Book Read Free

The Story of the World Cup

Page 12

by Brian Glanville


  Argentina 3, Ireland 1 (HT 1/1)

  Germany 2, Ireland 2 (HT 1/1)

  Czechoslovakia 6, Argentina 1 (HT 3/1)

  GOALS

  P W D L F A Pts

  Germany 3 1 2 0 7 5 4

  Czechoslovakia 3 1 1 1 8 4 3

  Ireland 3 1 1 1 4 5 3

  Argentina 3 1 0 2 5 10 2

  Pool II

  France 7, Paraguay 3 (HT 2/2)

  Yugoslavia 1, Scotland 1 (HT 1/0)

  Yugoslavia 3, France 2 (HT 1/1)

  Paraguay 3, Scotland 2 (HT 2/1)

  France 2, Scotland 1 (HT 2/0)

  Yugoslavia 3, Paraguay 3 (HT 2/1)

  GOALS

  P W D L F A Pts

  France 3 2 0 1 11 7 4

  Yugoslavia 3 1 2 0 7 6 4

  Paraguay 3 1 1 1 9 12 3

  Scotland 3 0 1 2 4 6 1

  Pool III

  Sweden 3, Mexico 0 (HT 1/0)

  Hungary 1, Wales 1 (HT 1/1)

  Wales 1, Mexico 1 (HT 1/1)

  Sweden 2, Hungary 1 (HT 1/0)

  Sweden 0, Wales 0 (HT 0/0)

  Hungary 4, Mexico 0 (HT 1/0)

  GOALS

  P W D L F A Pts

  Sweden 3 2 1 0 5 1 5

  Hungary 3 1 1 1 6 3 3

  Wales 3 0 3 0 2 2 3

  Mexico 3 0 1 2 1 8 1

  Play off Wales 2, Hungary 1 (HT 0/1)

  Pool IV

  England 2, Russia 2 (HT 0/1)

  Brazil 3, Austria 0 (HT 1/0)

  England 0, Brazil 0 (HT 0/0)

  Russia 2, Austria 0 (HT 1/0)

  Brazil 2, Russia 0 (HT 1/0)

  England 2, Austria 2 (HT 0/1)

  GOALS

  P W D L F A Pts

  Brazil 3 2 1 0 5 0 5

  England 3 0 3 0 4 4 3

  Russia 3 1 1 1 4 4 3

  Austria 3 0 1 2 2 7 1

  Play off Russia 1, England 0 (HT 0/0)

  Quarter-finals

  Norrköping

  France 4 Ireland 0

  Abbes; Kaebel, Lerond; Gregg; Keith,

  Penverne, Jonquet, McMichael;

  Marcel; Wisnieski, Blanchflower,

  Fontaine, Kopa, Cunningham, Cush;

  Piantoni, Vincent. Bingham, Casey,

  Scott, McIlroy,

  McParland.

  SCORERS

  Wisnieski, Fontaine (2), Piantoni for France

  HT 1/0

  Malmö

  West Germany 1 Yugoslavia 0

  Herkenrath; Krivocuka; Sijakovic,

  Stollenwerk, Juskowiak; Crnkovic; Krstic,

  Eckel, Erhardt, Zebec, Boskov;

  Szymaniak; Rahn, Petakovic, Veselinovic,

  Walter, Seeler, Schmidt, Milutinovic,

  Schaefer. Ognjanovic, Rajkov.

  SCORER

  Rahn for West Germany

  HT 1/0

  Stockholm

  Sweden 2 Russia 0

  Svensson; Bergmark, Yachine; Kessarev,

  Axbom; Boerjesson, Kuznetsov; Voinov,

  Gustavsson, Parling; Krijevski, Tsarev;

  Hamrin, Gren, Ivanov, A., Ivanov, V.,

  Simonsson, Liedholm, Simonian, Salnikov,

  Skoglund. Ilyin.

  SCORERS

  Hamrin, Simonsson for Sweden

  HT 0/0

  Gothenburg

  Brazil 1 Wales 0

  Gilmar; De Sordi, Kelsey; Williams,

  Santos, N.; Zito, Bellini, Hopkins; Sullivan,

  Orlando; Garrincha, Charles, M., Bowen;

  Didì, Mazzola, Pelé, Medwin, Hewitt,

  Zagalo. Webster, Allchurch,

  Jones.

