many ways, they were.
It’s a truly marvellous image, and many don’t realise it was Baggio’s last game as a professional footballer.
Newly-crowned Serie A champions Milan welcomed Brescia on the final day of the 2003/04 season for a game of celebration. Carlo Ancelotti’s team, at the peak of their mid-00s greatness, had been comfortably the best team in the league and won their first Scudetto in five years two weeks before against Roma. Had it not been for the first of two consecutive psychological meltdowns, Milan would’ve likely retained the Champions League in 03/04. Andriy Shevchenko was at the pinnacle of his sumptuous powers, scoring 24 goals in 32 league games (which would earn him the Ballon d’Or later in the year); the signing of Kaka so transformative that it pushed the majestic Manuel Rui Costa to the bench for the rest of his Milan career; the midfield trio of Andrea Pirlo, Gennaro Gattuso and Clarence Seedorf continuing their growth as a Swiss army knife unit, while Paolo Maldini and Cafu proving they had years left in them at the highest level despite being in their mid-30s (Maldini had, in fact, just finished third in the 2003 Ballon d’Or ranking at the age of 35).
Yet in spite of Milan’s brilliance and coronation as champions, everyone inside San Siro was there to see Baggio’s last tango with the ball. One final chance to see Italy’s most beloved player before he walked off into retirement. Baggio had announced at the beginning of 2004 that this was to be his final season as a player. Soon to be 37-years-old, his legs simply could no longer obey his football brain, and the pain was getting too much. Baggio recalled towards the end of his career he prayed for rainy days on match days, as the water-soaked grass would be easier on his battered knees. In a 2022 interview, he revealed that it got to the point where his wife would have to help him out of his car after games. In the bowels of San Siro, the state of his shattered right knee can be seen in a video which shows Baggio hideously pushing fluid from one side to the next, with seemingly nothing in between.
Despite the pain, Baggio was still performing. 12 league goals for Brescia meant he’d reached double figures in each of his four seasons with Le Rondinelle. Relegation had been avoided for another season and in classic Baggio fashion, there had been some pearlers: the swivel and left-footed finishes against Parma and Lazio; the top corner free-kick against Udinese and the outside-the-box-chip against Modena all worthy entries into his ever-growing catalogue of wonder goals.
There were calls for Baggio to be selected for Euro 2004, but with Francesco Totti in his prime, Antonio Cassano having a productive season and Alessandro Del Piero a favourite of then-Azzurri boss Giovanni Trapattoni despite Del Piero never transferring his Juventus form to the national team, there was no genuine chance of Trapattoni bringing a fourth No.10 to Portugal, let alone one who was 37 and with limited mobility.
Trapattoni refused to cave to public pressure and bring Baggio to the World Cup in Japan and South Korea (something Baggio’s never forgiven him for) two years prior, but he did hand him a farewell match. On April 28 Italy hosted Spain in Genoa in a friendly as the Stadio Luigi Ferraris paid tribute to the country’s greatest number 10. Five years after his last appearance, Baggio was handed the captain’s armband for the second half and showed flickers of brilliance throughout his 88 minutes on the pitch. One sequence of play had an uncanny resemblance to the goal that knocked Spain out of USA ’94 a decade earlier, however as Baggio rounded Iker Casillas after heading Gianluca Zambrotta’s long ball past the goalkeeper, the angle narrowed and his left foot shot went wide.
A vintage Baggio performance would’ve put the pressure on Trapattoni to bring Baggio to Euro 2004, but as he walked off with two minutes remaining, even the most ardent Baggio fan knew this was his final cap. Banners were displayed inside the Marassi, with ‘Grazie Roby’, ‘No Baggio, No Party!’ and most prescient: ‘Italy loved you, Baggino, but it also obscured and humiliated you’ among those that caught the eye, with the latter a nod to Baggio’s fraught relationship with Italy’s football ideology and the banishment of its artists. Italy had — foolishly — decided it could do without Baggio long ago.
