By now, comparisons were being made with Paolo Rossi, the inspiration when Italy won the 1982 World Cup.
“Rossi was a champion,” Schillaci said ahead of a semi-final against Argentina that his side were expected to win. “I am an ordinary, modest guy. I just hope I can continue to do what I have been doing.”
He did, opening the scoring with another poacher’s effort, but this time it was not enough. Italy passed England’s record of 499 minutes without conceding at a finals before their goal was breached in the second half – and the fairy tale was finished when they went out on penalties.
Every national newspaper in Italy used the headline ‘End of a dream’ while Gazzetta and Corriere dello Sport simply put ‘NO’ in huge letters on their front pages.
“We deserved to win,” reflected Schillaci. “I think if we had beaten Argentina we would have gone on to win the World Cup.”
That was not quite the end of the Schillaci story, however. The day before West Germany beat Argentina in the final, he grabbed his sixth goal of the tournament in the third-place play-off against England, putting him ahead of Czech Tomas Skuhravy as the tournament’s leading goalscorer.
“After the tournament, I went away to somewhere quiet,” Schillaci says. “Everybody wanted a piece of me but I just wanted to get away from it all, especially after the pain of our semi-final defeat.”
The next time he made the headlines, it would be for a less savoury reason. The following November, he was banned for one game for threatening to have Fabio Poll shot after the Bologna player punched him during an on-pitch row.
By then, the goals were drying up too. He scored only five in the league in the 1990-91 season and six the following campaign. An injury-plagued move to Inter Milan in 1992 failed to revive him and he ended his career in exile – albeit a lucrative one – as the first Italian to play in Japan’s fledgling J-League.
While he was still in Serie A and struggling to regain his World Cup form, Schillaci said: “Even if I were to drop out of the Italian team, I will still have with me for the rest of my life the wonderful memories of Italia ’90.”
He still had them after returning to his home city to run the youth academy he used to play for.
What was clear from talking to Schillaci was that, while he enjoyed reliving past glories when he was asked to play in exhibition matches, he was also happy his fame did not change him too much.