The Germany match was in Parc des Princes in Paris. Once the players took a look at the City of Light, “We were thinking of barricading ourselves in our rooms and not going back,” Kasey Keller, the starting keeper, said years later.
The American players had great respect for the German team. Thomas Dooley, who had barely been able to speak English when he joined the U.S. team in 1994, was now an articulate and positive leader. “When I came over here, I don’t want to say they weren’t organized, but they had more freedom,” Dooley said of his colleagues on the American team. “The Germans like more control. If the coach says you have to stay somewhere, the players do not say anything.” He seemed to be suggesting that the 1998 players had complained themselves into a bad attitude because of the château and other issues.
Among the Americans, Claudio Reyna spoke admiringly of his fifty-eight matches for Bayer Leverkusen and Wolfsburg, including the brutal midweek practices when scrubs tried to earn a uniform for the weekend games by tackling their own teammates viciously. And in the fifth minute against Germany, Reyna received a reminder of past practices—a vicious elbow to the kidney area, thrown by Jens Jeremies and unacknowledged by the referee. Reyna was far too professional to be elbowed into submission, but he was not much of a factor in the match after that.
Sampson mandated a 3-6-1 alignment for the match, leaving Eric Wynalda pretty much alone up front, easily nullified by the German defense. Sampson’s strategy seemed to be borrowed from the film Dances with Wolves, in which Kevin Costner plays a lone soldier posted out on the prairie. Germany won, 2–0, as the fleet striker Jürgen Klinsmann scored a goal, as if to introduce himself to the nation where he would one day live—and coach.
The Americans moved south and east to Lyon to play Iran. Twenty minutes before the match, the morose Ramos sat on the team bench and chatted on a cell phone with his buddy Harkes back in the States. Wish you were here, Ramos said. Harkes felt the same way.
The Iranian players had their own distraction: thousands of Iranian émigrés had purchased tickets, and although political demonstrations were banned on the grounds, they uncovered T-shirts that indicated their opposition to the ayatollahs. The Iranian and American players linked arms in a gesture of friendship beforehand, a nice touch.
This time, Sampson put two strikers, Brian McBride and Roy Wegerle, up front, with Wynalda never stirring from the bench. McBride scored late on a header, but Iran stunned the United States, 2–1, pretty much eliminating the Yanks.
After the Iran loss, I called Harkes at his home in Virginia; he was as combative in absentia as he was on the field. “We went through so much hard work, and now the World Cup is over so fast,” Harkes said, conceding that the Yanks were not going to score a ton of goals against Yugoslavia. “I feel for the players. I’m part of it,” he added.
“I know I should be there,” Harkes continued. “I thought I could contribute something with leadership. We had such good chemistry.”
Harkes did not hide his hope that Sampson would be gone soon, and he ripped the coach for sticking Wynalda up front all alone against Germany. “He didn’t have a chance,” Harkes said. “He was out there playing against four backs, like he was a defender.”
I asked about Sampson’s suggestion that Harkes could not move well on defense any more, and Harkes said, “I’ve been known to play more than one position.” When I mentioned Sampson’s comment that Harkes was showing a bad attitude during practices, Harkes replied, “I don’t buy that body-language stuff. I was the captain. I was leading in my way, keeping the team together. We beat Brazil.” He was referring to a 1–0 victory in a friendly four months earlier.
“We had some great games,” Harkes continued. “Steve is the only one who ever questioned my leadership. I think it was evident they lacked leadership. Where was the fighting spirit?”
Harkes did not let up about the way Sampson cut him after a friendly in Portland on May 24. “He hugged me after the Portland game and said, ‘You’re going to your third World Cup,’” Harkes said. “Then he cut me. The way it was handled was so unprofessional.”
For the third match, against Yugoslavia in Nantes, Sampson stuck McBride out there in Costner-land and did not use Wynalda until desperation time in a 1–0 loss. When asked where Wynalda had been, Sampson said it was nobody’s business.
Dissidence was Sampson’s legacy. With three losses and only one goal, the United States was ranked thirty-second out of thirty-two teams in that World Cup.
