The Story of the World Cup
Page 50
In Suwon, the gloriously resourceful Irish gave Spain a notable run for their money only to go down at the last to the brutal anticlimax of penalty kicks. The Spaniards never mastered the blond Damien Duff, operating excitingly first on the left wing, then on the right, and they were almost hoist with their own petard. Almost that is to say paid heavily for the tactical corwardice of their coach Camacho.
With his team still ahead from an early goal by the coruscating Morientes, he seemed to lose his nerve, took Morientes off, put on an inexperienced midfielder in Albelda, only to lose the still more dazzling Raúl when Gary Breen clattered into him. Lose him, as it would transpire, for the rest of the tournament. Having used all his three substitutes, Camacho was obliged, when Albelda departed, hurt, at the end of normal time, to endure the whole of extra time with ten men. The Irish, to be frank, never made enough of that advantage.
During the game proper, they were awarded two penalties, one missed, one converted, though the spot kick gained by Duff and missed by Ian Harte seemed dubious. The second, by contrast—both came in the second half—was commendably given by the referee, Anders Frisk, when Fernando Hierro blatantly hung on to the shirt of the towering Niall Quinn. Robbie Keane calmly put it away.
Spain’s goal was cleverly worked. Carles Puyol and Luis Enrique combined at a right-flank throw in, Puyol crossed, Morientes glanced in his header. Roy Keane or no Roy Keane, the Irish central midfield of Matt Holland and Mark Kinsella was doughtily effective, as indeed it had been in previous games. The penalty shoot-out was something of a fiasco. Robbie Keane duly converted the first of them, but Holland, Connolly and Kevin Kilbane all missed. So Gaizka Mendieta, the little blond midfielder, had only to score to give Spain the game. His kick was a poor one, but it found its way over the line and Spain had survived.
In Oita, the inspired finishing of Henri Camara, at his most effective when he moved to the flanks, took unpredictable Senegal through against Sweden on a burning hot day. Unbeaten in 16 games, the Swedes were one ahead on just 11 minutes, when Tony Sylva, in one of his more impetuous moments, rushed out to collect a corner, didn’t, and enabled Henrik Larsson to head home. At the end of the game Larsson announced it had been his last international.
On 37 minutes, Camara took a pass from Diouf and sent a strong acute angled right footer searing past Hedman into the corner of the net. In extra time, Anders Svensson hit a post, but it was Camara who scored the Golden Goal, snapping up a backheel from Pape Thiaw, springing into the box, and beating Hedman with, this time, a left-footed shot, which flew in off a post.
In Jeonju next day, American confidence in facing Mexico, a team they’d played so often, and often beaten, proved justified, transcending current form. Canny Bruce Arena man-marked both Blanco, playing a ‘three-quarter’ attacking role, and Gerardo Torrado. It was the USA’s gung-ho aggression against Mexico’s more subtle approach. On the American flanks, clever experienced Claudio Reyna and Eddie Lewis, the player who’d spent the previous season in Fulham’s reserves and now kept out DaMarcus Beasley, were impressive. Yet again, the majestic Brad Friedel was a crucial factor, making three memorable saves, two in the first half, one in the second.
It was Reyna who set up an eighth-minute goal, hitting the line, pulling the ball back for Josh Wolff to find Brian McBride, who scored. Mexico should have had a penalty when John O’Brien handled in the box, but it wasn’t given. So the Americans eventually made it 2–0, Eddie Lewis crossing precisely from the left for Landon Donovan to head in. Arena had a point when he advised Fulham to give Lewis more of a chance.
In Kobe, Brazil rode their luck against Belgium. On 35 minutes, the ever dangerous Marc Wilmots leaped to head in a cross by Jacky Peeters from the right. Alas, another inexperienced referee, Jamaica’s Peter Prendergast, disallowed the goal for a phantom push. Not till the 67th minute could Brazil score, and that was when Rivaldo’s left-foot shot was significantly deflected past the Belgian keeper, Geert de Vlieger. Three minutes from time Ronaldo, ebullient again, struck the second with a low drive: 2–0. But the watching England players were hardly intimidated.
