It is easy to dismiss claims that Torino were something special; so many great teams have come and gone, showing fleeting signs of excellence before dropping back to join the chasing pack. It was the timing of Torino’s demise that made the events in the Superga hills even sadder from a footballing point of view. When Torino ruled the Italian game they had reached the peak. They could do no more than exact sustained and unerring domestic authority as they did between 1943 and 1949. They also won the Italian domestic cup, the Coppa Italia, in 1943 before it was suspended for fifteen years due to the destruction caused by the Second World War. Torino’s supremacy was all the more concentrated as a result, since the league was the only trophy around. Had Il Grande Torino existed in a multi-competition era, their dominance could have been more widespread and the club’s standing might well have survived the Superga tragedy.
Three years before the Coppa Italia returned to the Italian football calendar, a grander and more illustrious competition arrived. The European Cup was introduced into club football in 1955, giving the great and good of European club football a chance to go up against one another. For the first time, clubs were given a chance to compete against more than just their local rivals. However, it was initially less of a competition than a routine and inevitable crowning, as Spain’s Real Madrid ran out victors in the first five seasons. Nobody could get close, and Real Madrid cemented the already firm foundation upon which they have built their near-unrivalled dynasty.
One team might just have been able to challenge the great Real Madrid sides. Of all the sides that might have stood a chance of toppling Madrid and breaking the still-unbeaten streak of five consecutive cups, Torino would have ranked among the strongest. This is not just baseless speculation; Madrid themselves appreciated Torino as a noticeable absentee from the competition. And Madrid’s talisman throughout the late 1950s and 60s, the Hungarian striker Ferenc Puskás, revered Valentino Mazzola long after his death. Madrid’s tenure as European champions was ended in 1961 by Portuguese side Benfica, and they did not reach the final again until 1964. One team stood in their way: a Sandro Mazzola-led Internazionale. Inter ran out 3–1 winners, extending the barren spell for the Spanish giants. Far from bitter, Madrid accepted that they had been well beaten and Ferenc Puskás singled out one particular player for praise. With two goals to his name, Sandro Mazzola was approached by Puskás at the final whistle. ‘I played against your father,’ said Puskás. ‘You did him proud and I want to give you my shirt.’
Sandro Mazzola
The Torino story is one of unfulfilled potential, though not for a lack of victories. The timing of their success and unfortunate demise was pivotal. Had they managed to avoid the Superga hillside that rainy day in 1949, Mazzola and his teammates would doubtlessly have gone on to become some of the best-known names in footballing history. They would most likely have taken home World Cup winner’s medals and European Cups. As it is, the tale of Torino is one reserved for Italian fans to reminisce about, to recall the days when Stadio Filadelfia was a theatre for a footballing spectacle, rather than the run-down wasteland that it is today. Yet while Torino’s great side never really received the global acclaim which they so truly deserved, their legacy was significant. Without their unrivalled team spirit and collaborative approach, the great sides that followed them would have lacked a vital inspiration. A decade of sublime supremacy in the Italian league bred a footballing philosophy that influenced the great Dutch sides of the 1970s, and in turn the great Barcelona sides ever since. The Torino approach continues to bear fruit, even if Il Grande Torino are not always credited.
Diego Maradona
Chapter 7
Imagine that …
An ephedrine-fuelled Maradona leads Argentina to glory in ’94 … and football’s history books become worthless
USA 1994 was one of the most memorable World Cups in history. There are many reasons for this, but few of them are footballing ones. A tournament staged in stadia built with other sports in mind, it was always likely to feel slightly strange. The opening ceremony, for example, was one of the oddest exhibitions the sport had ever witnessed. As expected, the USA rolled out a number of high-profile celebrities to raise the curtain on the tournament. Oprah Winfrey played the role of host, but the appearance of Diana Ross has proven to be the enduring image. Dressed in red and white and flanked by dancers dressed in blue, she looked every inch the proud patriot as she energetically paraded around Soldier Field Stadium, Chicago. Midway through singing her hit single ‘I’m Coming Out’, Ross headed towards one end of the pitch. A ball was placed in front of her and she lined up a penalty kick. Showing the hallmarks of even the most accomplished spot-kick takers, she stuttered her run-up, trying to tempt the keeper into diving early. Her credentials were soon diminished, however, when she struck the ball wide of the goal as the special effects team triggered the goal frame to collapse. If this seemed bizarre, it was nothing compared to what followed over the next few weeks.
In the closing days of the tournament, the Los Angeles Times looked back on how the nation had staged the biggest show in football. The newspaper’s assessment focused on the surrounding factors, exalting the Americanisms that had made the 1994 World Cup such a unique spectacle.
They expected an athletic tournament. We staged a county fair, featuring nine exhibits stretched across 3,000 miles, with people and surroundings as varied as our twangs.
This was quite understandable and reflected the philosophy behind staging each World Cup in a different country, to expose and explore the ways in which different regions embrace the beautiful game. As far as attendance figures go, USA ’94 is unrivalled. Even though the number of matches played in a typical tournament has increased from 52 in 1994 to 64 in recent years, no World Cup before or since has managed to top its total attendance of 3.59 million people. That is an average of just under 70,000 fans per match.
