Italy's goalkeeper legend Walter Zenga turns 65: My God, Walter!

It was easy not to like Walter Zenga. Most football fans in this country first encountered the Italian goalkeeper with the very German first name at the opening match of the 1988 European Championship between the German national team and the Azzurri. One glance at Zenga's trademark – the striking gold chain – was enough to know: This guy could only be a sleazy playboy. He probably had a blonde model as a girlfriend and probably already released a single with the worst Italo-pop.

Of course that wasn't true at all. The blonde wasn't a model, but the presenter Roberta Termali, whom Zenga had met the year before the European Championships because he was presenting a football show on private television. And the disco record wasn't just a single, but an entire LP with eight tracks. Zenga even had his own radio show with the well-known presenter Amadeus. And that was just the beginning. Back home in Milan, Zenga never missed a party. The "Gazzetta dello Sport" once called him Il re degli eccessi , the king of excess, because he was magically attracted to anything that was even remotely embarrassing.

As I said, it was easy not to like him. And so, in the 56th minute of the match, the German fans rubbed their hands together in glee. Hosts and tournament favorites Germany were trailing 1-0 when the referee suddenly awarded an indirect free kick in the Italian penalty area. Zenga allegedly took too many steps with the ball. Only four were allowed at the time, so the referee held up all the fingers of his right hand to indicate that he had taken five steps before the goalkeeper cleared the ball.

Whether that's true, no one knows. Because Zenga had the ball firmly under control following a German corner, the television cameras showed several substitutes warming up during the crucial seconds. But whether that was correct or not, a free kick was awarded. Pierre Littbarski nudged the ball, and Andreas Brehme, of all people, who had just signed for Zenga's club, Inter Milan, fired the ball through the wall and into the net. It was the first, but certainly not the last, unfortunate moment for Walter Zenga at a major tournament.

That's just how it is with goalkeepers – what sticks in your memory are usually the mistakes. In Walter Zenga's case, this is almost tragic, because the Italian was one of the best goalkeepers of his generation. Perhaps even more so; after all, he was named World Goalkeeper of the Year three times in a row between 1989 and 1991. The Inter Tifosi loved him; after all, he was a native of Milan, never made a secret of his deep love for the club, and was part of the great eleven – along with Brehme and Lothar Matthäus – that finally won the championship again in 1989.

Even in the national team jersey, he could be relied upon. Perhaps his international career would have begun earlier than the fall of 1986 if he hadn't been such a scoundrel. At the beginning of 1985, Enzo Bearzot wanted to include him in the squad for the match against Ireland in Dublin, but for two days, Zenga disappeared, unreachable by anyone, not even the national coach. (According to "Gazzetta dello Sport," he had hidden away at a friend's house to finally get some peace and quiet from the women who stalked him after training with such hysterical zealotry you'd only ever see in Beatles movies.)

The highlight of his career would be the 1990 World Cup on home soil. Zenga was in great shape. The famous Italian journalist Gianni Brera even gave him one of the best nicknames of all time: deltaplano – the hang-glider. The term was meant to express that Zenga's strengths were on the line and he liked to fly through the air to fish balls out of the corner. Because Brera was a clever guy, the lovely nickname probably also contained a hint of criticism. Zenga loved flying moves so much that he was sometimes accused of preferring spectacular saves on the line to coming out and simply intercepting crosses.

In this respect, he was very different from Italy's greatest goalkeeping icon, the extremely matter-of-fact Dino Zoff. And yet, during the 1990 World Cup, his name was increasingly heard in connection with Walter Zenga. Zoff had once set an incredible record: he had gone 1,143 minutes without conceding a goal for his national team. But now this mark was in jeopardy. Zenga had not been beaten since a 1-0 defeat against Brazil in October 1989. Before the semi-final against Argentina, he had played 913 minutes. And in this decisive match, another 67 minutes had already been added when Diego Maradona played a somewhat helpless pass out to Julio Olarticoechea.

Italy were 1-0 up thanks to a goal from Salvatore "Toto" Schillaci and were perhaps already thinking about the final against Germany. Despite having retreated a little too far after the break – not least because of their reliance on Zenga – a highly average Argentinian team rarely posed a threat. Olarticoechea couldn't think of anything more than to spoon a half-hearted cross from the left corner of the penalty area into the path of Claudio Caniggia, who was racing towards the near post. Thirty years later, an entire generation of Tifosi still remembers the next two seconds as clearly as if they happened yesterday.

Six meters from goal, Caniggia rose up with his marker, Riccardo Ferri. The Argentinian just managed to get the back of his head on the ball and nudged it harmlessly toward the far post. That said, the whole thing would have been harmless if Zenga had been on the line. But he wasn't. At that precise moment, the man who was so reluctant to come out made a clumsy attempt to intercept the cross. When the ball thumped into the net, Zenga was standing seven or eight meters from the goal and must have felt the stares of his teammates like daggers in his back.

Zenga's only mistake of the entire tournament meant Argentina had to wait until a penalty shootout, in which two Italians missed their spots. The 517 minutes that the goalkeeper kept a clean sheet at the finals remains a record, but that was probably no consolation to him, nor was the fact that Madonna called him the sexiest man at the tournament. Zenga remained the national goalkeeper for two more years, but because Italy failed to qualify for Euro 1992, he was denied a truly major success with the Squadra Azzurra. At least he won the UEFA Cup twice in the 1990s with his great love Inter, in 1991 against AS Roma and in 1994 against Salzburg. In the four finals (the UEFA Cup was decided on a two-legged basis until 1997), Zenga conceded only one goal.

A few years later, he began an affair with a 20-year-old lingerie model and moved to America to end his career in the MLS. There he began his second career, first as a player-coach with the New England Revolution in 1998. But his time as a coach has also been rather mixed. He worked in Romania for several years, which earned him his third wife, a second citizenship, and a league title. After that, things went rather suboptimally. The Arab club Al-Shaab fired him after two months, Sampdoria Genoa after five, Wolverhampton Wanderers after three, and FC Crotone after six. In early March 2020, he signed a contract with Cagliari Calcio – six days later (and before Zenga's first game), the season in Italy was suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Today, Walter Zenga turns 65. We offer our heartfelt congratulations and let him have the final word. When the newspaper "La Repubblica" asked him a few years ago about his reputation as a bon vivant and his dazzling career, he replied: "Journalists always complain that players are all boring and banal. And when someone comes along who knows how to hold a microphone, they accuse him of being a star. Everything I've done has been experience. I don't regret anything."