by Nick Holt
Brazil made changes for the second game, played in São Paulo more through political expediency than any sensible reason. Zizinho was still unfit and they left out Jair and Bigode, and nearly paid the price. Switzerland were well organised but decidedly ordinary, and should have been brushed aside. Instead, the Brazilians showed their defensive frailty, Jacques (Jacky) Fatton frequently “doing” Augusto for pace and twice equalising for the Europeans, the second in the eighty-eighth minute when it was too late for Brazil to up a gear and win the game. Coach Flávio Costa was nearly lynched – the hosts would have to up their game.
And how. Yugoslavia had breezed past Switzerland and Mexico and now needed only a draw to top the group and eliminate the hosts. Given what happened in the country in the 1990s, it seems remarkable that this disparate and hostile ethnic group could be turned into a potent unit, but they were a really good side here, hard at the back where their young (Croatian) fullback Ivica Horvat was dominant, aggressive in midfield and skilful up top.
In the decider, in a rocking Maracanã restored to near capacity after safety concerns were alleviated, the Brazilians got an early break when Rajko Mitic, one of six Red Star Belgrade players in the side, cut his head on a crudely finished girder and had to have treatment. (Obviously the safety precautions didn’t extend to looking after the opposition players.) Momentarily thrown, Yugoslavia conceded early to an Ademir header. Back to a full complement, they pressed Brazil all the way; the Dream Team were excellent, but so too were Mitic, the Cajkovski brothers and Tomasevic. Zizinho had a goal chalked off by the Welsh referee, but not before Zeljko Cajkovski missed a gilt-edged chance at the other end. Brazilian ’keeper Barbosa made a good stop from Mitic, but it was all over when Zizinho repeated his earlier dribble and scored a second. It was tight, but Brazil did enough and knocked out one of the other strong teams.
GROUP 2
An upset was narrowly avoided in the top group but not in the second. It nearly came in the first round of matches; the USA were beating Spain with ten minutes to go before a flurry of goals gave the Spaniards a 3–1 win. In the other game England produced a competent display to see off Chile 2–0, Mortensen heading Mullen’s cross back past the goalkeeper and Mannion hitting a daisy-cutter from fifteen yards after Finney teed him up.
England brought a squad to this tournament that was neither young nor experienced. Only Billy Wright, Tom Finney and Stanley Matthews had more than twenty caps, yet the youngest players were a couple of twenty-four-year-olds. It was a legacy of the war, which had deprived a good crop of players of some of their best years. Matthews arrived late so he missed the game against Chile, but it was assumed he would replace Mullen for the second match – he was England’s most likely match-winner. Arthur Drewry, the one selector who travelled with the team, decided otherwise and stuck with the team that beat Chile. This was a huge part of England’s problem; the team was selected by committee, with the post of manager, held by Walter Winterbottom, little more than a chaperone and dispenser of tactical advice. Even that was pretty redundant, English sides knew only one way to play. The system meant selection was inconsistent, biased towards establishment men and wholly conservative. The press consoled themselves with the thought that maybe Matthews was being held back for the tough final game against Spain that would decide the group.
WORLD CUP SHOCKS No.1
29 June 1950, Independencia Stadium, Belo Horizonte, Brazil; 10,151
Referee: Generoso Dattilo (Italy)
Coaches: Walter Winterbottom (England) & Bill Jeffrey (USA)
England (WM): Bert Williams (Wolverhampton Wanderers); Alf Ramsey (Tottenham Hotspur), Laurie Hughes (Liverpool), John Aston (Manchester United); Billy Wright (Wolves), Jimmy Dickinson (Portsmouth); Wilf Mannion (Middlesbrough), Roy Bentley (Chelsea); Tom Finney (Preston North End), Stan Mortensen (Blackpool), Jimmy Mullen (Wolves).
United States (3–2–5): Frank Borghi (St Louis); Harry Keough (St Louis), Charlie Colombo (St Louis), Joe Maca (Brooklyn); Ed McIlvenny (Philadelphia), Walter Bahr (Philadelphia); Frank Wallace (St Louis), Gion Pariani (St Louis), Joe Gaetjens (Brookhattan), John Souza (Ponta Delgada), Ed Souza (Ponta Delgada).
