FOR SPORTS FANS of a certain age, it’s hard to believe Italia 90 turns 25 years old this coming summer.
While younger generations wonder what the fuss was about, for others, it will retain a place in the heart as one of the great sporting moments of their lifetime.
While only 11 at the time, RTÉ’s Aidan Power is one of the millions who remember it fondly.
“It’s still one of the greatest moments in my life, and I think, in most Irish people’s lives,” he tells The42.
“It was the first time it had ever happened. Yes, we’d been to the Euros two years previously, but we’d never been to a World Cup.
“The whole country was genuinely united behind one thing. Everyone over 30 or certainly, 35, has a memory or a story of it — whether they were watching it on the TV at home with the street parties, or there at the match and all the craic that went with it.”
Consequently, Power is planning to make a documentary that he hopes will air on TV around Christmas time, and which will gather together fans’ memories of this iconic moment in Irish sporting history.
“We’re trying to pull as many people as we can together to tell the fans’ story. They weren’t the greatest games of football, even though we got to the quarter-finals, but it’s about those moments that happened outside of the stadiums.
“At the stage we’re at, we’re still trying to source stories. We’re trying to move forward. There are so many similar stories and it’s about getting beyond some of those stories and finding some of the more quirky or unusual things.
“It doesn’t necessarily need to be people who went to Italy. It can be any Irish person who was watching them anywhere in the world — what their memories are. There is no story too big or too small. We’ll follow up on a lot of them, as we’re casting the net as widely as possible.”
Power and his team will also be exploring the event’s cultural impact, and looking at how it has come to be regarded as a symbol of the start of a new era in Irish life.
“It was a completely different time — no mobile phones, no internet, the cars, the fashion… The state of the country at the time [was also notable]. Things were very bleak, we had little to be shouting about.
“Yet here we were, punching above our weight on the world stage on an adventure we’d never been on. So we’ll be setting the documentary within the context of the 80s socially, politically and economically, which I think is important to do as well.”
The RTÉ presenter also says he wants to avoid focusing too heavily on the football itself, as the players’ stories are relatively well known at this stage.
“There may well be people who went on to be famous who were there or who have a story to tell us. But it will not [focus on] people in the football world. For example, we won’t be going down the road of bringing Packie Bonner back to talk about the penalties in Genoa. I’ve no doubt that kind of thing will be revisited by someone else. But we want to tell other people’s stories, because we all know the stories of the matches very well.”
In fact, as impressive as the team’s achievements were, Italia 90 ultimately transcended sport — it became better known for what it said about Ireland as a nation than as a football team.
“I think it was the first time many people watched an Ireland football match. Football was still very much for the purists. It was the first time many people had got on this bandwagon and some haven’t gotten off since.
“I was watching an old archive piece with Bill O’Herlihy and he said the Romania game was watched by 2.5million people on RTÉ Two, which is just mindblowing. And that’s television ratings, that’s not taking into account that most people were in the pub watching it, or in Italy. So collectively, the whole country came to a standstill for those few weeks.
“Many people who went to it had never been out of their own county, they’d never been on an aeroplane. It was a step into the unknown. People didn’t really have the money for it or anything, but they just went for it and had the time of their lives.
Moreover, there’s even a well-known theory that it inspired the Celtic Tiger and the unprecedented rise of Ireland’s economy.
“That has to be looked at too,” he says. “I know there are different schools of thought. Some people wonder was that actually the beginning, or is it too easy to say that Italia 90 kick-started the good times. It certainly coincided with the beginning of the good times.
“But before that, on the international stage, U2 were very much out there, Sinéad O’Connor was doing very well. Musically, we were very out there as a country, but at least for me, it feels as if things were never the same after that.”
If you have a good memory of Italia 90 and are interested in participating in the documentary, email italy90@cocotelevision.ie
