Eight World Cups

by George Vecsey

  Before the semifinal, there was a rare opportunity for reporters to meet the Polish team, sequestered in the jagged peaks of Montserrat, outside Barcelona. Because of the economic and political turmoil back home, the team was keeping a low profile. Poland was one of those mystery teams that occasionally infiltrate the semifinals; the coach and several players seemed stunned to be playing Italy instead of Brazil.

  Zibi Boniek was hangdog about being ineligible for the semifinal because of his double yellow cards; later we heard he had been sighted in the Ramblas days earlier, nearly getting his car towed; the man has suffered enough, fans told the police.

  When we got back to town, Kindred, Mizell, and I invited our translator, a charming Polish-born woman with a Scottish married name, now living in Barcelona, to a late lunch. We sat outdoors at a seafood restaurant and had a glass of wine and cracked shrimps and tossed the shells onto the sidewalk, as per local custom. Some things about the World Cup you always remember.

  On July 8, Italy played Poland in the semifinal in Camp Nou. From a distance of time, I can imagine the disqualified Gentile sitting with the disqualified Boniek, discussing how cool it was going to be in a few weeks when they would be united as teammates at Juventus, the team of the Agnelli family and the Fiat empire. Juve collected stars the way the New York Yankees of the era accumulated the Reggie Jacksons and Dave Winfields. Gentile surely would have marked Boniek that day, presumably as physically as he had marked Maradona a few days earlier.

  Poland had nothing left without Boniek, and Italy prevailed, 2–0, as the galloping Rossi scored both goals. Camp Nou was easily half empty, with attendance listed as fifty thousand.

  Later that day, I repaired to the Ritz to watch the West Germany–France semifinal from Seville on television, along with my pal Dick Schaap, who was there for ABC. In the sixtieth minute, with the match even at 1–1, a French substitute named Patrick Battiston took a lovely pass from Michel Platini behind the German defenders but squibbed it wide to the right—a split second before the West German keeper, Harald “Toni” Schumacher, blasted Battiston in the jaw with his right hip.

  Battiston went down, and some French players thought he was dead; ultimately, he would need extensive work to repair his jaw and teeth. The referee showed no curiosity as to why a player would suddenly need extreme medical attention for a broken jaw; Schumacher was not penalized. The collision remains the ugliest single act in World Cup history.

  The teams remained tied, prompting a thirty-minute overtime with no sudden death. France scored twice within eight minutes but was just not geared for defensive posture. The bartender at the Ritz watched as the French players blithely surged forward toward disaster, like musketeers storming a castle—because it is there.

  “Once tontos!” the bartender blurted, pronouncing it “ON-thay tontos,” in Castilian. I can still hear him.

  Eleven dummies.

  The bartender was absolutely right. West Germany took advantage of the Gallic nonchalance—or maybe it was weariness. Because Battiston had come and gone within ten minutes, France had no substitutions left. West Germany’s blond locomotive of a forward, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, who had not started because of a thigh injury, came on in the 97th minute and scored in the 102nd minute; another player scored in the 108th minute; and West Germany won on penalty kicks, inevitably.

  From casual comments from that bartender and other knowledgeable fans, I was starting to get a feel for this sport. Things happen all the time—but not the repetitious goals of basketball or strikeouts in baseball. In soccer, the game turns as one team finds a weakness (Italy on the counterattack against Brazil) or one team shows foolhardiness (France, going for a needless third goal). One substitute—the hobbling Rummenigge—can make a difference. Things happen. But you have to watch.

  * * *

  On Friday morning, the entire World Cup coalesced in Madrid for the final that would take place on Sunday between Italy and West Germany. Five years earlier, my family had lived for a month in a friend’s flat facing the Parque del Oeste; the city felt like home. This time I stayed in a FIFA hotel, where, waiting for the elevator, I noticed a security guard. Then I spotted Henry Kissinger outside his suite down the hall.

