Massing’s ‘truck’ foul of Caniggia set tone for Italia 90’s shock and awe

In an extract from his book World In Motion, Simon Hart talks to Benjamin Massing, whose flying full-frontal felling of Argentina’s Claudio Caniggia was merely the first of many shocks at Italia 90

The 1990 World Cup began with a bang and no one felt it more than Claudio Caniggia. If Argentina 0-1 Cameroon was the most seismic opening result of any World Cup, there is arguably no more famous a foul in finals history than the one Benjamin Massing, the west African nation’s huge central defender, effected on Caniggia, the long-haired Argentina forward, with two minutes remaining of the tournament’s curtain-raiser at San Siro on 8 June 1990. It is certainly hard to think of a more laughably blatant one.

Not for Massing the sly rake of studs down calf or other such acts of cunningly disguised destructiveness. No, this was full-frontal stuff, cartoonish in its crudeness. Here, the flying Caniggia evades two green shirts but then, splat – the haulage truck, aka Massing, flies into the frame and simply wipes him out.

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