Sandro Mazzola has died at 83: Inter’s tribute

World of football in mourning.

The world of football mourns Sandro Mazzola, who has died at the age of 83.

By a twist of fate, Saturday 19 September marks the 100th anniversary of the opening of San Siro, which staged a Milan derby that Inter won 6-3.

San Siro was his lifelong home, where he played for two decades from 1957 to 1977, scoring 162 goals in 566 matches in the Nerazzurri shirt, the only one he wore in his career.

Away from club football, he also played for the Italy team, for whom he scored 22 goals in 70 appearances, winning the European Championship in 1968 and reaching the final of the 1970 World Cup in Mexico, lost 4-1 to Brazil after the legendary semi-final won 4-3 by Italy against Germany after extra time.

He also won the 4 Serie A titles, 2 European Cups and 2 Intercontinental Cups with Inter, who in practice took him in from the time when, at the age of six, he was orphaned following the death of his father, Valentino Mazzola, the symbolic figure of the Grande Torino, who died at the age of 30 on 4 May 1949 in the air disaster of Superga.

After hanging up his boots, Sandro Mazzola worked for Massimo Moratti's Inter as sporting director, a role he later also held at Torino, bringing the Brazilian Fenomeno Ronaldo to Milan, who has just turned 50.

He also worked as a television pundit for Rai Sport and TeleMontecarlo.

Inter statement

FC Internazionale Milano, president Giuseppe Marotta, vice-president Javier Zanetti, manager Cristian Chivu and his staff, the players and the entire Inter world join, with profound emotion, in mourning the passing of Sandro Mazzola, a Nerazzurri legend and a legend of world football, and, in remembering him, embrace his family.

The urge to remember is mixed with restraint: how hard it is to find the right words to say farewell to someone who wrote history, truly wrote it, indelibly and without precedent?

Harder still when gripped by a melancholy that is already here and will not leave us, because it feels as though we can still see him here, between the club headquarters and Appiano, reminiscing about Puskas, Herrera, Suarez and Corso, one anecdote after another, then immediately bringing it back to the present, the desire for Inter shining in his eyes, wanting to talk about Lautaro and our Inter, the one of today, the one of always.

Sandro Mazzola was one of the greatest footballers in history. Not only in Nerazzurri history. He was Inter’s history: he entered it as a boy and never left. On his shoulders sat a heavy burden, the memory of a father who had seemed invincible. In his destiny were two legendary Nerazzurri who would in effect raise him, guiding him on his path through history.

One shirt for his whole life, one dream alone. Built without a father, lost in the Superga disaster, that of Grande Torino. Alessandro, Sandro, Sandrino to everyone, was six years, five months and 23 days old. He saw the shattered faces of the people embracing him and running their hands over his head, and wondered what was happening. Who Valentino had been, Sandro came to know through the epic passed down day by day. He started to nurture it at the San Lorenzo oratory in Milan, in Porta Ticinese, in full-pitch matches against Adriano Celentano. Nor was he the only Inter man who shaped his development: Giuseppe Meazza and Benito Lorenzi did too. Meazza developed him technically, teaching him every secret. Lorenzi arrived at Sandro’s home in Cassano d’Adda with boots and a ball. At the age of eight, Mazzola and his brother were effectively Inter’s mascots: between pitch, dressing room and stadium, a total Nerazzurri education.

Skipping stages and becoming a man out of necessity. Sandrino did it quickly, helped by events too. He, born in 1942, was thrown into the first team in the infamous replay of Juventus v Inter on 10 June 1961 in Turin. From an oral exam at school to the trip to the Piedmont capital, where Moratti and Herrera fielded the Primavera side. It ended 9-1. For Inter, a slim lad with a gifted touch scored: Sandro Mazzola. He was 18.

A second striker, we would say today. An 8 and a 10, like the shirts he wore for Inter. An inside-forward or a centre-forward? Herrera built the right role around him, setting up an uncontrollable explosion in that spectacular army that was the Grande Inter. His consecration? Very early, sealed by the giants of world football. The Prater in Vienna, European Cup final, 1964. On the way onto the pitch, it was Suarez who pushed Mazzola out: Sandro had stayed behind admiring his idols outside the dressing room, Di Stefano, Puskas and the other Real Madrid champions. Then came two goals on the pitch. A brace in the European Cup final, Inter’s first European triumph, an unprecedented victory bearing Mazzola’s signature and Puskas’s congratulations: “You are worthy of your father Valentino,” the great Hungarian told him, giving him his shirt.

Stories we know by heart, stories we have heard again and again without ever tiring of them, each time finding a new detail, told in a voice that was warm and always moved by memory. A sense of devotion and total gratitude towards Inter, “like a mother to me”, repaid with an endless stream of plays, goals and wonders. Four Serie A titles, two European Cups, two Intercontinental Cups, the Serie A top-scorer title (in 1965 with 17 goals) and the European Cup top-scorer title (seven goals in 1964). Runner-up in the 1971 Ballon d’Or behind Johan Cruyff.

Then there was the Grande Inter of Angelo Moratti, of Helenio Herrera, of Sarti, Burgnich and Facchetti. Mazzola was there, between midfield and attack, drawing trajectories and scoring goals. European nights, afternoons at the Meazza. Crucial and unforgettable goals. His trademark against Independiente in the Intercontinental Cup, the comeback against Liverpool signed off and celebrated with “When the Saints Go Marching In” blasted over the loudspeakers at San Siro. And more: the derby goal after 13 seconds, the goal in Inter v Lazio in 1966 that delivered the first star. All the way to 1977. In between, the European Championship with Italy, the World Cups, the relay with Rivera.

Seventeen seasons, 565 official matches, 158 goals. His bond with Inter never broke, first through a career as an executive and then as sporting director. Even behind a desk, his instincts were unique. Platini and Falcao, then deals that slipped away. Zenga, brought back to Milan from Sambenedettese. And above all, Ronaldo. Il Fenomeno, who arrived after the pressure applied by Moratti and, indeed, Mazzola. When R9 was presented at Inter’s headquarters, beside him were Luis Suarez and Sandro Mazzola.

Those visits to Inter headquarters continued in recent years too. As a member of the Club’s Hall of Fame, he always spoke of the unique and indissoluble bond with the Nerazzurri colours. He did so too when recounting it to Lautaro and his team-mates on a recent visit to Appiano Gentile. A place where he felt at home, where he remembered training camps with Herrera through wonderful and amusing anecdotes.

He also felt the affection of the Nerazzurri fans in person in May 2024, on the day of the celebration of the second star: he, with Bedin and Cappellini, was on the pitch, celebrated for that first star won 58 years earlier.

He shone on the pitch, and his star still shines now, the star of the moustache. He, as he often said, had only one final wish: “To be remembered as a good man, who gives it a go even when it is impossible to win, like in that 9-1.”

We will do that, Sandro.