the best Italian player he had ever seen. During his time at Juventus, the club's former chairman, Gianni Agnelli, referred to Baggio as an "artist", comparing his elegance to the painter Raffaello, while he described the emerging talent Alessandro Del Piero as Pinturicchio. In a 2011 interview with La Gazzetta dello Sport, Del Piero stated that Baggio, along with Zinedine Zidane, was the best player with whom he had ever played, a view shared by Baggio's fellow former Juventus teammate Angelo Peruzzi and his former Brescia teammate Pep Guardiola in 2010, as well as his former Inter teammate Javier Zanetti in 2020, while Matthew Le Tissier named Baggio as his best ever opponent in 2012. In 2017, Baggio's former teammate Ravanelli instead labelled Baggio as the greatest player of all time. In 1993, Giampiero Boniperti stated that he believed that Baggio was "already one of the greatest number tens ever." In 2018, Cathal Kelly of The Globe and Mail described Baggio playing in the 1994 World Cup as "the best player in the world" at the time, while The Guardian described him as "[t]he definitive player of the decade", also adding that "the 1990s belonged to Il Divin Codino", and labelled him as "probably the finest player in the world between 1992 and 1995." In 2015, Les Carpenter of The Guardian described Baggio as "perhaps the greatest player of his time," while his colleague Emmet Gates dubbed him "the best player of his generation." In 2010, Marco Gori of TuttoMercatoWeb labelled Baggio as "one of the best footballers in history." Throughout his career, pundit Gianni Brera compared his playing style to that of Italian former footballer Giuseppe Meazza, while manager Trapattoni instead compared Baggio's technical characteristics to other former number 10s such as Zico, Platini, and Juan Alberto Schiaffino. In 2017, Baggio received praise from numerous sporting figures and pundits ahead of his 50th birthday, with Stefano Edel of La Gazzetta di Mantova describing Baggio as "the Italian Maradona", and echoing Sacchi's words prior to the 1994 World Cup, when he compared Baggio's importance to Italy with that of Maradona to Argentina. Zico described him as "one of the best players in the history of Italian football", while Tommaso Pellizzari of Il Corriere della Sera called him "the greatest pure talent of Italian football." James McHie of Calciomercato.com instead named him as Italy's greatest player, calling him "the greatest player