This was the most extraordinary result in the brief history of the World Cup to date, and remains one of the more inconceivable results that has rocked the Finals. This was England, inventors of the game, so confident in their supremacy they hadn’t bothered to even enter the competition before the war. (Maybe they should have – they had a much better side relative to the competition than they did in the 1950s.) Even with the problematic heat and all the travelling, they were one of the clear favourites for the tournament.
Cris Freddi suggests the result wasn’t as seismic as the reaction would suggest, but he’s being wise after the event. The USA had played well against Spain – but then Spain weren’t regarded as any good, either. The USA had only narrowly lost to an FA XI, but that XI was a much weaker side, featuring only Matthews of the World Cup side (and a young Nat Lofthouse, who scored for fun on the tour). In qualifying, the USA had been trounced twice by Mexico, who proved the whipping boys in the first group; make no mistake, this was a massive shock, the modern equivalent would be China beating France or something similar.
Most sources, even US ones, cite their team as giving a backs-to-the-wall performance. Not that there were many US sources; only one reporter, from St Louis – who provided five of the starting line-up – attended the game. His name, in wonderfully 1950s Chandleresque film-noir style, was Dent McSkimming, and he reported back the exciting news with great pride. It was met, as most soccer news still is in the USA, with massive indifference.
What has been misrepresented is Gaetjens’ goal, a clever header from a mishit shot, and certainly not the “in off his ear” fluke Alf Ramsey claimed it to be. The experience in Brazil confirmed Ramsey’s view of South America as an uncivilised place and put in place some of the festering resentment that came out as England manager. Most of the other England players dismissed the result as “one of those days”, which is probably a fair assessment. Tom Finney claims it was the most awful game of his long and distinguished career, ninety minutes of monumental frustration.
The Americans played well and deserve enormous credit. They worked hard and kept their discipline – the ostensible 3–2–5 formation became nearer to 5–4–1 as they were pressed back in the second half, but McIlvenny and Bahr were excellent, the former a Scot who had played a bit of lower-division football (how he must have loved beating England!). The goalkeeper Borghi had played a bit of pro baseball so presumably had a safe pair of hands – he played really well and deserved the odd piece of good fortune. And for all their heroics the Americans had a fair slice of luck, too – this is not apologist stuff, just accurate; if one team has around twenty attempts on goal (with finishers of the quality of Mortensen and Finney in the side) and the other has three or four, which is expected to win? The chances were fluffed – Roy Bentley was the chief culprit and his claims to have hit the bar three times aren’t borne out by other reports.
You often read reports after FA Cup giant-killing games about a postman or a welder scoring the winner; Gaetjens, a Haitian awaiting US citizenship, washed dishes in a New York diner. He went back to Haiti and disappeared a few years later, presumed a victim of Papa Doc Duvalier’s murderous Tontons Macoute.
Even in 1950, England’s reputation abroad was not what we wanted to believe it was; the Brazilian crowd waved white handkerchiefs in a farewell taunt to the homeward-bound losers. It says much for English attitudes that Drewry and Winterbottom took the team straight home rather than stay and watch the denouement of the tournament.
If ever there was a time when English football should have sat down and taken a long, hard look at itself, it was in the aftermath of the 1950 World Cup . . . We stood still, our insular attitude reinforced by the notion we had invented the game.
Stanley Matthews in his autobiography
The Way It Was (2001)
; For 1950 you could equally read qualifying in 1974, failure in 1982 and embarrassment in 2010. English football dances to the ringing of the cash register not the waltz, the samba, the flamenco or the tango. In a musical game, England are Status Quo.
England, to their credit, didn’t moan about their defeat – stiff upper lip and all that. They did moan a bit more when they lost their next match, to Spain. Jackie Milburn, in alongside Eddie Baily of Spurs for Bentley and Mannion, was denied a perfectly decent headed goal and there was plenty of time-wasting and theatrics after Spain took the lead early in the second half. The goal was scored by Zarra (Telmo Montoya) of Atletico Bilbao, who scored twenty in twenty for Spain and is a legend of Basque football. Ramallets, the Spanish goalkeeper who made his debut at the tournament, was the next in a line of great Spanish ’keepers starting with Zamora – he was their first choice for the rest of the 1950s.
