Contrary to widely canvassed fears, the party leadership won the vote on its revised tax package, and with a healthier majority than even optimists had anticipated. He had played his part in the d?cle of 1966 when the azzurri were knocked out of the World Cup in England by North Korea – and he took his full share of the rotten fruit hurled by angry fans at the airport when the team arrived home in disgrace. Facchetti had scored the winning goal in the semi-final to beat Liverpool.That season was the high-water mark of Inter’s hegemony in Europe. They won the Italian title again in 1966 and reached the European Cup Final in 1967, but in a memorable culture clash they lost 2-1 to Jock Stein’s swashbuckling Celtic side in Lisbon.By this time Facchetti had emerged as one of the most inspirational captains the Italian national side had ever had. But two years later Facchetti led his country to victory in the European Championships, beating Yugoslavia 2-0 in a replayed final in Rome.In 1970 in Mexico Facchetti played a sweeper’s role in a more expansive Italy side, but they had the misfortune to get on the wrong end of one of the finest footballing exhibitions of all time as Brazil won 4-1 in the Final.Facchetti was back as captain for the 1974 World Cup in West Germany, but a disappointing Italy made an early exit.

The following year Inter won back the Italian title and successfully defended their European crown, beating Benfica 1-0 in Milan. In 1963 he won his first Italian title, and the following year Inter went all the way to the European Cup Final in Vienna. In one of the pivotal matches of football history, Real Madrid’s buccaneering superstars were nullified by Inter’s cagey defence, with the young Facchetti outstanding, and the Italians won 3-1. The striker-turned-defender flourished in the dual role, and his skill in the position was a major factor in Inter’s incredible run of success in the mid-1960s.Facchetti first played for Inter in 1961, just as the club was emerging as a European power, and Real Madrid’s long-held monopoly on the European Cup was weakening. In truth Facchetti was an elegant footballer, a cavalier, whose nature was to attack. It speaks volumes about his adaptability, and his team ethic, that Facchetti performed so brilliantly in a side whose method was inimical to his own character.Facchetti’s football career began at the lowly Trevigliese club in his home town. In the early days the tall, powerfully built young Facchetti played as a centre-forward, and he was a good enough forward to sign for Inter in that position But Herrera had other plans for him.

The coach viewed Facchetti’s robust physique and strength in the air as vital components for a useful defender, and he set about converting him into a left-back. But the young player was destined to be far more than an anonymous cog in a defensive machine.His defensive colleagues were generally confined to playing rigid roles in Herrera’s man-marking scheme. But the coach released Facchetti from slavish defensive duties to join the attack. It relied heavily on strict man-to-man marking to shackle the opposing team’s attacking capabilities, while relying on quick breaks to steal goals.
Yet, while Facchetti grew adept at making the system work from his left-back position, the sterile system ran counter to his instincts.

And I’ll ring Liv, Harriet and Bibi and some of the others and I’ll say to them, “Sven and Ingmar can’t stop filming. Couldn’t you come over and stand in front of the camera? There’s no film in it, but they can get on with their fun.” We laughed a lot at that It sounded like such a pleasant future But it was not to be.Tom Vallance. Giacinto Facchetti, footballer: born Treviglio, Italy 18 July 1942; played for Inter Milan 1961-78; capped 94 times by Italy; married (two sons, two daughters); died Milan 4 September 2006. Giacinto Facchetti, one of the greatest defenders of all time, was an anomaly in the Italian football of his day. The full-back was in his prime during the mid-to late 1960s, an era when the game in Italy was dominated by a stultifyingly defensive tactical mindset. At Facchetti’s club, Internazionale of Milan, the master coach Helenio Herrera turned negative play into an art form, perfecting the defensive method of play known as catenaccio. It transpired he had progressive aphasia, an incurable form of dementia.Ironically, his private life bore similarities to a Bergman script – authoritarian upbringing, religious fanatic parents, a failed marriage, a son who committed suicide – events that doubtless made him sympathetic to the bleak world view of Bergman.His surviving son, Carl-Gustav Nykvist, is a director, who made his first film, Kvinnorna p?aket (The Women on the Roof) in 1989.

The other, using his hands, viewed you, telling you how to move. They were a very good duo, those two.Ingrid Thulin recalled how she once said to the pair,When you two get old it’ll be like this: you’ll be allowed your camera but without any film in it. In 2001 he made a feature-length documentary, Ljuset h?er mig s?skap (Light Keeps Me Company), celebrating his father’s life and career, and his remarkable partnership with Ingmar Bergman.Bibi Andersson reminisced recently,Imagine those two coming up and pointing the camera towards you They were so concentrated on who you were to become The air was charged! One of them used words and looks. Nykvist photographed two films for Allen, Another Woman (1988) and Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), but he confessed that because he had an affair with Mia Farrow he subsequently found it difficult working with Allen when he saw the two of them together. (Nykvist was married in 1952, and had two sons, but the marriage ended in 1968. Later one of his sons committed suicide.)In 1986 he was honoured with a Best Artistic Contribution prize at Cannes for his work on Andrei Tarkovsky’s Offret (The Sacrifice), and in 1996 he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Cinematographers – the first non-American to receive the honour.Nykvist’s work became appreciated especially for the clean simplicity of his lighting and set-ups, eschewing flamboyant shots that call attention to themselves. (In 1975 Nykvist was to photograph Bergman’s fetching version of the complete Mozart opera.)One of Nykvist’s most striking movies was Aus dem Leben der Marionetten (From the Life of the Marionettes, 1980), made by Bergman in Germany while in self-imposed exile from Sweden after accusations of tax evasion (he was later cleared).