  SCORER

  Pelé for Brazil

  HT 0/0

  Semi-finals

  Stockholm

  Brazil 5 France 2

  Gilmar; De Sordi, Abbes; Kaelbel,

  Santos, N.; Zito, Bellini, Lerond; Penverne,

  Orlando; Garrincha, Jonquet, Marcel;

  Didì, Vavà, Pelé, Wisnieski, Fontaine,

  Zagalo. Kopa, Piantoni,

  Vincent.

  SCORERS

  Vavà, Didì, Pelé (3) for Brazil

  Fontaine, Piantoni for France

  HT 2/1

  Gothenburg

  Sweden 3 West Germany 1

  Svensson; Bergmark, Herkenrath;

  Axbom; Boerjesson, Stollenwerk,

  Gustavsson, Parling; Juskowiak; Eckel,

  Hamrin, Gren, Erhardt, Szymaniak;

  Simonsson, Liedholm, Rahn, Walter, Seeler,

  Skoglund. Schaefer, Cieslarczyk.

  SCORERS

  Skoglund, Gren, Hamrin for Sweden

  Schaefer for Germany

  HT 1/1

  Third place match

  Gothenburg

  France 6 West Germany 3

  Abbes; Kaelbel, Kwiatowski;

  Lerond; Penverne, Stollenwerk, Erhardt;

  Lafont, Marcel; Schnellinger, Wewers,

  Wisnieski, Douis, Szymaniak; Rahn,

  Kopa, Fontaine, Sturm, Kelbassa,

  Vincent. Schaefer, Cieslarczyk.

  SCORERS

  Fontaine (4), Kopa (penalty), Douis for France

  Cieslarezyk, Rahn, Schaefer for Germany

  HT 3/1

  Final

  Stockholm

  Brazil 5 Sweden 2

  Gilmar; Santos, D., Svensson; Bergmark,

  Santos, N.; Zito, Axbom; Boerjesson,

  Bellini, Orlando; Gustavsson, Parling;

  Garrincha, Didì, Hamrin, Gren,

  Vavà, Pelé, Zagalo. Simonsson, Liedholm,

  Skoglund.

  SCORERS

  Vavà (2), Pelé (2), Zagalo for Brazil

  Liedholm, Simonsson for Sweden

  HT 2/1

  CHILE

  1962

  Background to Chile

  Brazil retained the 1962 World Cup, held in Chile, showing in the process that they were very much more than a one-man—or one-demigod—team; or rather that if one hero succumbed, another sprang up to take his place. It was the World Cup of Garrincha, the World Cup of 4-3-3. That long, thin, impoverished Chile should put it on at all was remarkable. Earthquakes had devastated the country at the time they were pleading their case, and Carlos Dittborn, the President of the Chilean Football Federation, coined the magnificent non sequitur, ‘We must have the World Cup because we have nothing.’

  They got it, quickly building one superb new stadium in Santiago in the snowy lee of a still more superb mountain and another, small but exquisite, on the coast at Viña del Mar, where pelicans sat on the rocks and the sea wrack blew in over the pitch. A third group would play in seedy, broken-down Rancagua in the stadium of the Braden Copper Company, and a fourth thousands of miles to the north, at Arica, near the Peruvian border.

  Criticisms of the country, of the organisation, were often unfair. If there was corruption over tickets, at least an official was hauled off to gaol. When there were similar stories, four years later, in England, the dirt was swept quickly under the carpet. If there were tales of over-charging for accommodation, then the police quickly made indictments. The two Italian journalists who indicted Chile as a backward country, and thereby exposed their own team to the calvary of the Battle of Santiago, were not even justified in their criticism. It was a country at once squalid and sophisticated, backward yet subtle, but for the visitor, Chile left more congenial memories than either Sweden or Mexico.

  Brazil, playing on South American soil, were inevitably the favourites, though illness had obliged Vicente Feola, that rumbling, Buddha-figure, to stand down as manager in favour of Aymore Moreira, brother of 1954’s Zeze. Aymore was a white-haired, patient, courteous man who, with Hilton Gosling beside him, had again ensured a climate in which the Brazilians could express their overflowing gifts in peace and with effect. They would play in the Viña del Mar group with the Czechs, Spaniards and Mexicans.

  The Contenders

  The Viña group: Brazil, Czechoslovakia, Spain and Mexico

  In the four years since they had
won the World Cup, the component pieces of the Brazilian team had sprung apart, then strangely and steadily come together again. Two players had gone to Madrid, with sharply varying fortunes; and had come back. Vavà, the centre-forward who scored twice in the Final was transferred to Atletico Madrid, did well for a few seasons, then returned to play in Brazil; in time to displace Pelé’s precocious teenaged colleague at Santos, Coutinho, with whom he had worked many a spectacular one-two.