Chile put things in perspective when they beat the USA 5–2 in a dead rubber. Their opening goal was scored by George Robledo of Newcastle United, son of a Chilean father and English mother. When Newcastle signed him from Barnsley in 1949, he refused to sign unless his brother, Ted, a left-half, was part of the deal. He followed Ted back to Chile to play for Colo Colo in 1953. While at Newcastle, Robledo became the first South American to play (1951) and score (1952) in an FA Cup Final as the Magpies won the trophy in successive seasons. Robledo was the only player at this World Cup not playing domestic football in the country he represented.
England Squad 1950:
GK: Bert Williams (Wolverhampton Wanderers, 30 years old, 7 caps), Ted Ditchburn (Tottenham Hotspur, 28, 2)
DEF: John Aston (Manchester United, 28, 14), Bill Eckersley (Blackburn Rovers, 24, 0), Laurie Hughes (Liverpool, 26, 0), Alf Ramsey (Tottenham, 30, 5), Laurie Scott (Arsenal, 33, 17), Jim Taylor* (Fulham, 32, 0), Billy Wright (Wolves, 26, 29)
MID & WIDE: Eddie Baily (Tottenham, 24, 0), Henry Cockburn (Man Utd, 28, 10), Jimmy Dickinson (Ports-mouth, 25, 7), Bill Nicholson* (Tottenham, 31, 0), Willie Watson* (Sunderland, 30, 2), Tom Finney (Preston North End, 28, 25), Stanley Matthews (Blackpool, 35, 30), Jimmy Mullen (Wolves, 27, 4)
FWD: Roy Bentley (Chelsea, 26, 4), Wilf Mannion (Middlesbrough, 32, 19), Jackie Milburn (Newcastle United, 26, 7), Stan Mortensen (Blackpool, 29, 18)
USA Squad 1950:
GK: Frank Borghi (St Louis Simpkins-Ford), Gino Gardassanic (Chicago Slovaks)
DEF: Robert Annis (St Louis SF), Geoff Coombes (Chicago Vikings), Harry Keough (St Louis McMahon), Joe Maca (Brooklyn Hispano)
MID & WIDE: Walter Bahr (Philadelphia Nationals), Charlie Colombo (St Louis SF), Ed McIlvenny (Philadelphia Nationals), Benny McLaughlin (Philadelphia Nationals)†, Ed Souza (Ponta Delgada), Frank Wallace (St Louis SF), Adam Wolanin (Chicago Eagles)
FWD: Robert Craddock (Pittsburgh Harmarville), Nicky DiOrio (Pittsburgh Harmarville), Joe Gaetjens (Brookhattan), Frank Moniz (Ponta Delgada), Gino Pariani (St Louis SF), John Souza (Ponta Delgada)
GROUP 3
The third group comprised three teams and looked close on paper. Paraguay were a quick, inventive side but had no experience of this kind of opposition. Italy were still recovering from the Torino disaster, and sent an inexperienced squad with only eighty-five caps between twenty-two players. Sweden were shorn of three of their best players, the trio of Gren, Nordahl and Liedholm who were barred from playing by the Swedish FA for accepting professional contracts in Italy. The Swedes were managed by George Raynor, a plain-talking Englishman who had put too many noses out of joint to succeed in his own country. Raynor’s own nose was for spotting talent and clever tactics.
Raynor’s skill was put to the test in the first match as a rebuilt Italy took an early lead. Raynor opted for fast, nimble forwards to pick their way through the Italian defence, and it worked. Hasse Jeppson scored twice and centre-half Sune Andersson scored with a drive that beat an unsighted goalkeeper. Both scorers were among a host of Swedish players who were picked up by Italian clubs over the next two years; Jeppson had a good season at Atlanta and moved to Napoli for a huge fee (which he justified with a good scoring record over four seasons), while Andersson went to Roma along with Stig Sundkvist. The most successful from this team was the young inside-left Lennart Skoglund, who played for Inter from 1950 to 1959, winning two Serie A titles.
