“… The 10 players we will feature are the highest-ranked World Cup winners of our 100. Today, it is an Italian great who ranked 19th in our century and has a champions’ medal from the 1982 tournament despite never actually making it onto the pitch during it. Franco Baresi stood in the Amazon Theatre in Manaus. The salmon-pink opera house with a dome the colour of Brazil’s flag was built in 1896, when that city in the middle of the jungle became one of the richest on the planet during the rubber boom. …”
NYT/ATH