Eight World Cups

by George Vecsey

  * * *

  Meantime, a whole other tournament was going on in Japan. From what I heard, the Japanese were diligent hosts but did not seem to have as much invested psychically in the dual enterprise as the Koreans did. A few young Japanese friends of ours, who had lived near us in New York and now worked for international corporations in Tokyo, said their bosses demanded they be at their desks. But the young people insisted on watching at least the Japanese matches, and their bosses relented.

  My first contact with the Japanese end of the tournament came on June 7, when I flew from Incheon to Osaka to Sapporo for the match between Argentina and England, a reprise of the quarterfinal in 1998 when David Beckham earned a red card by kicking at Diego Simeone. Beckham had played his way back into the hearts of the English fans and was on the team.

  In Sapporo, one of the few cities in Japan with a grid layout, police were guarding against any outbreak of Falklands-Malvinas hostilities, but the fans were polite in this neutral place. This dream first-round pairing was held in the Sapporo Dome, the first indoor World Cup match since Michigan in 1994, and FIFA sent in a superstar to ride herd on the other stars. Pierluigi Collina of Italy, a referee noticeable for the absence of hair due to a rare disease, alopecia, had his own Web site, his own fan club, and his own watch commercial.

  Life does not always provide opportunities to redress mistakes, but, indoors, on the other side of the world from Saint-Étienne, Beckham had his chance. In the forty-fourth minute, Michael Owen reprised his jitterbug runs of 1998, breaking inside the Argentine defenses, hurtling himself toward the goal, and causing contact with an Argentine defender (not Simeone). The great Collina blew his whistle and sent England to the penalty-kick disk. Owen and Beckham conferred briefly, but Beckham was the best free-kick specialist in this sport and had been lusting for redemption for four years. Of course he would take the kick. Simeone, ever the antagonist, tried to shake Beckham’s hand, to mess with his mind, but Beckham ignored the antics. He let the keeper make his move, then plunked the ball straight down Sapporo High Street for what would be the only goal of the evening. After the match, Beckham celebrated. Four years was a long time.

  * * *

  Both Japan and South Korea had advanced into the knockout round, a matter of pride for both countries. Japan went out quickly, 1–0, to Turkey, one of the many outsiders in this tournament.

  The other host team played Italy in the main stadium in Seoul, a night that would test FIFA’s campaign against the grand spectacle of diving.

  To its credit, FIFA had been raising the professionalism and fitness of officials, calling them in for periodic training sessions, lowering the retirement age into the forties, and preparing them with seminars and training films. Just before the tournament, reporters were invited to the end of a three-day training session in Seoul, where I got to interview Brian Hall from Gilroy, California, who had been assigned to officiate the Italy-Ecuador match and would be the fourth official for Argentina-England, a high level of trust.

  “This is a brotherhood,” Hall told us, praising Collina.

  The refs had been told to crack down on the diving—simulazione in Italian. In recent years, bad acting had reached epidemic stage.

  “My intent is to protect the good players,” Hall said, adding, “You judge the location of the field and the score at the time. If a team is losing late in the game, they try to use gamesmanship. If you watch the video, you can see a player realize he has lost control of the ball, and then he drags his toe or his heel and does a flop. Then they look up to see if you are watching.”

  Hall, who worked in the credit card and computer fields, came to his strange sideline the way most officials do, by accident. As a thirteen-year-old keeper in California, he was asked to fill in when one of the refs did not show up. He declined, until the other ref reminded him that he would earn a seven-dollar fee. Hall had worked his way past the stereotype that the United States was not soccer territory, and now he and his colleagues had their orders: cut down on the acting.

  Byron Moreno of Ecuador was the referee for Italy–South Korea. Christian Vieri scored in the eighteenth minute, and Italy seemed to be tightening its traditional defense. But the Reds, inspired by crowds chanting “Tae-han Min-guk”—Republic of Korea—chased the ball until they scored in the eighty-eighth minute.

  Given its own ghastly record in three straight World Cup shoot-outs, Italy was not counting on that mode for salvation. Italy began firing the ball toward the goal and pulling out all the tricks, the operatic death scenes that work for the top teams in the chummy world of Serie A.