In the second game Sweden took a two-goal lead through Sundkvist and Karl-Erik Palmér and looked in total control. They relaxed and let Paraguay back into the game and Sweden were thankful a late effort from Attilio López was disallowed. Paraguay were well beaten by Italy (who were already out) in the last match in the group and so missed a good opportunity to progress. The Italians’ best player Gino Cappello was banned for life (and forgiven after serving twelve months) for punching a referee in 1952. Cappello is an iconic figure at Bologna where he played for a decade after the war.
GROUP 4
The final group was a bit of a farce. A team really ought to have been moved from one of the first two groups to add some competition for Uruguay, because Bolivia were a really weak team. Uruguay looked good in slaughtering them, but the Dog & Duck Second XI would have looked handy against Bolivia. Peter Seddon states in his book that playing just this one game gave Uruguay a huge advantage going into the final phase (or Final Pool, as FIFA liked to call it), but I would demur. Good teams tend to ease into tournaments and often need two or three games to get into their stride; Brazil had three to decide upon their best forward line – no one proved anything against Bolivia.
FINAL POOL
* Bror Mellberg was the great-uncle of modern Swedish star Olof Mellberg; he joined Italian club Genoa after the tournament before moving to France, where he spent the remainder of his club career. Mellberg returned to the Swedish squad for the 1958 Finals when the ban on players who played abroad was lifted.
The organisers got away with it in the Final Pool. A format that could have ended as a real anti-climax produced a final, and a spectacular one at that. Perhaps they guessed that making Brazil v Uruguay the last scheduled match would produce a decider, perhaps they just got lucky.
Uruguay’s lack of preparation against decent opposition nearly cost them straight away, as they encountered problems against Spain. They coped well with the aerial threat of Zarra, but ignored the potent Barcelona winger Estanislau Basora, who stole in twice past Tejera to put Spain ahead. Uruguay dominated the second half, but found the net only once, through their captain Obdulio Varela. It was a rough game – most involving this Spain team were – and a draw was about right. Uruguay would be without their in-form goalkeeper Máspoli for the next match.
The game played the same day in the Maracanã wasn’t anywhere near as evenly matched as Brazil simply tore Sweden apart. Sweden weren’t awful – they had good, experienced players at the back, including their captain Erik Nilsson, who played in the last World Cup before the war. He was one of two, the other being Swiss captain Fred Bickel. Both players would have won about a gazillion caps but for the war – as it was, Bickel ended his international career in 1954 with seventy-one and Nilsson played until 1952 and won fifty-seven. They were both significant servants to their only clubs, Nilsson for Malmö and Bickel for Grasshoppers of Zurich.
Brazil’s attacking players were in scintillating form, the trio of Ademir, Zizinho and Jair exchanging the ball at mesmerising speed. Of the three Ademir was the out-and-out goalscorer (he finished with thirty-two in thirty-nine internationals), and he scored four in this match.
The first was avoidable – Svensson shouldn’t have been beaten at his near post with a low, scuffed strike – but the second was magnificent as the big striker played a wonderful one-two and pushed the ball past the onrushing Svensson with consummate timing. Chico wandered in from the left-wing to thrash high past the exposed goalkeeper for a three-goal half-time lead and the game was over as a contest. The second half was more like an exhibition match as Brazil strolled around with the ball showing off their party tricks. Sweden’s only consolation was
a penalty for a foul committed by Bigode a good foot or two outside the area – one of the earliest theatrical dives I can remember seeing on video.
The Swedish defenders look amateurish by today’s standards, defending in static ranks and allowing players to run between them, but that was the game in 1950. A defender marked his opposite man and if that man’s movement took him away then gaps would appear, and the Brazilians were fleet enough of foot and mind to fill the gaps effectively. There was no high defensive line and no sort of pressure in the midfield on ball players like Zizinho and Jair.
Spain should have been a much tougher proposition but Brazil were on a roll by now, and their big strong defenders weren’t intimidated by Spain’s macho men. The first goal again owed something to fortune; Ademir’s shot was hit at a good height for Ramallets until it took a huge looping deflection and flopped into the other side of the goal. There was nothing friendly about Jair’s thumping effort for the second, although the way Spain backed off as he ran from the halfway line was pretty hospitable. Chico was proving a lively presence on the left wing and he added two more goals to the pair he scored against Sweden, before Zizinho did well to set up a tap-in for Ademir and then jinked through to score himself. Igoa’s adept finish came with the game lost and Brazil on cruise control.