  Didì, the great orchestrator in Sweden, and already a star in Switzerland, had joined Real Madrid, but had come home, in time to win back his place from the confident young Cinesinho.

  Zito, his midfield colleague, challenged by Zequinha, had edged in front of him at the eleventh hour, while an injury precluded any chance of Pepe supplanting Zagalo on the left wing; history repeating itself. Garrincha, that extraordinary child of nature from Pau Grande, was there again.

  There were changes, however, in the central defence. Mauro, a reserve in 1958, took over at centre-half and captain from Bellini. The little black Zozimo, who had toured Europe with Brazil in 1957, succeeded Orlando, who had been playing in Argentina.

  The Santoses, though veterans now—Nilton was thirty-six—were irreplaceable at back; the grey-jerseyed Gilmar was as calmly efficient as ever in goal. And of course there was Pelé, as wonderfully gymnastic, as astonishingly inventive, as brave, strong, inimitable and explosive as ever. At twenty-one there was little doubt that he was now the best footballer in the world.

  At Viña—or rather, just outside it at Quilpue, where Pelé rejoiced to play daringly in goal—Aymore Moreira confessed his fears of Czechoslovakia. ‘The Czechs play a very athletic game, hard and vigorous, which will certainly give us trouble. And then I know that they are also good technicians!’ They were known to be a gifted team though a slow one but, as one acute French journalist wrote, their very slowness, their very pessimism, were turned to advantage.

  Slowness—when players were at the same time such fine ball-players—meant precision; a packed defence, a sparsely-manned attack, with large areas of space to play in. Pessimism meant lack of pressure, plus a desire to show everybody they had been undervalued. Teamwork was guaranteed by the fact that most of the side played for the Dukla Prague (Army) club; and there was an outstanding left-half in Josef Masopust, a calm, deft player who used the ball cunningly and could score goals, too. In the centre of the defence, Pluskal and the massive, bald Popluhar, both World Cup centre-halves in their time, were no mean barrier, while behind them played the bald, elastic goal-keeper Wilhelm Schroiff, whose contribution would, until the Final, be so great.

  Spain were managed by Helenio Herrera, the Internazionale manager, who had previously flanked Giannini Ferrari as coach to the Italian side. Controversy over the drugging of Inter players, and Herrera’s public delight when Juventus were knocked out of the European Cup, had led to his resignation. Spain—where he had worked for many successful years—now appointed him.

  It was a surprising development, which led predictably to a conflict of egos between Herrera and Alfredo di Stefano. Pulling a muscle just before leaving Spain, di Stefano announced he would be coming merely ‘as a tourist’. His cheerful father arrived from Buenos Aires with a ‘magic’ liniment which he urged him to use, but the prevailing view was that no liniment would heal the breach between di Stefano and Herrera.

  Still, there was Luis Suarez, a fine, creative inside-forward, once with Herrera at Barcelona and now with him again at Inter. There was the leggy Peirò of Atletico Madrid. There was Martinez from Paraguay, and Puskas from Hungary. The talent was there, if not the team.

  The remaining country was Mexico, two of whose players had tried on their arrival in Viña to attack an Australian journalist who had written that they would be there only to live the gay life.

  In retrospect, there are good reasons for calling this Zagalo’s World Cup as much as Garrincha’s. ‘One could never sufficiently stress the key role played by Zagalo in the Brazilian victory,’ wrote the French journalist Jean-Philippe Réthacker. ‘An active and courageous footballer, very perceptive in his passing and positional play, precise and varied in his technique, Zagalo was certainly, with the Czech Masopust, the most intelligent player of the 1962 World Cup.’

  Seriousness was the keynote of his game and his personality. In hot, gay Rio, he was the player who spent his evenings quietly with his fiancée, his Sunday mornings in church. Strength of lung and strength of will would transform him into an international star, capable now of labouring in midfield, now of bursting forward to deliver a short, deadly accurate cross, who had never been more important to Brazil than at this moment.

  The Rancagua group:

  England, Hungary, Bulgaria and Argentina

  England had Walter Winterbottom in charge, for what would be his fourth and last World Cup. He had just been out-voted for the Football Association’s Secretaryship, in which he was expected to succeed his mentor, Sir Stanley Rous, now President of FIFA. He was assisted as coach by the English Footballer of the Year, Burnley’s Jimmy Adamson, a tall, lean, humorous Geordie, captain and future manager of his club, who would subsequently turn down Walter Winterbottom’s job.

