Italian football is mourning Sandro Mazzola, the Inter Milan great whose life was bound to the Nerazzurri from childhood to retirement. He died aged 83, with Inter confirming the news on Saturday.
Mazzola spent all 17 years of his professional playing career with Inter, becoming one of the defining figures of the club’s European glory years. He scored 158 goals across 565 appearances and helped deliver four Serie A titles and two European Cups.
Quick facts
- Sandro Mazzola has died at the age of 83.
- He made 565 Inter appearances and scored 158 times.
- His Inter honours included four league championships and two European Cups.
- He won Euro 1968 with Italy and reached the 1970 World Cup final.
- After retiring in 1977, he held sporting-director roles at Inter and Torino.
Inter described Mazzola as one of the greatest players in football history, not merely in the club’s own past. The club said he represented Inter’s story, having arrived as a boy and remained connected to it throughout his life.
His childhood had been marked by tragedy. Mazzola was six when his father Valentino, himself an Italy international and a Torino player, died in the Superga air disaster in May 1949.
The Torino squad were returning from a match in Lisbon when their aircraft crashed, killing everyone on board. The disaster remains one of the darkest moments in Italian football history.
Mazzola’s first-team Inter debut came at 18 in extraordinary circumstances. The Italian federation ordered a Juventus-Inter fixture to be replayed after overturning an initial 2-0 Inter win, which had followed a pitch invasion by Juventus supporters.
Inter fielded their youth side for the replay in Turin. Mazzola had sat a school examination before travelling to the match, then scored Inter’s only goal from the penalty spot in a 9-1 defeat.
He quickly became a central player for the club. In the 1964 European Cup final, Mazzola struck twice as Inter beat Real Madrid 3-1 to claim their first title in the competition.
He was again a major figure when Inter retained the European crown the following season. At international level, he was part of Italy’s victorious Euro 1968 squad and the side that finished runners-up at the 1970 World Cup in Mexico.
Mazzola ended his playing career in 1977 before later serving as Inter’s sporting director. He also worked in the same position at Torino, the club so closely associated with his father.
Inter recalled a player known for his moustache and his enduring competitiveness. The club said Mazzola’s wish was to be remembered as a good man who kept fighting even when victory was out of reach, as it had been on the day of that 9-1 defeat in Turin.