Soldier Field Stadium, Chicago
Stanford Stadium, California
As a result, the events of the month-long competition were magnified even more than one might expect a World Cup to be. Any high-profile controversies were bound to be scrutinised. Sadly there were two such controversies, darkening the legacy of what was otherwise a fondly remembered tournament. One came to its tragic conclusion outside the USA, a thousand or so miles south in Colombia. In a competitive if not formidable group that included hosts USA, Colombia struggled. They were eliminated following defeat by America, having played only two of their three group games. America took the lead when defender Andrés Escobar slid to cut out a cross and end an American attack, but inadvertently diverted the ball goalwards and beyond goalkeeper Oscar Cordoba. The game finished 2–1 but Escobar was blamed by many in Colombia for the defeat. After they had played their final game, beating Switzerland 2–0 in a dead rubber, they returned home. Less than a week later, Escobar was dead. In the early hours of 2 July he was approached by a group of men in the car park outside the El Indio bar in Medellín and shot repeatedly. Reports claimed that the gunmen had shouted ‘Gol’ as they did so, leading many to the conclusion that the murder was carried out by a disgruntled betting syndicate.
The assassination of Andrés Escobar cast a brief shadow over the competition but, since the events had taken place outside the USA, and with so many people keen to make a success of the rest of the tournament, condolences were offered and the focus returned to the football. But another talking point proved more difficult to overlook. On the back of an anti-climactic second-place finish in 1990, Argentina returned to the world stage vying for glory. However, their presence at the tournament was by no means assured; they had undeniably been second-best in their qualifying group, finishing behind Escobar’s Colombia and losing 5–0 to them in the process. As runner-up in the smaller of two South American qualifying groups, Argentina had to defeat Australia in a play-off match to seal their spot in USA ’94. They made it, but only just, winning 2–1 on aggregate.
When the World Cup finally began, the
majority of pundits rated Argentina’s chances of triumphing as slim. Diego Maradona, Argentina’s talisman in previous years, had fallen out of shape as a result of a turbulent personal life riddled with cocaine addiction and spiralling debts. He had won the Golden Ball award as player of the tournament when Argentina were victorious in 1986, and had received the bronze award in 1990. He had since left the highly competitive environs of Italy and the Napoli side in which he had prospered, returning to Argentina and relative international obscurity. So it came as a great surprise when, in the team’s opening match of USA ’94, Maradona seemed back to his best. Argentina were already two goals up in their opening game against Greece when a rapid short-passing move resulted in a thunderous shot from Maradona. It was as emphatic a strike as you could hope to see and Maradona, apparently full of adrenaline, ran towards a pitch-side cameraman in celebration. As he approached, a close-up of the goalscorer was relayed to millions across the globe. He roared into the camera, his mouth gaping and his eyes piercing.
Argentina went on to defeat Greece 4–0 and overcame Nigeria in their second game despite falling behind early on, but their tournament was about to be blown apart. After the Nigeria match Diego Maradona was approached by FIFA officials – more specifically, anti-doping officials. He tested positive for the performance-enhancing substance ephedrine. It was a devastating blow to Argentina’s chances, but not an altogether unsuspected one. While Maradona’s sparkling past made a simple return to form seem feasible, many onlookers had already grown suspicious of steroid abuse before FIFA acted. His celebration against Greece has long since been pointed to as an illustration of a chemically assisted player, so much so that the tale is often erroneously retold with Maradona being caught out after that particular game, instead of at the end of the following fixture. Nevertheless, the Argentine was sent packing and his teammates soon followed. They had already qualified for the knockout stages when their star departed, but defeat in the final group game against Bulgaria was followed by a 3–2 loss to Romania in the last-sixteen round, and the void left by Maradona was clear for all to see.
The goal against Greece proved to be Maradona’s last for Argentina, as the scandal of ’94 brought down the curtain on an illustrious international career including 91 appearances, 34 goals and a World Cup winner’s medal.
Maradona protested his innocence, claiming that it had been an honest mistake. He suggested that it had been the result of a mix-up over the differing contents of the Argentine and American versions of a sinus medicine for allergies. Yet in 2011, seventeen years on from his most shameful episode, he made allegations against Julio Grondona, the president of the Argentine Football Association. These claims suggested that the doping extended beyond the tournament in the USA, and with the knowledge of those in charge. Speaking to The Football Show, Maradona explained: ‘What happened is that to play against Australia we were given a speedy coffee. They put something in the coffee and that’s why we ran more.’