In Daejeon, history, in a sense, repeated itself; the Italians went out to Koreans. This time, however, to South rather than North Korea, who’d beaten them at Middlesbrough in 1966. It was a defeat the Italians took bitterly. The word vittimismo, the feeling that the world is against you, sprung to mind. At the end of the match Francesco Totti, sent off on a second yellow card for diving when he arguably had been fouled, admitted that he, and others, childishly smashed up their dressing room. Something which wasn’t done by the England players afflicted in Mexico City by Diego Maradona’s Hand of God goal in 1986. Nor, then, did we hear the agonised claims of corruption which rose from the Italian and Spanish camps after defeats by South Korea. Those of us who have conducted long, exhaustive inquiries into football corruption—notably by Italian clubs—know how easy it is to make such accusations, how hard it is to prove them.
Byron Moreno, the Ecuadorian referee, was called ‘a disgrace’ by the head of the Italian delegation, Rafael Ranucci, who knew South Korea ‘were going to try something’. To his credit, Giovanni Trapattoni was restrained.
Yet in the case both of Italy and Spain, the games were surely there for the taking. Gianni Mura, in La Repubblica, opined that the Italians had been like a man who drives through a notoriously dangerous zone wearing a Rolex watch with his arm dangling out of the window. So Moreno’s refereeing had become ‘a great sheet’, covering up a multitude of errors.
Italy lived dangerously from the fourth minute when Moreno rightly gave a penalty after Christian Panucci grasped Seol Ki-Hyeon’s shirt. Ahn missed it, Gianluigi Buffon diving to save. Fifteen minutes later Bobo Vieri soared typically to head in Totti’s corner at the far post. Only spectacular saves by Lee Woon-Jae thwarted Totti and Vieri. So it was that when the hapless Panucci blundered again, failing to cut out Hwang’s pass, Seol scored with a left footer. That was on 88 minutes and two later Vieri, of all people, struck Damiano Tommasi’s cross over the bar from five yards. In extra time the same player had a perfectly good goal refused for alleged offside, Totti was expelled and Ahn scored the Golden Goal on 116 minutes, running in front of Paolo Maldini to head in Lee Young-Pyo’s left-wing cross. The incorrigible blowhard, Luciano Gaucci, President of Perugia, swore that the ingrate Ahn would never play for them again, although he subsequently changed his mind. Italy, emphatically and sullenly, were out, as were the victorious Koreans’ co-hosts, who went down 1–0 to Turkey in Miyagi.
Three days later came the quarter-finals, and an English anticlimax. Might it have been different if only Michael Owen had been fully fit, rather than recovering from a groin strain? Yet, after defeat by Brazil in Shizuoka, England and Eriksson had scant excuses. Had they not, after the sending off of Ronaldinho, scorer of his team’s embarrassing winner, fully 32 minutes to score against ten men? Didn’t they have the gift of an opening goal from Michael Owen on 23 minutes, after a bizarre blunder by Brazil’s central defender, Lucio? Wasn’t Ronaldinho’s winner in the 49th minute a present from David Seaman, stranded hopelessly and helplessly off his line as the free kick sailed into the open net? Ronaldinho said he meant it; others say he didn’t. But Seaman had erred expensively like this in the past, memorably in a Cup Winners’ Cup Final in Paris for Arsenal against Zaragoza, when from much farther out still, Nayim’s shot soared over his head.
Seaman left the field in tears; a sad climax to what had previously, for him, been a triumphant World Cup. Brazil equalised in first-half injury time and in this instance, too, Ronaldinho was crucial. Shaking off Paul Scholes after Beckham spurned a tackle, he then elegantly eluded Ashley Cole before laying the ball on for Rivaldo to score.
Though Emile Heskey was on far better form, England, deprived of Owen’s dash and opportunism, had neither the skill nor the strategy to penetrate what was after all a far from irresistible Brazilian defence. Neither Scholes nor Butt was able to produce the unexpec
ted, decisive pass. No Paul Gascoigne of old, alas. Eriksson seemed to have no solutions. Bringing Dyer on to the left flank was no help. It might have been a moment to risk using Joe Cole, the one English player with the skills and flair to make chances, even if consistency had not been his forte. So it was that Seaman’s blunder was fatal; but surely, given that long numerical advantage, it need not have been.
Sven-Göran Eriksson hardly inspired his team at half time. ‘We needed Winston Churchill,’ complained an England defender, ‘and we got Iain Duncan Smith.’
