The journalist and Rai commentator who narrated football to millions of Italians for years has died at the age of 86.
It is a sad day for football enthusiasts in Italy, especially for those who, like me, due to age, grew up and began to love football accompanied by his extraordinary and iconic voice: Bruno Pizzul has died.
Narrator of an Italian football era that didn’t win but always came very close, Pizzul’s greatness lies in having contributed to the evolution of sports commentary: he was the first commentator to revolutionize the polished style of the ’70s and early ’80s by adding a personal touch to his narratives.
Iconic phrases, always timely comments, a rhythm that could change with the moments of the match, accelerate and slow down, accompanying the event and following its course without ever overshadowing it. With professionalism, participation, and his unique irony, he became beloved and recognizable.
At the age of 47, after replacing the legendary Nando Martellini as the voice of Rai’s football events, from the National Team to European Cups, he found himself narrating a great sporting event that turned into an unspeakable tragedy, a wound that still bleeds today recalling the blood at the Heysel stadium of the 39 innocent victims who had gone to watch a match and never returned home: the European Cup Final between Juventus and Liverpool. What was supposed to be a sports commentary turned into a terrible news report that kept millions of Italians on edge, and Pizzul managed the emotion of that moment, for which he was obviously unprepared, with extraordinary professionalism. At the time, he was my age. Even today, listening to the pre-match audio of that event, with the commentator forced to update viewers on the confirmed victims, I cannot help but admire how the handling of that crisis was professionally and humanly impeccable. A giant.
From a sporting point of view, he was not fortunate enough to narrate a winning Italy, despite his long career leading him to commentate the Azzurri in 5 World Cups and 4 European Championships: at Italia ’90, the World Cup of Magical Nights, he narrated a fairy tale without a happy ending, with elimination on penalties in the semifinal at the hands of Maradona’s Argentina, while in USA 1994 the goal was even closer, with that thrilling narration of the Pasadena Final, but there too the penalties saw the opponents, Brazil, celebrate.
He came close to narrating an Azzurri victory at the 2000 European Championships as well, with the unfortunate Final lost after Italy’s extraordinary journey. In the 2002 World Cup, his composure was severely tested by Byron Moreno’s refereeing, which played a decisive role in the elimination of the Azzurri by host nation South Korea.
That was his last major event narrated from the microphones of mamma Rai. Fate, cynical and deceitful, wanted him to take up the microphone to narrate the Azzurri’s matches immediately after the 1982 World Cup victory and to leave it just before the 2006 World Cup victory: a trick he didn’t deserve but that didn’t unsettle him and didn’t diminish his popularity in the slightest.