  Thirteen minutes into extra time, Francesco Totti of AS Roma went into spasms on the ground, his arms and legs shaking violently, as if he were being riddled by machine-gun bullets. The referee, warned about histrionics, observed Totti’s death rattle. Moreno had flashed the yellow card at Totti in the twenty-second minute for another infraction; now he waved it again, meaning Totti was automatically expelled.

  The Italians screamed but had to play one man down, which caught up with them at the twenty-seventh minute of added time, when Ahn Jung-Hwan scored the winning goal. The Italians went off the field raging at Moreno.

  Italian fans had no idea the referees had been told to cut down on faking; the cynical tifosi who saw strange calls in their home league suspected favoritism in the yellow card brandished at an Italian player in Seoul. This is the way the world works, vero?

  Since FIFA had ordered the refs to clamp down on diving, it seemed logical that a leader would back up his people the next day. Instead, Sepp Blatter undercut his referee.

  “Totti’s sending off against Korea was neither a penalty nor a dive,” Blatter told La Gazzetta dello Sport. He added, “A referee with a feeling would not have shown him the card, bearing in mind the same player had already been booked.”

  In a sense, Blatter was right. Refs generally hand out yellow cards early in a match to calm the lads down and then use discretion late in the match. On the other hand, a player with a yellow card in his dossier ought to be smart enough to shut down some of the gratuitous violence or yapping, but sometimes they forget—like Boniek of Poland in 1982 or Harkes in 1994.

  Now Blatter was publicly telling the world that his ref should have observed a double standard. The refs came to Moreno’s defense. The highly rated Anders Frisk of Sweden praised his colleague for making the right call and could not help noting that both Totti and Vieri missed easy shots late in the match.

  Many Italians insisted that Moreno must have been paid off to allow the Reds to advance. Blatter said that this was ridiculous but since he had already said the referee made the wrong call, Blatter and his staff made sure Moreno did not ref any more World Cup matches.

  In the months to come, Moreno was exposed as a shady character. Back home in Ecuador, he allowed nine minutes of injury time when a highly favored team was behind. After he gave up refereeing, Moreno was caught with $700,000 worth of heroin on a flight from Ecuador to New York in 2010 and served twenty-six months in prison. But nobody could have predicted his downfall on that furious evening in Seoul, when Totti flopped.

  That night I wrote that Totti had been guilty of bad acting. Then I began receiving e-mails.

  “Devei morire,” one of them began. You must die. Terrific. It gave me a chance to use my rudimentary Italian to write back to my new pen pals.

  * * *

  The quarterfinals included three regulars (Brazil, England, and Germany), one perennial disappointment (Spain), and four outsiders (South Korea, the United States, Turkey, and Senegal). Never had four nations from so far outside the power structure reached the quarterfinals. Why did this happen?

  • Opening up the competition to thirty-two teams gave outsiders the chance to upset somebody.

  • The increase of sponsor and television money in the best leagues in Europe and the Bosman court decision, allowing players to move to clubs in other countries, gave players experience and confidence when they played f
or their national teams.

  • Contemporary technology and electronics allowed nations to be more effective in training and teaching their players.

  • National teams recruited coaches from established nations like Brazil and the Netherlands. South Korea, once known as the Hermit Kingdom for its resistance to outside influences, had been unable to improve in soccer until it hired Guus Hiddink, the Dutchman who had coached at Fenerbahçe in Turkey and Real Madrid, as well as the 1998 Dutch team that went to the World Cup semifinals.

  When the Reds began to get results, Hiddink was hailed as a genius—a Western genius, at that, whose management style included spreading responsibilities to assistants and conferring with his players, a radical change for the Koreans.

  Bruce Arena said being the home team in the World Cup was worth two goals—one to get you out of trouble in the first round; another to beat a team you might not have beaten otherwise. South Korea had a lot going for it.

  On June 22, Hiddink went from genius to downright immortal as the Reds held off Spain for 120 minutes and then won in penalty kicks, 5–3, another World Cup failure for Spain. Going to the semifinals was a great moment for South Korea because it surpassed the stunning romp to the quarterfinals by North Korea in 1966.