  Yet although they had scouted the ground this time, had got the retreat that everybody wanted, there was still something vaguely amateurish and haphazard about the English preparation. What other team, for instance, would include in its practice matches a middle-aged Australian millionaire businessman?

  The 1958 side had largely evaporated, with one major exception; the attack was still built round Fulham’s inside-left Johnny Haynes, who was now the captain. ‘Why is everything with England number 10?’ a Yugoslav coach would demand rhetorically, as his team’s aeroplane finally flew out of Santiago. ‘Number 10 takes the corners! Number 10 takes the throw-ins! So what do we do? We put a man on number 10! Goodbye, England!’

  It was exactly what the Hungarians would do in the first match at Rancagua, when Rakosi dogged Haynes’ every move. And indeed, the nemesis of making one man so important was precisely that if he failed, so did the team. Haynes had failed in Gothenburg; he would fail, alas, again in Chile. But since he was captain, the failure would if anything be more costly. A most gifted player with a superb left foot, brisk control and high strategic flair, Chile saw him at his least amenable. There was a thin-skinned petulance about him which seemed to permeate the team, and led to strained relations with the Press. On the other hand, it was not Haynes’ fault that the over-hierarchical atmosphere of the England team was so marked that players still tended to give less for England than they gave for their clubs; and they still travelled without a doctor, an omission which might have had fatal results for Peter Swan, the reserve centre-half, in Viña del Mar.

  Bryan Douglas, the skilful little Blackburn outside-right, who had scored an important goal in the vital qualifying match against Portugal, also survived from Sweden. As for Bobby Charlton, the blameless cause of such controversy in 1958, he had developed in these years from a goal-scoring inside-forward into an outside-left of classical gifts, marvellous acceleration, a willowy swerve, a prodigious shot not only in his right foot but now in his left.

  Then there was Jimmy Greaves, quintessentially Cockney, a ‘boy-wonder’ still more remarkable than Charlton; an East Ender who at the age of seventeen had walked straight into the Chelsea First Division team on the opening day of the season at Tottenham to embark on a dazzling series of goals. His turn of speed was extraordinary, his confidence more remarkable still, his left foot a hammer, his instinct for being in the right place near goal almost psychic. The previous year he had gone briefly and reluctantly to A.C. Milan, hated the atmosphere and the disciplines, and obliged them to transfer him home; but to Tottenham, not to Chelsea. He was one of the most exciting talents England had thrown up since the war; yet now, when the chips were truly down, he would be as disappointing as Haynes.

  Another East Londoner had just won a place in the team—Bobby Moore,
capped for the first time in Peru en route to Chile. England had played extremely well, winning 4–0 on a ground where, three years earlier, they had lost 4–1, and the twenty-one-year-old Moore, tall, blond, quite imperturbable, had had a fine game at right-half. This imperturbability was evident even when he was a West Ham United youth player, running up a record number of youth caps for England. Haste seemed anathema to him; even in the tightest goal-line situations he would remain calm and relaxed.

  Encouraged by Ron Greenwood, West Ham’s manager, a disciple of Winterbottom, he had worked hard at his football, developing from a centre-half of great poise but unexceptional talents into a defensive wing-half who read the game superbly, covering and tackling faultlessly, using the long ball well. If he had weaknesses, they lay in strange, transient lapses in concentration and a vulnerability to small, quickturning forwards who would play close up on him.

  He well deserved his place, and would have an excellent World Cup, but the choice of the equally bold, equally large, straightforward Ron Flowers as the other wing-half meant that England lacked the ball-playing half-back they needed in a 4–2–4 formation. Bobby Robson, who had developed since 1958 into a thoughtful half-back, had dropped out in Lima through injury, and would otherwise have been a more sensible choice in the circumstances.

  In goal was yet another Londoner, the cheerful, robust, fearless Ron Springett of Sheffield Wednesday. He was Fulham-born, resilient on the line, but vulnerable to shots from afar, as his colleagues knew. There was a worrying doubt about his vision.

  At full-back there was a resilient pair in the calm, pipe-smoking Jim Armfield and the tough ebullient Ray Wilson, while at last there was a choice between two tall and powerful centre-halves, Tottenham’s Maurice Norman and Sheffield Wednesday’s Peter Swan. For centre-forward there was the brave, blond Shropshire miner, Gerry Hitchens, who unlike Greaves had stayed happily that season in Milan, scoring freely for Inter. He arrived in Chile, to the admiration of his colleagues, dressed to kill.

 

‹ Prev