  Kissinger used to attend Cosmos matches in New York and loved the sport, dating back to his childhood in Germany. Many years later, he would tell me he kept a gift jersey from the team in Fürth, the town he left just ahead of the Holocaust. “You know, my experiences in Germany were not that great,” he would tell me in his gravelly accent, adding, “This town that I left seventy years ago, why should I care? But I do.”

  I found out later that day that Kissinger was acting as a liaison for the United States Soccer Federation. Colombia was about to default as host for 1986 because it could not meet its financial commitments, and the United States was eager to serve as host.

  I got the distinct feeling that FIFA officials loved the money the United States might shake free but were quite nervous about the relative transparency required by American corporations, television networks, and government, as opposed to Europe, where companies (particularly nonprofits like FIFA) did not have to reveal much financial data. Meanwhile, Dr. Kissinger got to see the games.

  Having covered a few Super Bowls of American football, I was curious how FIFA would promote its biggest event. The answer was, FIFA did not. At the Super Bowl, every player must show up for Media Day and answer questions both wise and foolish. Perhaps Media Day was overkill—or good business sense. FIFA did not expose its players to roaming packs of interviewers, and even canned quotes from coaches and packets of basic details were minimal. Generating zillions of dollars and francs and pounds and pesetas from the biggest sports event in the world, FIFA felt no need to inform. Everybody was going to watch anyway, so why bother?

  Ninety thousand people packed into Bernabéu for the final. This event felt bigger, deeper, better than the Olympics, where all those exotic sports emerged once every four years for a worldwide television audience. This was a monthlong tournament for one sport, the one the world knows best, loves best.

  Both two-time champions marched onto the field and stood at attention for the stately anthem “Deutschlandlied” and the merry tarantella of “Il canto degli Italiani” with its more dramatic lyrics (“We are ready to die”). Then the starting teams posed for separate pregame photos, six standing, five crouching.

  A large banner hung from the grandstand, proclaiming: Colombia 1986. That was not going to happen.

  Italy’s coach, Enzo Bearzot, jacket slung stylishly over his shoulder, pipe in his mouth, looked like a padrone about to enjoy his aperitivo. I had more feel for Italy, having seen them three times and West Germany none.

  Gentile was back for the final but had shaved his Qaddafi mustache, perhaps reasoning that the referee in the final would not recognize him. Must be some other No. 6 whacking away at people. Gentile had new company on the back line. Giancarlo Antognoni was injured and had been replaced by eighteen-year-old Giuseppe Bergomi, the youngest player on the squad. The kid, known as Lo Zio (The Uncle) because of his calm demeanor beyond his years, hounded Rummenigge, the best player in Europe during the club season, who was playing despite the injured thigh.

  Italy was so deep. Franceso Graziani injured his shoulder when hit from behind and had to come out in the seventh minute, replaced by Alessandro Altobelli.

  The Italians were aggressive and confident, but it took them fifty-seven minutes to score. West Germany was called for a foul, and the Italians took a quick restart, with Marco Tardelli racing down the right side, advancing the ball into the box, where Gentile, of all people, tipped it in front of the goal, and Rossi flicked it into the goal, his sixth score in three matches after the wretched start.

  Italy had its counterattack in gear. In the sixty-ninth minute, the reliable sweeper Gaetano Scirea intercepted a sloppy pass and—a true footballer—saw the opening and took off downfield without a play being sent in from the sidelines. Moving the ba
ll back and forth with Bruno Conti, Scirea calmly flicked the ball sideways to Tardelli, who shifted and fired a left-footed shot past the keeper.

  Twelve minutes later, Conti took off on another fast break, centering the ball for Altobelli, the sub, who fired a left-footed shot past the keeper. West Germany scored at the eighty-third minute, but Italy’s defense locked down, and Italy had its third championship—its first in forty-four years.

  Starting with my near-zero understanding of soccer, I had made an assumption that Brazil could win any time with all that artistry. I had heard passionate condemnations of the catenaccio, but now I had seen defenders like Scirea and Gentile break downfield to lead the charge. Now I was watching the Italians, so unloved by their own fans at the start, cavorting on the field, being greeted by King Juan Carlos of Spain. I felt I was at the center of the universe.