The implications of Maradona’s claims were vast. On the most basic level, it suggested that Australia had been cheated out of a place in USA 1994. Although Argentina had little impact on the eventual outcome of the World Cup, as they did not face either finalist (Brazil or Italy), their absence would have shaken up the tournament considerably. The 24 nations that qualified for the competition’s initial group stage were separated into four groups or ‘pots’. With the rest of the pots dictated by geographical location, the most significant was Pot 1. This was made up of the five strongest nations and the hosts, in this case USA. The relative strength of the teams was measured by their FIFA world rankings, a points system based on their previous performances in qualifying and tournaments. As finalists in the two previous World Cups, this was the group Argentina was placed in. Australia, however, would not have made it into Pot 1. Had Argentina been removed from proceedings the shape of the World Cup would have altered dramatically as, in their absence, another nation of considerable strength would have stepped into their place and been afforded a better chance of success. The shake-up would have undoubtedly altered the fates of a number of nations, and possibly the identity of the eventual winners.
The significance of Maradona’s doping stretches beyond the 1994 World Cup. As can be seen from his later allegations, his removal from the tournament was a case of damage limitation. In the end it was not FIFA that sent him on his way; instead Argentina dismissed him before FIFA had a chance to, hoping that their proactive stance would help them to avoid further punishments.
While Argentina’s omission from the finals would have altered the competition, had they progressed further it might have changed the entire sport. In the aftermath of Maradona’s failed drugs test, many people asked just how he had managed to participate in a second match at the tournament, considering his history of cocaine addiction, his striking performance and celebration in the opening game of the competition, and the resulting groundswell of speculation. The drugs tests were supposedly conducted on a random basis, so it was only by chance that Maradona’s involvement ended when it did. In the group stages a certain amount of tinkering with the testing regime would have been possible, as FIFA president Sepp Blatter later explained. Two Argentines were tested for doping but only Maradona tested positive, but as Blatter suggested: ‘If two players had been found guilty, FIFA probably would have changed the result.’ Post-Maradona, the vanquished Greeks failed to win a single point in their group and Nigeria progressed ahead of Argentina, so Maradona’s impact was ultimately superficial. However, if Maradona had led Argentina further into the tournament than he did, perhaps even to victory, then the ramifications would have been far greater.
Where doping has occurred in other sports, the same question is always raised – how do you rewrite the history books? In some sports, such as track athletics, it is relatively simple. Although the alarming performance may well have a psychological impact on the rest of the competitors, in running events the time of one sprinter is not logistically affected by their challengers. When Canadian 100m sprinter Ben Johnson was found guilty of doping at the Seoul Olympics in 1988, blaming the contents of a herbal drink in similar fashion to Maradona, he was stripped of a gold medal. Subsequently, the International Olympic Committee awarded gold to second-placed Carl Lewis, silver to third-placed Linford Christie and so on. However when it came out that cyclist Lance Armstrong had doped, the appropriate course of action was not so clear. Armstrong had dominated the sport’s premier competition, the Tour de France, for almost a decade, triumphing repeatedly in the tactical endurance race. When news of his use of stimulants broke to the media in 2012 there were suggestions that it would spell the end of the sport in its high-profile and widely supported form. With its past built on what were essentially false results and achievements, it made the present seem meaningless and hollow. The same questions would have befallen the world of football had Maradona escaped detection in 1994.
It would be sensationalist to assert that football could be brought down by a single drugs cheat; in fact, even widespread cheating would struggle to shatter the game. The World Cup, on the other hand, might not have coped quite so well. USA 1994 was the fifteenth-ever World Cup, and by this time it had long been established as the pinnacle of footballing competition. The form shown by Argentina with an ephedrine-fuelled Maradona at the helm was impressive. Aside from his goal in the opening game, he played a key role in the team’s turnaround in the second fixture. This had also been his role in previous World Cups, orchestrating a strong but otherwise unremarkable side with admirable success. The team was built around him. Should he have managed to evade detection and continued to exert his influence upon the team, the integrity of the tournament would have been compromised. While in reality they exited to an unfancied Romanian side in the last sixteen, victory in that game would have pitted them against Sweden in the quarter-finals, one game shy of a match-up with tournament victors and bitter rivals Brazil.
There is of course no guarantee that Maradon
a would have been able to reverse the 3–2 defeat that Argentina suffered at the hands of Romania. Nor could one say with any certainty that they would have beaten Sweden in the following round. However, they would undoubtedly have been favourites with their inspirational forward in the side – especially with ephedrine running through his system. A semi-final against Brazil could have irreversibly changed the future of the World Cup. The previous year, Brazil and Argentina had gone head to head in the quarter-finals of South America’s primary international competition, the Copa América. The match finished 1–1 before Argentina prevailed 6–5 in a penalty shoot-out, en route to winning the tournament outright. A repeat of this outcome in the USA could have been a watershed moment in World Cup history. For Brazil to have been denied progression at the hands of a performance-enhanced Maradona would have made a mockery of the competition. Yet if Maradona’s doping had been detected after such a fixture and Brazil reinstated at Argentina’s expense, their eventual victory would have been tarred by a defeat, regardless of its unjust nature. The poisonous impact of Maradona’s stimulants had the potential to render the whole tournament worthless, and with such a blot in the history books future World Cups would have taken place under its shadow.
Football Page 6