Régis, the instant American, wound up playing all 270 minutes, thoroughly invisible. Jeff Agoos never got in a game, but he did prove his talents as a tutor.
A year later, Harkes published a book, Captain for Life: And Other Temporary Assignments, with the help of Denise Kiernan, who had covered that World Cup for the Village Voice. In it, he ripped Sampson for lacking “credibility to a group of guys who had hundreds and hundreds of caps among them” and “putting a huge amount of pressure on young, internationally inexperienced players.” He added, “I can’t think of one thing that Steve did right in the months leading up to the World Cup.”
The rumors and bad vibrations lingered twelve years later, when John Terry, the English captain, was revealed to have had an affair with the former girlfriend of a national teammate. By now, Harkes and Wynalda were working as television commentators for separate television networks. In discussing Terry, Wynalda referred on the air to an “inappropriate relationship” between Wynalda’s former wife and Harkes in 1998. Harkes, who was still married, declined to comment, saying only that 1998 had been a bad time in his life.
Sampson, now also a commentator, claimed he had discovered just before the 1998 World Cup that Harkes had had an affair with Amy Wynalda. Sampson also repeated the old scuttlebutt that Harkes had been setting a bad example, breaking curfew, questioning authority, and potentially getting in the way of Reyna. Was Sampson ignoring the bad attitude by his captain until he heard about a possible affair? Or was he looking for a rationale to get rid of Harkes?
Whatever the truth was, my sense is that Harkes and Wynalda were both important players, and the team could have functioned better with both of them on the field for all three matches, rather than using, say, Citizen Régis. The players were more pragmatic than their coach.
* * *
While the legion of the lost was going down in three straight, I found time to bustle around the country. For Brazil’s opening victory over Scotland, I took the No. 13 metro line to Saint-Denis, the train packed with Scots in kilts singing a scurrilous ode to Ronaldo, to the tune of “Winter Wonderland.”
One drizzly French morning I took the high-speed train, the TGV—Train à Grande Vitesse—from Paris to Bordeaux for the Italy-Chile match. The cultivated countryside flashed by in the rain, and I arrived early enough that I could enjoy a proper meal right in the train station. How civilized.
Roberto Baggio was back for his third World Cup. In the past four years, he had been dropped from the national squad and had left Juventus and the owner who had labeled him a “wet rabbit,” moving to AC Milan and then to Bologna, where he had the liberty to show his stuff. The new national coach, Cesare Maldini, once a fine defender himself—and also the father of the smooth defensive star Paolo Maldini—was secure enough to invite Baggio back into the fold. When Alessandro Del Piero was hurt in the spring, Maldini the Elder installed Baggio as the engine of the Azzurri.
In the tenth minute against Chile, Maldini the Younger lofted a long knowing ball that caught Baggio in full stride down the left side (the two had played together briefly at AC Milan), and Baggio then flicked a right-footed pass to Christian Vieri, who scored, as any striker should.
Remember, Italy never does things easily. The Azzurri fell behind, 2–1, but in the eighty-fourth minute, Baggio dribbled up the right side and chipped the ball at the right arm of the defender, and the referee ruled it a handball. At first, I was convinced Baggio aimed that ball at the defender’s arm to earn a penalty kick, but
then I remembered how he had botched the final rigore against Brazil in 1994, and how his teammates had to escort him off the field. Otherwise, Baggio might still have been standing in the arroyo in Pasadena.
I was just starting to have a memory like a true soccer fan. I’ve been watching baseball since 1946 (Dixie Walker hit a home run for the Dodgers that day), and when something strange happens in a current baseball game, I may remember something similar in Brooklyn from when I was a kid. As I watched Il Codino shuffle toward the disk in the humidity of Bordeaux, I was remembering the heat of Pasadena, four years earlier.
Baggio stood in a submissive position for many long seconds, his head hanging down. Surely he knew his duty was to take the penalty, but he could not seem to summon the audacity, until a teammate patted him on the back. His face blank, Baggio went to the disk. A Chilean player, a few yards behind him, was yapping as if to remind him of his public failure four years earlier. Baggio kept his head down, easily made the kick, and Italy survived with its normal opening-match draw.