After Germany had squeezed through 1–0 in Ulsan against the United States, surviving a plain penalty when Torsten Frings handled Greg Berhalter’s shot on the line, Franz Beckenbauer’s contempt was unrestrained. ‘We should change everything about this team,’ he inveighed. ‘Everybody apart from the goalkeeper Oliver Kahn [who made several crucial saves] should be thrown out for the semi-final.’ It was indeed one more drab performance by a German team riding its luck to excess. The skilful Claudio Reyna declared that the USA had ‘played Germany off the park’. Indeed, their muscular approach to the game had given the Americans territorial dominance, but they simply couldn’t turn it into goals.
Thus, the only one came from Germany’s best outfield player, Michael Ballack, just two minutes after Kahn had punched out Eddie Lewis’s fierce drive in the 36th. An in-swinging free kick by Christian Ziege, and Ballack’s header went under Brad Friedel and in. Oliver Neuville ran himself to exhaustion.
After South Korea’s hugely controversial win over Spain in Gwangju once more accusations flew of dirty work at the crossroads.
There was no doubt that the officials’ decisions went disproportionately against Spain, but once again, sympathy had objectively to be limited. The Spaniards should still have been able to win, and so avoid the fiasco of penalties. Spain were without Raúl, still injured, but chances were made. On 48 minutes came the first fraught moment. When De Pedro’s free kick was headed in, from a knot of players, by Ivan Helguera, the Egyptian referee, Gamal Ghandour, gave a free kick, though nobody knew quite why.
In extra time, on the decision of his linesman, Michael Ragconath, he quite wrongly decreed that the ball had crossed the right-hand goal line after Joaquin centred and before Morientes headed in; though it was possible that the Korean keeper, Lee Woon-Jae, had stopped when he heard the whistle. But in my opinion the most blatant mistake was when Joaquin himself took what proved to be the fatal penalty in the shoot out—when Lee Woon-Jae so clearly came off his line.
‘I have reached the conclusion that Senegalese players use their elbow first in high balls,’ said Turkey’s coach, Senol Gunes—who was largely confounding his many critics—provocatively, before the teams met in Osaka.
Elbows or no, Senegal would succumb to a Golden Goal, splendidly scored on the half volley by Ilhan from Umit Davala’s right-wing cross. Afterwards the young striker, used yet again as a substitute, claimed with reason that he should have been on at the start in every game. Top scorer for Besiktas in the Turkish Championship, he took the place against Senegal of a waning Hakan Sukur, who missed chance after chance but would ultimately come alive in the Third Place match: in tandem with Ilhan.
Senegal, however, had truly distinguished themselves in this World Cup; a team whose kit had initially to be paid for by Salif Diao, later to be bought by the team at large. But it was Turkey who played the good football, Yildiray Basturk elusive and neat as ever, Hasan Sas a clever soloist on the left. Overall, one of the tournament’s benign surprises.
But even they could not stem the advance of Brazil, when it came to the semi-final in Saitama. Clearly there were scores to be settled from the first match. A plus for Turkey was that Ronaldinho, sent off against England for his foul on Mills, would not be there. In the event Ronaldo, who would score the only goal, would complain of maltreatment.
Ronaldo scored Brazil’s winner against the Turks on 48 minutes, racing on to Gilberto Silva’s pass from the left, stretching to make the contact which took the ball past the excellent keeper, Rustu Recher. He would save resourcefully from the exuberant right flanker Cafu, Ronaldo, Roberto Carlos and twice from Rivaldo. This was so much more the ‘real’ Brazil, no matter the dour philosophy of Big Phil.
Meanwhile, in Seoul, in the words of one headline, GERMAN ROBOTS GO MARCHING ON. This time, no referee or linesman could save South Korea. Germany, bruising opposition, again had Kahn’s goalkeeping to thank, but theirs was the one goal, scored by Michael Ballack on 75 minutes, when he struck Oliver Neuville’s cutback ball with his right and, when Lee moon-Jae saved resiliently, converted the rebound with his left. But his cynical foul on the impressive Lee Chun-Soo got him the yellow card which would keep him out of the Final.
Just as in 1982, but for different reasons, neutrals prayed that Germany would lose the Final. In Madrid it was a moral matter, after Toni Schumacher’s repugnant foul on Patrick Battiston. Now it was because a German victory would distinguish not the Beautiful but the Ugly game.
