This week’s roundup also features snooker deciders, somersault throw-ins and the 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers
1) RIP Paolo Rossi. The Italian football great’s death was announced on Thursday. Judging by this Fifa short film from 2018, he was also a wise man to boot. He is best remembered for leading Italy to World Cup glory in 1982, nabbing the Golden Boot and the Golden Ball (for best player) – here are his six goals from that tournament, including the hat-trick against Brazil. “Coming second is the same as coming 20th,” he says in this interview from last year at his home in Tuscany. At club level he was most associated with Juventus and Milan but was the top scorer – Capocannoniere – in Serie A in 1977-78, helping newly promoted Vicenza finish second. A legend of the game.
2) Peter Alliss died last week at the age of 89. What was the legendary commentator’s secret to success? “I just waffle along, loving the game of golf,” he said in 2012. Some of Alliss’s highlights: trying to sum up Jean van de Velde’s infamous Carnoustie collapse, watching Tom Kite battle with a bank at Wentworth and covering Miguel Ángel Jiménez’s unusual warm-up. Alliss was also a fine golfer in his own right before his commentary career. He shares a host of useful tips in these delightfully retro videos, and his swing is the subject of this clip from 1968. In the booth, Alliss always enjoyed an amusing aside, whether trying out a cockney accent or offering tips to a youngster, but he could tackle the serious stuff too. In 2009 he visited Seve Ballesteros at his home in Spain for an enlightening and emotional interview.