The party was indeed ending, but it wasn’t over just yet.
Baggio’s penultimate game produced his 205th and final Serie A goal in a 2-1 win over Lazio at home, yet it was fitting that Italy’s biggest and most famous arena would be the setting for the last 90 minutes of his career.
After receiving a visit from Milan president Silvio Berlusconi — who signed Baggio for Milan in 1995 —and taking pictures with linesmen looking to treasure the moment, the game kicked off. The match had the feel of a testimonial and an end of season with both teams having nothing to play for about it. Milan zipped through the gears when needed, but they also sat back and almost allowed Baggio the ball, except for the snarling presence of Gattuso.
Jon-Dahl Tomasson opened the scoring not long after the half hour mark, with Kaka feeding the Dane after a superb run from the halfway line. Shevchenko tapped in Milan’s second after good work from Cafu down the right-hand side to go one goal ahead of Parma’s Alberto Gilardino and securing his second Capocannoniere title in four years. Baggio had been mostly on the fringes of the contest, but struck the woodwork with a trademark free-kick just before half time after being hauled down by Gattuso on the periphery of the box.
The second half played out in pretty much the same vein. Franco Matuzalem scored for Brescia with a long-range strike to make it 2-1, but Tomasson restored the two-goal advantage with a header following more Kaka brilliance. While the sun was setting on Baggio’s career, it was just rising for Kaka, who was highlighting why he would go on to become one of the players of the 2000s. In his debut season with Milan, the 21-year-old finished with 14 goals in all competitions, and the way in which he glided past players here was a taster of how he’d terrify defenders for the rest of the decade.
Rui Costa, the man Kaka usurped from the No.10 position at Milan, came on with half an hour remaining and the effortlessly suave midfielder added a fourth, rifling the ball home from outside the box. In between chats with Milan players, Baggio cut a frustrated figure, unable to influence the game as he no doubt would’ve wanted. Yet the truth was this Brescia team were mostly comprised of workmanlike players and even if Milan weren’t at full throttle, the gap between the two sides was stark.
Baggio’s number had been called by boss Gianni De Biasi, and the stadium rose in unison to applaud. Sliding his Buddhist-inspired captain’s armband off, he applauded the fans back and, in a scene that would turn even the most stoic of individuals into a sobbing wreck, Baggio walked towards Maldini and embraced the Milan captain; arguably Italy’s two greatest football talents of the last half-century sharing a tender moment amid 80,000 fans and millions watching at home. “Thank you for everything Roberto, from today Italian football will never be the same again,” Maldini said in his ear. Years later, Baggio admitted Maldini’s words almost made him break down in tears.
Now on the side line, Baggio shook hands with everyone on both benches, looked up at the fans who always adored and never abandoned him one last time, and walked down the tunnel. His career officially over.
“Da quando Baggio non gioca più, non è piu’ domenica” (Since Baggio no longer plays, it’s no longer Sunday), sang Italian singer Cesare Cremonini in his 2005 song Marmellata. For the generation who grew up on a diet of Football Italia on Sunday afternoons on Channel 4, Serie A has never truly been the same. Despite the league’s galaxy of stars in the 90s, Baggio was the one who personified the era best: exotic, ethereal, brilliant, stylish.
Even if Football Italia itself had stopped running two years earlier and his final game was now broadcast in the UK by Eurosport, May 16 2004 in retrospect represented the true end of a golden age. Other Football Italia stalwarts like Zinedine Zidane, Juan Veron, Ronaldo and Hernan Crespo had left Italy over the prior three years; Gabriel Batistuta sought semi-retirement in Qatar in 2003 and Beppe Signori would also follow his lead a year later, heading to Greece. Yet it was Baggio’s retirement that hit hardest. Time grants immunity to no one.
And as Cremonini says, Sunday’s really haven’t been the same.