In the interim, a Turkish team inspired by Ilhan won a livelier than usual third-place match against the South Koreans in Daegu. Sadly for the resourceful 33-year-old Korean skipper, Hong Myung-Bo, who had scored the decisive spot kick for his team against Spain, been saluted as the best in his role in the tournament, and was playing his last international match, it would end in tears. Or, if you like, begin with them, for it was only after 11 seconds that he carelessly lost the ball to Ilhan, who enabled Sukur to score.
Korea equalised on nine minutes with Lee Ful-Yong’s inspired curling free kick but their back three constantly let them down. Ilhan made it 2–1. Ahn, dynamically twisting one way then the other, almost equalised, but on 32 minutes Sukur knocked the ball through for Ilhan to score again. The second half was largely as great an anticlimax as Song’s 90th-minute consolation goal.
The Final, in Yokohama, was overall a better game than might have been expected. Above all, it represented the apotheosis of Ronaldo, after the trauma of 1998, and victory for a team which, unlike its rivals, at least was sporadically capable of playing spectacular football, not least because Ronaldinho was now exuberantly back from his suspension. Even without Ballack, the Germans to their credit carried the game to Brazil in the opening stages, though they made few clear opportunities. Sadly and strangely, their keeper, Oliver Kahn, voted best player of the tournament and faultless till then, gave away the opening, crucially important, goal with a blunder as bad in its way as Seaman’s against Brazil. Ah, football!
For that matter Ronaldo, though he would emerge triumphant, could well have looked back on the Final with despair. Twice in the first half he failed with splendid chances, once forced wide by Kahn, once allowing him to block, when an exquisite angled pass by Ronaldinho had sent him clear. Almost on half time, the lively 22-year-old midfielder Kleberson had struck Kahn’s bar.
As against that, early in the second half, belying his diminutive stature, Oliver Neuville let fly a tremendous 35-yard free kick which Marcos, the best Brazilian goalkeeper for years, flung himself to turn on to the post.
It was another of the ironies of this game that the German midfielder Dietmar Hamann, who had made such a dominating start, should be seriously at fault when Brazil took the lead on 68 minutes. Dwelling on the ball, he lost it to a determined tackle by Ronaldo, of all people, one which would have done credit to any midfield terrier. Ronaldo advanced and served Rivaldo, who shot. Kahn, vulnerable at last, and on this of all occasions, spilled the ball and Ronaldo, following up, sent it home. Well might Kahn, afterwards invested with the golden award, have reflected that all that glisters is not gold.
Eleven minutes later, when Kleberson, evident again, crossed from the right, Rivaldo’s cunning dummy freed Ronaldo, despite the clutch of opponents around him, to beat Kahn again with a right-footed drive. So he and the Brazilians laid the ghosts of 1998.
For all the mediocrity of the tournament at large, this was arguably the best Final since 1986.
Transferred on loan from Arsenal to Fulham after the tournament, Inamoto confessed after he’d played his first half game for his new club in the Intertoto Cup at home (well, at Queens Park Rangers’ stadium) against Souhaux, that his World Cup feats had restored the confidence he had partly lost in his deeply frustrating season at Highbury.
The Japanese coach, Philippe Troussier, however, felt that after exceptional efforts in the first three matches he was running out of steam against the Turks, and substituted him at half time.
There was no doubt that Japan’s impressive World Cup progress was thanks in large measure to Troussier, however uncompromising his attitude could be, and it was a blow to Japanese football when he maintained his determination to leave the job when the competition was over. Clearly he had hoped he could then take over the French international team, following the dismissal of the hapless Roger Lemerre, but though he was on the short list, the job went to Jacques Santini.
It was much to the credit of the Japanese Football Federation and its understanding President, Shunichiro Okana, that Troussier survived the hostility of the media and the J League’s President, Saburo Kawaguchi, to remain in office. His brusque uncompromising approach alienated the local press. When Japan won their group decider against Tunisia, 2–0, he dedicated the victory sarcastically to the Japanese media who had ‘so motivated me to shut them up that I owed them that. Thanks to them, I always had to be good.’ It was perhaps inevitable that he and the J League should clash, such were his demands on their players for training camps and tours.