  Another outsider was guaranteed a place in the semifinals, as Turkey was meeting Senegal in Osaka. Senegal was coached by a foreigner, Bruno Metsu, a Frenchman who had played in France and Belgium and later coached in France, Africa, and the Middle East. Twenty of the twenty-three Senegalese players worked in the French league.

  Turkey was also having its best World Cup. The domestic league had intense competition among three teams based in Istanbul, but the national team had been marginal until coached by Şenol Güneş, a former national team keeper from the Trabzonspor team. Eight of the twenty-three Turkish members played in Germany, while its best striker, Hakan Şükür, had played for Torino, Inter Milan, and Parma but mostly for Galatasaray.

  In the quarterfinal of outsiders, Turkey outlasted Senegal, 1–0, on a goal in the fourth minute of added time. The world was still waiting for a semifinalist from Africa.

  * * *

  I opted for the Brazil end of the semifinals, and by evening, we were ensconced in Ginza, which was glowing, as usual. It was great to see Japan. I had decided that holding the European championships in adjacent countries may be fine, but the sea between South Korea and Japan was too great a barrier for a World Cup.

  Brazil appeared to be gathering steam under Luiz Felipe Scolari, known as Big Phil. Managing Brazil is always tricky because jogo bonito is a national patrimony. Every time Brazil looks vulnerable on defense, the public calls for hunkering down, but when a nation produces a left back like Roberto Carlos, it’s hard not to deploy one of the most murderous left-footed shots in history.

  Brazil was powered by tall sturdy Rivaldo and a brash newcomer with glistening curls named Ronaldinho, along with the resurrected superstar Ronaldo, who had survived his apparent trance in the 1998 final to become the great striker of his time, a lethal mix of six-foot power and balletic grace.

  Like most artists, Ronaldo had his flaws, including his taste for roaming, which would eventually produce at least four children by various companions and wives. His other flaw was his knees. Injuries and operations had held him to only sixteen matches in 2001–2, but in a way that meant he was fresh for the World Cup. He had scored in four straight matches before missing against England. He had an injured thigh, but was expected to play in the semifinal against Turkey—a rare rematch in the World Cup format.

  The two teams had met in their group, producing charges of world-level faking. When Luizao went sprawling in the eighty-seventh minute, he convinced the Korean ref to give a penalty kick, which Rivaldo converted for a 2–1 victory. In the closing minutes, a Turkish player directed a ball into Rivaldo’s shins, and Rivaldo clutched his face with great elaboration, shades of Croatia’s Slava Bilić in 1998. The ref went for Rivaldo’s agony, flashing a red card, which ruled the Turkish player out for the next match.

  “Oriental Hospitality,” proclaimed the headline in a Rio paper, referring to the regional proclivity for generous gift giving. Needless to say, the Turkish players and fans remembered Luizao’s dive and Rivaldo’s mortal injury.

  The two teams were training in new stadium in Saitama, at the edge of the Tokyo sprawl, where the Japanese had built a subway line, exactly the kind of excesses the World Cup and Olympics foist upon host nations. For a few yen, I traveled from glittering Ginza to the end of the line in Saitama, in actual farmland. In the dusk, I walked along a quiet sidewalk, hearing the breeze whistle through the crops, birds singing vespers, a farmer finishing up for the evening, with the glow of the new stadium up ahead.

  Brazil was working out in the mostly empty stadium on this sweet, eerie evening, with the major noise coming from Brazilian radio reporters, who swarmed and chattered, keeping track of Ronaldo’s thigh, Ronaldinho’s banishment because of a dangerous tackle against England, and a collision between the regular keeper and a reserve during training. (The keeper would recover.)

  After the workout, I walked back through the farmland and took the subway back to Ginza, where the lights put me on sensory overload. I caught up with the televised semifinal in Seoul, between Germany and the Reds.

