The “Puliciclone”, a striker “dal cuore granata”!

1 . The grit of Paolino Pulici, a Toro-style striker.

It’s the end of the 1974-1975 season, two years later, Paolino Pulici returns to the bomber throne, this time in solitude with 18 goals. He had won the title as the top scorer in the 1972-1973 season by scoring 17 goals, together with Savoldi and Rivera.

The growth of the understanding with Ciccio Graziani sublimates his skills as a ruthless goal scorer. The label “goal twins” is coined for the two Granata strikers, who find themselves with their eyes closed. The center forward is mobile, impetuous and generous, able to score as well as to open spaces for his teammate by “taking away” a couple of defenders; the winger is fast and essential, but it would be better to define Pulici as the second center forward of Torino.

He too is strong in the air; he too is deadly in intervening in the center of the penalty area on assists from his teammates or in slipping into the gaps created by the incursions of his line mate. His career has not always been easy, until the “weaning” operated by Giagnoni, which changed his career.

Raised in the myth of Gigi Riva (Pulici also passed through Legnano), he candidly admits: «When Riva was at the top, I redid the fundamentals. Giagnoni helped me in that period. He corrected me every day, I have not forgotten it and he also had an exceptional energy».

The energy that Pulici was able to express on the field. They called him “Puliciclone”, a name that well expresses his disruptive force, that unleashed competitive energy that explodes like a spring compressed for too long.
Precisely because he is an instinctive goal scorer, he sometimes alienates the sympathies of aesthetes, due to the little bit of crudeness that remains in his technique as a goal-scoring animal.

For the fans, however, Paolino expresses the “Toro heart” well, the special energy that those who wear the garnet shirt must be able to express in order to get in tune with the most genuine moods of the environment.

Off the field he seems hostile and surly, but it is only shyness, a way of closing himself in for self-defense that does not help him to “bond” with the press. Perhaps also for this reason no one supports his candidacy for the national team, which will remain one of the most controversial notes of his career, for the results below his potential.

Pulici remains a great, great club striker, incapable of transferring his same lethal effectiveness to the Azzurri stage.

Perhaps it was a matter of emotion, the same that led him to give his best in the championship: “Every ball,” he would recall at the end of his career, “was a kind of war for me. I didn’t know half measures and I rejected the idea that you could play just looking to maintain the result.”

The “Maratona” curve of the Stadio Comunale knows it, and has made him an idol, also for his very strong anti-diva characteristics: the celebrations with clenched fists under the foaming of the Granata fans in a happy storm, his walking home after training, chatting with the fans. A true champion, a Toro man.

2 . “Azzurra” nostalgia!
Once again, “Puliciclone”, conquers the top of the scorers with 21 goals, and together with Torino wins the “Scudetto” title for the 1975-1976 season!
It is inevitable, however, that in the year of Torino’s tricolor consecration he is its most dry and continuous excelling scorer. Pulici is a typical goal hunter, gifted with the classic selfishness of a pure striker. It is useless to ask him for refined dribbling or shrewd participation in the maneuver.

He was born to aim for the back of the net, with his power and above all his agility, which makes him a prodigy in acrobatic conclusions. His relationship with the “azzurra” blue jersey is singular and contrasting.

Ace of the junior national team (10 games, 5 goals), highly esteemed by Enzo Bearzot, an old granata heart, who made him debut and play a lot in the Under 23 (9 games and 5 goals), Pulici made his debut in the senior team on March 31, 1973, against Luxembourg.

On the Azzurri bench sat Ferruccio Valcareggi, who seemed to place his bets strongly on the Granata striker in the climate of renewal of that period, to the point of including him in the squad of twenty-two for the 1974 World Cup.
The failure of the expedition then cost a brief period of oblivion for Paolino, who returned to wear the blue jersey only at the end of the ’74-75 season, with the new title of top scorer on the way. Bernardini lined him up in the unfortunate friendly in Moscow, and then launched him as a starter, only to later put him as an alternative to the city rival Bettega, who was on the rise.

First Riva, then Bettega: Pulici was definitely not lucky in terms of competition. Finally, the joke. When Bearzot was left alone at the helm of the national team, in the autumn of 1977, he immediately used Pulici in the experimental friendly in Berlin against West Germany, lost 1-2, bringing him on late in the second half to replace his “twin” Graziani.

Then, he will use him repeatedly, until the eve of the 1978 World Cup, in which Pulici will participate only nominally, without ever taking the field. His admirer Bearzot will have changed his mind, thanks to the player’s not always convincing performances, prey in blue of a very special emotion, which prevents him from playing with the bold determination shown in the garnet shirt: one more appearance, against Turkey in the friendly in Florence on 23 September 1978, then oblivion.

At only twenty-eight years old (Pulici was born in Roncello, in the province of Milan, on April 27, 1950) the “azzurra” curtain will fall for him. And he will have that one regret, in the context of a happy and fortunate career: having collected only crumbs (19 games and just 5 goals) with the shirt of the senior national team.

Pulici remained faithful to Torino until 1982, when, with his scoring streak a bit faded, he moved to Udinese for a season, to end with two championships in Fiorentina. His overall “score” was excellent: 401 appearances and 142 goals in Serie A.

By Pjerin Bj
New York: January, 29-2025
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Sports Vision +Plus / Champions Hour in activity since 2013

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