Inter Milan, Italy icon Mazzola dies aged 83

Former Inter Milan and Italy forward Sandro Mazzola, one of the defining figures of the Nerazzurri’s golden era, has died at the age of 83, the club announced Saturday.

“Sandro Mazzola was one of the greatest footballers in history. Not only in the history of the Nerazzurri,” Inter said in a statement.

With Inter, the dominant force in Italian football during the mid-1960s, Mazzola won four Serie A titles, as well as back-to-back European Cups in 1964 and 1965.

Mazzola scored 158 goals in 565 appearances for Inter and produced one of his best performances in the 1964 European Cup final, netting twice in a 3-1 victory over Real Madrid.

That earned him the seal of approval from Hungarian legend Ferenc Puskas, who gave Mazzola his shirt after the match. “I played against your father. You are worthy of him,” said Puskas.

His father was Valentino Mazzola, the Torino great who was killed in the 1949 Superga air disaster, which claimed the lives of 31 people, including 18 players and eight Italy internationals from the side known as the “Grande Torino”.

Mazzola scored 22 times in 70 appearances for Italy and won the 1968 European Championship, as the Azzurri beat Yugoslavia 2-0 in a replay in Rome.

He also played in the 1970 World Cup final in Mexico, where Italy lost 4-1 to Pele’s great Brazil side.

The following year he finished runner-up to Johan Cruyff for the Ballon d’Or.

After a 17-year professional career, Mazzola retired in 1977 and held an executive position at Inter before later serving as sporting director of Torino.

“Today, another piece of the Nerazzurri legend leaves us. Sandro was Inter: he joined the club as a boy and chose to stay here forever, one shirt, seventeen seasons, an entire lifetime,” said Inter president Giuseppe Marotta.

“With (Helenio) Herrera’s Grande Inter, he wrote chapters that nobody will ever erase. Today, it is our duty to preserve his memory, because a club is only as great as its memory. And Sandro’s memory will remain with us, forever.”

AFP