  Some readers of the New York Times might say they began paying attention to soccer from the time I showed up in Spain in 1982. I never thought of myself as an evangelist, never passed myself off as an expert. Millions of fans around the world knew more about the game than I ever could, as some would remind me in caustic e-mails. Maybe because I discovered soccer relatively late in life, I saw it with fresh eyes, a fresh heart. I loved the difficulty of it, the kaleidoscopic surprises, with a growing appreciation for the history and the strategy.

  One fact of life I learned that summer: a fan can be a psychological bigamist, or worse. Love the one you’re with. I still considered Brazil the warm and pulsing heart of the sport. I have great respect for the young men and women who represent my own country. I enjoy dozens of soccer nations when they are on a roll. I never hesitate to criticize Italy for its thuggish moments, its flamboyant simulazione (faking), its failure to finish the attacks. But whenever the Azzurri take the field and the loudspeakers play the anthem, I am reminded of first love, summer of ’82.

  4

  NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME

  TORRANCE, CALIFORNIA, 1985

  It was peaceful in the funky little football stadium.

  Or, as they say in the old westerns, too peaceful.

  The United States was about to play Costa Rica in a vital match before the 1986 World Cup. All the Yanks needed was a result, as it is called in soccer—just one point from a draw—and they would be moving into the final round of qualifying.

  The match was at home. Theoretically. It was also being played in virtual secrecy, as if soccer were enrolled in the witness-protection program. An hour before game time, the crowd pretty much consisted of parents, girlfriends, little kids, college students, and a few soccer buffs wearing red regalia. On the day of this crucial qualifier, people in Southern California were vastly more excited about the victory by the Los Angeles Lakers in steamy Boston Garden two nights earlier to tie the NBA Finals at one game apiece.

  That series had Magic and Kareem and Bird. This qualifier had Rick Davis and Paul Caligiuri.

  In its wisdom, the United States Soccer Federation had placed this match in a drab little football stadium at El Camino College, south of Los Angeles, a few miles from the Pacific. It was pretty quiet on an obscure Friday afternoon, when suddenly, over a distant hill, came the sounds of trumpets and drums and human voices, an army on the move: a couple of thousand Costa Ricans, brandishing flags and banners, chanting fight songs, honking and shouting and blaring.

  Instantly, Costa Rica became the home team, no small advantage in this sport of emotion and pressure. Most of this marching army lived within hours of Torrance and observed the normal decencies of the territory—no flying batteries, no bags of urine lobbed onto the field, very few bilingual curses and insults.

  They did, however, honk horns and cheer. The official attendance for that match is listed as 11,800, and maybe it was, which proved that a few thousand Costa Ricans could outroot four times as many Americans.

  * * *

  The United States was still trying to catch up with most of the world. Surely, all that dribbling around pink cones and trophies for Josh and Heather in the youth leagues of America would produce the long-awaited soccer boom?

  “Respect my frankness, but the Americans are not World Cup material,” Roderick Warner, the coach of Trinidad and Tobago, said politely after the United States defeated his squad, 1–0, a few weeks before the Costa Rica match.

  FIFA seemed to agree. As expected, Colombia had defaulted as host for 1986, and the United States put in a bid that was generally regarded as amateurish. American soccer managed to offend the haughty president of FIFA, João Havelange of Brazil, who did not bother to send an inspection team to the United States, despite the dozens of huge stadiums and arenas, and the track record of being able to fill them for major events like the Super Bowl of American football and the Final Four of college basketball (and, later, in 1984, the hugely successful Summer Olympics in Los Angeles). The United States had a reputation for throwing big sporting parties, but FIFA seemed to have scorn for its soccer federation.