  In the seventy-first minute of a scoreless draw, Captain Ballack sacrificed himself when he took down a Korean player on a fast break, a tactical foul, worth a yellow card. He had accumulated a yellow card in the team’s earlier match when a Paraguayan player initiated contact, so Ballack would be out for the final, if Germany made it that far. Four minutes later, he made sure his team would reach the final, putting in a rebound. In South Korea, an estimated seven million people watched—and groaned—in public plazas.

  The next evening, some Turkish fans living all over the world splurged for last-minute air tickets to Tokyo and then splurged for outrageous scalper tickets, just to be in the corn and soy fields of Saitama for Turkey’s first World Cup semifinal.

  Ronaldo, ailing thigh and all, spun two defenders in the fourth minute of the second half and placed a shot into the corner for the only goal. Then he celebrated with a raised index finger and his gap-toothed grin, described by my colleague Howard French as resembling Alfred E. Neuman, the Mad Magazine icon.

  Big Phil replaced Ronaldo for a fresh defender in the sixty-eighth minute, and Brazil held on for the 1–0 victory. The honorary Brazilians in the stands, from Japan, South Korea, China, everywhere in the world, celebrated in their blue-and-yellow kits, the colors standing for grace, music, enthusiasm. Brazil was back in the finals.

  * * *

  Normally, I am not interested in the third-place match, but the Reds and Turkey had provided fresh energy and new faces. From Tokyo, I watched them play in far-off Daegu, as Şükür, the Bull of the Bosporus, scored the fastest goal ever in the World Cup, 10.8 seconds into the match.

  After Turkey held on for a 3–2 victory, its players summoned the South Koreans to take the victory lap with them. The players put their arms around one another, saluted the fans, absorbing the lusty cheers from the stands. Bravo to the Turks for acknowledging the last thrilling month.

  The championship match was in Yokohama, the ancient port for Westerners, with its foreigners’ cemetery. Marianne and I met our Japanese friends in Yokohama’s Chinatown before I headed for the stadium.

  After all the new faces, the final belonged to Germany and Brazil, with seven championships and five runner-up finishes between them. Ronaldinho was back from his suspension, but Ballack was serving his, an ominous imbalance.

  The great Collina was assigned to work the final, since he would reach the retirement limit of forty-five before the next World Cup. He took control of the match right away, wielding a yellow card to Roque Junior in the sixth minute and to Miroslav Klose in the ninth. The boys got Collina’s point and did not test him after that.

  Germany took the play to Brazil for more than
a half, counterattacking, conceding nothing, but without Ballack, it could not score. Big Phil’s tactics—the defense, and, who knows, maybe even the celibacy—had focused the Brazilians, with their offense coming from Big Ronnie, Little Ronnie, and Rivaldo, from everywhere.

  In the sixty-seventh minute, Germany made its first blunder. Rivaldo fired a left-footed shot that skipped off the soggy turf to Kahn, who normally would have gathered the ball. Instead, he deflected it to Ronaldo, who flicked it into the empty corner. (Later, there were suggestions Kahn had been playing with an injured ring finger on his right hand, but, tough guy that he was, he would not say.)

  In the seventy-ninth minute, jogo bonito emerged. José Kléberson centered a cross toward Rivaldo, who feinted as if to shoot, but he dummied the ball, letting it roll through his long legs, leaving the German defense leaning. The ball went to Ronaldo, who tapped in his second goal. Big Phil took him out in the ninetieth minute, as all Brazilians, honorary and real, applauded his comeback from the horror of 1998.

  “We missed this joy,” Ronaldo said after being awarded the Golden Boot trophy as the tournament’s outstanding player. “We said to ourselves, ‘We cannot miss it.’ Not only our joy is in first place but the joy of the Brazilian people.”

  The journalists waited in the mixed zone for words of wisdom from the Brazilian players. Eventually, they paraded through the corridor in a wiggly line, dancing the samba, blowing on horns, singing, but they never stopped to talk, and that was fine. At the end of a World Cup of outsiders, Brazil was making music and dancing again.

  14

  THE HOME I WAS ALWAYS SEEKING

  NEW YORK, 1997–2008

  For one magic decade, I was taken inside a society with all the finer things in life—soccer, the Italian language, and Sicilian orange-flavored rice balls.