Italy v Brazil (1982 FIFA World Cup)

Brazil had won all three of their first group stage matches, including comprehensive wins over Scotland (4–1) and New Zealand (4–0), and were the pre-tournament favourites.[4][5] They were widely praised for their attacking style. In their initial second group stage match, Brazil beat South American rivals and World Cup holders Argentina 3–1.

Italy, meanwhile, had a slow start to the tournament, having drawn all three of their first group stage matches and finishing runners-up in their group; they had only qualified for the second group stage by having scored one more goal than third-placed Cameroon. However, in the first of their second round matches, Italy had recorded an impressive 2–1 victory over Argentina. Italy's striker Rossi had failed to score up to that point and there was considerable debate about whether he should be in the team, as he had only recently returned from a two-year ban following his involvement in the Totonero 1980 match-fixing scandal. Italy were forced to play for a win to reach the semi-final, due to their inferior goal difference.

The result was seen by many as not only a defeat for Brazil, but a defeat of their attacking philosophy by the more organised Italians.[9] This match has since then been labelled by the Brazilian press as the "Sarrià Tragedy" (Portuguese: Tragédia do Sarrià).[10] The result of the match had a profound and lasting impact on Brazilian football and fundamentally changed its philosophy.[11] According to Luizinho, Brazil's centre back in 1982, the defeat changed Brazilian coaches' way of thinking, leading to a new, destructive philosophy based on more tactical, physical, defensive, and counterattacking football, possessing similarities with the style of football played by the Italians against the Brazilians.[12]

As described by sports journalist Tim Vickery: "For many Brazilian coaches, the failure of that 1982 side to win the World Cup (...) served as proof for ideas that had been kicking around for a while – starting with a 5–1 massacre at the hands of Belgium in 1963, confirmed by the defeat by Holland in the 1974 World Cup. The physical development of the game, it was thought, meant that traditional methods had to be revised. Brazilian players had to bulk up – Rubens Minelli, the most successful domestic coach of the 70s, wanted his team to be made up of six footers. And with less space on the field, the future of football lay in the counter attack, rather than elaborate attempts to pass through midfield." Tim Vickery continues by stating that "these thoughts have carried a lot of weight in the Brazilian game. They help explain why a succession of Brazil sides have caught the eye for explosive breaks down the flanks rather than for the succession of midfield triangles that enraptured Cappa and everyone else in 1982. When former Middlesbrough left-back Branco was in charge of Brazil’s youth sides, he told me that right from the start of the process the search for big, strong youngsters was a priority. Brazilian coaches, meanwhile, became fond of spouting the statistic that the chances of a goal are reduced if the move contains more than seven passes."[13] He also earlier stated in 2006 that "had Brazil won the trophy in 1982 the team would be more than a fond memory. They might be the blueprint for future sides, because winners are always copied."[14] When describing the events of the match, Sócrates later infamously recounted: "We had a hell of a team and played with happiness. Then Rossi had three touches and scored a hat-trick. Football as we know it died on that day."

Further success in 1994 and 2002 in mostly pragmatic, less flashy styles cemented the new philosophy and practically buried the traditional passing style further into the past.[15][16]

The rise of tiki-taka, a style of football partly based on moving triangles, positional interchange and intricate passing – highly reminiscent of the old Brazilian passing style, embodied by the 1982 team – has helped recover some of the prestige of the 1982 team in the country. The crushing defeat of the Brazilian counterattacking style by tiki-taka teams, namely the 4–0 defeat of Santos to Barcelona and the 7–1 Brazilian defeat to Germany at home at the World Cup in 2014 laid bare how Brazilian football had been left behind.[17][18] As a result, the country's football philosophy has been slowly returning to the old intricate passing style in the last few years, as recent success by Grêmio and Flamengo have shown.[19][20]

• Brazil–Italy football rivalry
• Brazil at the FIFA World Cup
• Italy at the FIFA World Cup