  On May 20, 1983, FIFA chose Mexico as the replacement for Colombia for several sound reasons. First, Mexico had competently staged the 1970 World Cup and was more of a soccer power than the United States. Also, FIFA knew it could control the preparations for 1986 by using friendly companies to upgrade the security, the hotels, the roads, the electronics. Now the U.S. team would have to play its way into the 1986 World Cup instead of getting an automatic berth as host.

  To prepare for qualifying, the United States Soccer Federation had created something called Team America, stocking it with supposedly the best players with U.S. passports and basing it in Washington, D.C., as a member of the dying North American Soccer League. Once flush with twenty-four teams, the NASL was down to nine, including Team America, coached by the courtly Alkis Panagoulias.

  As American as gyro or spanakopita, Panagoulias loved his adopted country, where he had played and coached in some fast ethnic leagues. He had also coached the Greek national team for a while and served in the Greek parliament while his wife sold real estate in suburban Virginia. Now he was trying to improve America’s status among the soccer-playing nations.

  “It was very difficult,” Panagoulias would recall years later. “I first had to sell the league people and owners on the idea that the national team has to be the No. 1 team in the country. We needed their players. I was almost crying when I talked about the national team. They looked at me like I was crazy. They didn’t know from the national team.”

  Panagoulias had a theory of how to create interest in a national team: “All you had to do was bring in the Russian team and have the Americans lose, 10–0, to them,” he said. “That would have gotten some action.”

  His problem was that many of the best American players refused to give up their security to relocate to Team America. Some wanted to go down with the ship with the Cosmos, and others could make a few more dollars playing indoor soccer. Hardly any Americans were wanted even by the lesser pro leagues of Europe.

  In 1984, the NASL went the way of the Roman Empire, and all the players had to scuffle. Panagoulias recruited an assortment of young and old players, including Rick Davis, a twenty-six-year-old midfielder with the Cosmos, and Paul Caligiuri, a nineteen-year-old student who was taking final exams at UCLA.

  In the spring of 1985, the United States was trying to qualify for the 1986 World Cup via a series of elimination rounds in the regional federation known as CONCACAF—the Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football. In the second stage, the Americans were placed in a three-team group that would send one nation into the final qualifying round. The Yanks defeated Trinidad and Tobago twice and then tied in Costa Rica. Not bad. Going into the final game at home, the United States needed only a draw with Costa Rica to advance.

  Panagoulias knew that his makeshift outfit did not have the cohesion to move the ball around for ninety minutes—no catenaccio here—so he had them play a full-field game, to keep Costa Rica occupied on defense, and for most of the match, the Americ
ans did fine.

  But soccer turns on mistakes, and in the thirty-fifth minute, the U.S. keeper, Arnie Mausser, called to punch away a free kick, and Kevin Crow—five times the Defender of the Year in indoor soccer—backed away slightly to give Mausser space. A Costa Rican player intervened and headed the ball toward the corner, where a teammate put it in the goal. After that point, the Costa Rica players knew how to protect a lead and held on for a 1–0 victory. For the ninth straight World Cup, the United States had failed to qualify.

  I still remember Rick Davis sitting in the grungy little dressing room. He was the face of American soccer, an eager little brother to the galácticos on the late, lamented Cosmos, but now he was seeing the bleak future in the discarded tape and orange sections near his feet.

  “I don’t know where we go from there,” Davis said, when he could finally utter words. “There was our best chance to make it to the World Cup. We won’t have another chance until 1990. Who knows where soccer in America will be by then? I do know this: unless we develop a professional league for outdoors, we won’t go anyplace. We can’t do it with indoor soccer. We were playing for U.S. soccer—for its reputation and recognition in our country. It’s another setback. We missed a golden opportunity.”

  It was a sad moment, something reporters never witness at the World Cup itself because journalists are not allowed in locker rooms. I was standing there when Gregg Thompson, a defender who earned his meager living in indoor soccer, plaintively asked the fatherly Panagoulias, “When are we ever going to play a home game?”

  “Never,” Panagoulias said.

  Thompson then expounded on being road warriors in the state of California.