Two days later, I took a train to Nantes, out west in Brittany, with a glimpse of salt marshes and a whiff of sea air, for the highlight of Bora Milutinović’s coaching career, a 3–2 victory for his new team, Nigeria, over Spain. Once again, Spain had come in with players of great reputation but found ways to self-destruct.
* * *
Our apartment in Paris was on the top floor—several maids’ rooms turned into a roomy flat. One evening we noticed televisions flickering in just about every apartment below us, as our neighbors watched France defeat Saudi Arabia. Not known as rabid fans, the French were getting into the swing, starting to appreciate the coach they had wanted fired.
In the spring of 1998, Aimé Jacquet had told France Football magazine: “The Frenchman is always critical, so critical that he criticizes himself.” And he added, “The Frenchman is often negative, too, seeing beauty elsewhere but not at home. However, when a big event comes along, when national pride is at stake, he is there. That’s what assures me. It will be up to us on the field to deserve that support.”
Most national coaches don’t have the time or the mandate to delve into cosmic issues like this. They take over what are essentially all-star teams and try to get the players to work with one another. “We can win and be spectacular,” Jacquet said in May. “I now have more offensive weapons at my disposal. I just can’t afford to misuse them; otherwise I will get buried by the press.”
Paris, like most great cities, is a cluster of neighborhoods. I would go out for newspapers in the morning—the International Herald Tribune, for sure, and maybe Libération (I liked its politics), and for soccer results, either L’Equipe or Gazzetta. After a day or three, the Arab vendor inside the kiosk would hold out a sporting paper, to let me know he recognized me. I was a regular.
The second time we patronized the café on our block, the manager greeted us in that lovely French singsong way: “Bon-JOUR Ma-dame. Bon-JOUR Mon-sieur,” like bells ringing. We were regulars.
One day I didn’t realize I had lost my World Cup credential until the Times bureau called to say that a street cleaner had found it and was in a bar a few blocks from my flat. I rushed over and gave some francs to two French African workers to thank them for being so thoughtful.
All these moments informed my writing about the World Cup and the country that was hosting it. We were regulars.
* * *
As the American team vanished, unlamented, the only Yank left was Esse Baharmast. And for a few days he was more visible than referees ever want to be.
Baharmast attracted attention around the world during the Norway-Brazil first-round match by awarding a penalty kick after detecting Junior Baiano of Brazil tugging at a Norwegian jersey in the closing minutes. The penalty was converted, and Norway advanced ahead of Morocco, which had celebrated, prematurely. Television replays did not immediately detect the jersey being pulled, so Baharmast took a great deal of criticism, particularly in the United States, with its understandable low sense of soccer self-esteem.
Look, our refs can’t even get a penalty right.
A full news cycle later, Baharmast was vindicated. A Swedish television station was able to isolate a frame that clearly showed the Norwegian jersey being pulled in the box. Baharmast could have said (but did not) that officials were only following orders from Sepp Blatter, the newly elected president of FIFA, who had urged the refs to get tough on defenders taking down offensive players near the goal. I thought back to my first World Cup, in 1982, and wondered what would have happened if the referees had been similarly warned before Claudio Gentile of Italy whacked Diego Armando Maradona into a bloody stump.
The refs understood their Wild West status. They had to monitor an entire prairie full of outlaws and gunslingers, all by themselves, in a never-ending rerun of High Noon. One hard-shell ref, Javier Castrilli of Argentina, was even nicknamed El Sheriff.
FIFA was a full generation behind the times and technology. In 1998, it had not yet gotten around to instructing the two sideline officials to take a proactive stance in advising their lone colleague out on the field. The assistants waved their flags in calling offside and possession, but they mostly suspended vision and judgment on everything else.
In 1998, Blatter wanted everybody to enforce the rules. I’ve seen that happen in pro basketball at the start of the season when the home office sends out a missive that too many players are palming the ball or traveling. In the opening game, the refs will call palming on LeBron James or Kobe Bryant, evoking a cynical grimace from the superstar. Then it all blows over.
