Italy 1990: Cameroon stun the champions, Roger Milla's dance and the World Cup with fewest goals in history
- Cameroon pulled off an upset by beating Argentina, the defending champions, 1-0 in the opening match of the 1990 World Cup in Italy; Argentina recovered and reached the final
- Roger Milla became an iconic figure of the tournament with his celebratory dance by the corner flag that remained in football's memory
- Italy 1990 was the World Cup with the fewest goals scored in the entire history of World Cups
After the four minutes Maradona gave us at the Azteca, football went on the defensive. Italy 90 is Notti Magiche, one of the most memorable World Cup soundtracks ever, and at the same time the most stodgy tournament ever played. Both things at once.
🇮🇹 The 1990 World Cup in numbers
- Host
- Italy
- Teams
- 24
- Champions
- 🏆 West Germany
- Runners-up
- Argentina
- Final
- West Germany 1-0 Argentina
- Stadium
- Stadio Olimpico · Rome
- Attendance
- 73,603
- Top scorer
- Salvatore Schillaci (Italy), 6 goals
Cameroon stun the champions
June 8, San Siro, opening match: Argentina, world champions and with Maradona, against Cameroon. The Africans played with incredible intensity, finished with nine players and won 1-0 with a header from Omam-Biyik that slipped past the goalkeeper.
It was no fluke. Cameroon topped their group, knocked out Colombia in the last 16 and reached the quarter-finals, the first time an African team had gone that far. There they took a 2-1 lead against England and lost 3-2 in extra time, with two Lineker penalties.
The symbol of it all was Roger Milla, a striker aged 38 who came off the bench, scored four goals and celebrated each one dancing by the corner flag. That celebration went around the world and people are still copying it.
Naples, Maradona and an impossible betrayal
The semi-final between Italy and Argentina was played in Naples. That is: in the city where Maradona was, literally, a saint — he had given Napoli the only two league titles in their history.
And Maradona did something Italy would never forgive him for: he publicly asked the Neapolitan fans to support Argentina, reminding them that the rest of the country treated them like second-class citizens the other 364 days of the year.
The match ended 1-1 and Argentina won it on penalties. From then on, every touch Maradona made in Italy was met with whistles, including in the final. They called him a traitor. He always said he was only telling the truth.
Gazza's tears
The other semi-final, England against West Germany, also went to penalties. But what people remember is a television shot: Paul Gascoigne, England's great hope, saw a yellow card that would have ruled him out of a potential final and broke down in tears on the pitch.
That image did something curious: in England it's considered the moment when football stopped being the preserve of hooligans and became popular again among the middle classes. It sounds over the top and yet that's what English sports historians themselves say.
Schillaci, the top scorer nobody saw coming
Salvatore Schillaci arrived at that World Cup at 25 years old, with just one cap for Italy and not even a starter. He came off the bench in the first match, scored, and never stopped: he finished with six goals, top scorer and best player of the tournament.
After 1990 he never scored for Italy again. An entire World Cup of glory and nothing else. He died in 2024 and Italy said goodbye to him like a national hero.
The ugliest final
8 July, Stadio Olimpico. Argentina reached the final having won just one match in normal time since the round of 16, with goalkeeper Goycochea saving penalties in two shootouts, and with four players suspended. Germany was far superior.
The match was a disaster: Monzón received the first red card ever shown in a World Cup final in the 65th minute, Brehme scored from a penalty in the 85th — a highly controversial penalty — and Dezotti was also sent off. Argentina finished with nine men.
At the final whistle, Maradona cried on the pitch while the stadium booed. It's the other great image of the tournament.
That Franz Beckenbauer, captain champion in 1974 and manager champion in 1990, is the only one who's done it.
That he isn't the only one and wasn't the first. Brazilian Mário Zagallo did it before: champion as a player in 1958 and 1962, and as a manager in 1970. And then came Didier Deschamps, champion as captain in 1998 and as manager in 2018. That's three. And get this, he wasn't even the only one to do it as captain: Deschamps lifted the Cup as captain in 1998 and won it again from the sidelines in 2018. Beckenbauer was the first to do it as captain.
That Milla was 38 at that World Cup, and that he was actually considerably older.
That the official date is 20 May 1952, which made him just 38 during the tournament. The suspicion that he was older has circulated since then, but there's no proof whatsoever: it's one of those doubts that gets repeated without anyone producing a document. And the really striking fact comes four years later: in 1994, at 42 years old, he scored again in a World Cup and remains the oldest ever goalscorer in the tournament.
That Italy 90 was unbearably dull and left nothing behind.
That the goal tally is objective: 115 in 52 matches, 2.21 per game, the lowest ever recorded. But from that tedium came two changes that fixed modern football: the ban on keepers handling deliberate back-passes, approved in 1992, and three points for a win, which FIFA introduced at the 1994 World Cup to reward attacking play. Nearly everything that makes a modern match entertaining was decided because this one was so dull.
What remained
Spain went out in the round of 16, losing 2-1 to Yugoslavia in extra time, after Míchel had scored a hat-trick against South Korea in the group stage.
And there remained a sense of the end of an era. Maradona would never be quite the same again, Germany reunified three months after that final — the team that won in Rome was the last "West Germany" in history — and football took note that things couldn't go on like this.
✏️ Corrected 22/10/2026: Deschamps was also champion as captain and as manager.
- Note on photos: from 1990 onwards practically all match material is owned by agencies and cannot be published. Here there are only public domain or Creative Commons images, which is why you'll see portraits taken in other years and museum objects instead of photos from the matches. Each caption says exactly what it is and when it's from.
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