Baggio, The Man With "Educated Feet"

Italy is not in this World Cup, but my memory can rival its HD.  In it, Roberto Baggio is not frayed at the edges.  His memory doesn't yellow or smear.  No, in it, Baggio emerges from the grainy fog of a 1990 broadcast a speckless blue, his perm bobbing, his i piedi educati, or educated feet, talking, teaching.

They dialogue with Giuseppe Giannini in a 1-2.  They are at times diplomatic.

He skips, floats past the Czechoslovakian players.  They are at times duplicitous.

One Czechoslovakian, two, (maybe three)? It's irrelevant.

What matters is that Baggio spies space.  Openings. Percentages.

He scores.

And then he collapses, lapping up the adulation.

On this day, 28 years ago.