The middle of a World Cup, a low-scoring sport, with the whole world watching, is a tricky time for refs to adjust to mandates from the home office in Zurich.
At the end of group play, FIFA issued statistics showing that the officials had given out sixteen red cards and 195 yellow cards in the first thirty-six matches. Blatter was pleased. Argentina’s players had flopped and writhed their way into receiving seventy-four fouls in three matches and somehow the United States was tied for third with sixty fouls suffered. I interpreted that to mean that Our Lads could not get out of the way of the other teams’ boots.
In the normal process of elimination of a World Cup, referees who were perceived to make bad calls were soon sent home, but Baharmast—vindicated by Swedish television—was assigned as fourth official in the France-Paraguay match in the second round. El Sheriff survived the cutdown to be assigned to work Croatia-Romania, tumblers and actors as well as footballers. Perhaps the conservative law enforcer from Argentina was put off by the punk-rock blond dye job on Romania’s Gabriel Popescu, but El Sheriff went for a dive by a Croatian player. Davor Šuker converted the penalty for the only goal of the day. The Time Study Man from Zurich was watching. By the next round, El Sheriff had been disappeared.
* * *
On Tuesday, June 30, I took the train to Lyon and switched to a funky clattering old rail line to Saint-Étienne for Argentina-England. That match could have been remembered for the stirring romp by eighteen-year-old Michael Owen, who scored between two savvy defenders. Instead, this match is remembered—certainly in England—for David Beckham’s petulant kick at Diego Simeone while Beckham was lying on the ground, visible to the world, not even surrounded by a scrum of players.
Beckham was tossed out, putting England at a disadvantage, and he was not available for the shoot-out, which, of course, England lost. From the moment he trudged off the field, and for four full years, Beckham would be vilified in England and elsewhere for his loss of poise—not to mention his glam haircuts and posh lifestyle. Nobody that night could have imagined he would persevere through the scorn of a nation to become one of the great sporting brands in the world. Give him credit; he survived.
Beckham and I both had a bad night in Saint-Étienne. After writing, I squeezed through the crowd at the station and found an air-conditioned special train and zipped back to Paris in a few hours. The next day, I could not find my passport, a hor
rifying feeling. Through the efficiency of the American consulate in Paris, I received a replacement passport in one day, but for the next fourteen years, whenever I returned to the States, polite immigration agents always needed ten or twenty minutes to sort things out. Finally, in 2013, I was notified I was off the stop list.
* * *
My colleague Chris Clarey advised me not to stay in Marseille for the quarterfinal and semifinal to be played there, but rather in Aix-en-Provence. Chris not only knew of a renovated monastery in the center of town; he knew the best room in the hotel—as I recall, chambre 32, with a terrace and back view of a churchyard and a steeple. Every day my wife and I had breakfast in our room and raised a cup of café au lait to M. Christophe.
Ensconced in Aix, I prepared to go to a local café to watch the France-Italy quarterfinal, being played back in Saint-Denis. France had romped over South Africa and Saudi Arabia but lost Zidane for two matches because he foolishly stomped on a fallen opponent and dragged his cleats along the man’s hip—a gratuitous piece of violence that infuriated his coach.
“You can’t let a gesture like that go unpunished,” Jacquet said.
Zidane had been brilliant in the first two matches, admittedly against inferior teams, and missed the victory over Denmark, won by Emmanuel Petit in the 56th minute, and the round-of-16 win over Paraguay, on a goal by Laurent Blanc in the 114th minute. Now he was back to meet Italy, whose players he knew because he had played for Juventus.
At the Belle Epoque café in Aix, the waiter said, “Boissons!” Drinks only. The staff was not about to cook and serve, not with Les Bleus in action. I looked around the café. The patrons were not wearing tricolor jerseys or waving banners or chanting. They were too French for all that. However, they did exhibit a tone of intensity as they dug elbows into the tables and stared up at the television.
Eight World Cups Page 15