World Cup Exhibition opens this weekend

A SPECIAL exhibition is coming to Cork next month to mark the World Cup, telling the stories of Ireland’s and Italy’s teams dating back to 1990.

The Chasing the Ball exhibition will be launched on Sunday, November 13 in St Peter’s Exhibition Hall on North Main St, and will showcase original material covering the 1990, 1994, and 2002 World Cups.

The project is promoted by the Italian Institute of Culture in Dublin and curated by FMAV, the Museo della Figurina in Modena (Italy).

It will display a series of albums, stickers, drawings, and original materials relating to past World Cups, with Ireland and Italy as the protagonists. It is a “unique opportunity” to re-experience historic moments for the two countries.

In 1990, Italy played in the World Cup finals for the 12th time, as the host country, while the Irish team were making their debut. Four years later in the US, the Ireland-Italy rematch took place in New York, a home for large numbers of both Irish and Italian immigrant populations. Korea/Japan 2002 was a World Cup that marked Asia’s emergence onto the football world stage, in which Ireland and Italy trod parallel paths and suffered the same fate.

Hundreds of trading cards, 80 albums, and 18 drawings representing the goals scored by the Irish teams will all be on display in the exhibition.

Collection

The items on display have been loaned from the Gianni Bellini collection, with Bellini widely considered to be the world’s leading collector of football trading cards and stickers.

As a collector, he has attracted the attention of major international publications, including L’Equipe and the football magazine FourFourTwo, in addition to TV networks like CBS, CNN and the History Channel.

Ruggero Corrias, ambassador of Italy to Ireland, said the aim of the exhibition is to give visitors the chance to feel as if they actually attended the matches themselves and got to know the great World Cup players, “most especially” Italia 90.

“In the 1990 tournament, as well as the following one held in 1994 in the United States of America, the two national teams faced each other in matches that resulted in moments of great football and passion that delighted the supporters of both nations,” he said.

“These three tournaments are firmly imprinted in the minds of Irish and Italian fans alike for similar and sometimes contrasting reasons.

“Bitter disappointments, albeit with remarkable results, were met by the Italian national team; whilst the Irish team saw great results and a new-found soaring public affection,” he added.

• The exhibition runs at St Peter’s until December 7.