by Nick Holt
West Germany trailed Sweden 1–0 in their next game, but played their best half thus far to win the best game of the group 4–2 – and without Müller contributing a goal. Sweden were full of fight but West Germany simply had the better players. They dominated possession in the first half but the Swedes are invariably well organised and they kept their feet and didn’t give away silly free-kicks and concede possession too easily. Herzog, who had come in on the wing for the second phase, was anonymous and the Germans struggled to make clear chances. It was Sweden who got the only goal of the half. A clearance was headed into the air, Edström watched it drop and executed a perfect dipping volley beyond Maier – the German defence should have done better than stand and watch.
West Germany immediately stepped up the pace in the second half and Beckenbauer forced a save from Hellström in the first minute. Müller made a nuisance of himself in the area – the ball wasn’t cleared and Overath drove home with his “wrong” foot. Less than a minute later Müller chested the ball down for Bonhof to hit a terrific strike which Hellström could only divert onto the post – the ball rolled the width of the goal-line before sneaking in off the second upright. West Germany switched off momentarily, and a deep cross skimmed Schwarzenbeck’s head and fell to Sandberg, who politely accepted the present. Vogts gave Schwarzenbeck a right earful, which was brave of him.
West Germany still looked the more likely and a persistent attack ended with Grabowski – on for Herzog and back in the team to stay – to fire across Hellström. Germany sensibly kept pressing and Sweden struggled to build attacks; when they did they found Beckenbauer in impassable mode playing just ahead of the other defenders. Hölzenbein hit a post, Müller poked a good chance narrowly wide and then made a meal of the slightest touch as he motored into the box to win a last-minute penalty, which Uli Hoeness buried.
Sweden had made a good contribution to the tournament and ended it well by beating Yugoslavia in their last game, Edström adding to his burgeoning reputation with his fourth goal of the competition.
Just as in the first group the tournament effectively had a semifinal with a crunch game between West Germany and Poland, albeit one in which West Germany only needed a draw. The match was played in appalling conditions – this was a pretty wet World Cup – in Frankfurt and West Germany coped marginally better. The Polish wingers were well policed by Vogts and Breitner and they used the energetic Bonhof to limit Deyna’s influence. Sepp Maier made a couple of crucial saves from Lato as West Germany dug in. One was a spectacular salmon leap effort when the confident Polish winger went for an outrageous strike from a free-kick way out on the right. The other was something of a collector’s item when Maier made a great double save from Gadocha and then Lato after Beckenbauer aimed a complete air shot at an attempted clearance. Banner headline – BECKENBAUER FALLIBLE AFTER ALL!
They had their moments in the game but the Poles missed the cavalry-officer moustache of the injured Szarmach bristling at the head of their attack; his replacement Domarski, who scored that vital goal in the qualifier at Wembley, was a good technical player but neither so aggressive nor so potent in front of goal. West Germany picked the Eintracht Frankfurt striker Bernd Hölzenbein for the second phase games. In the Bundesliga Hölzenbein, like England’s Franny Lee, had a reputation as one adept at winning penalties. In uncouth parlance, he was a clever cheat. Here he lived up to his reputation with a nonsensical piece of theatrics, but justice was served when the ever-acrobatic Tomaszewski saved a rather tame spot-kick from Hoeness. Tomaszewski never repeated his heroics against England in West Germany, and he never cured his indecision on crosses, but he was a remarkable shot-stopper. It mattered little, West Germany were in control by this stage. Bonhof was put through by Hölzenbein’s neat touch and then was challenged on the edge of the box; the ball broke to Müller, unmarked about twelve yards out and he made no mistake.
Poland went home with heads high; they won six games out of seven, even beating Brazil in the third-place play-off. In Deyna, the sweeper Zmuda (playing in the first of four World Cups at twenty), Lato and Szarmach they had world-class players – Lato scored seven in seven to win the Golden Boot – with willing accomplices in Kasperczak, the tireless winger Gadocha and the elegant Musial at the back. The strapping six foot four stopper Jerzy Gorgon became something of a cult figure with his mythical name, silly mullet and enormous thighs. The Poles were beginning their best football decade; only when they started to lose their best players to wealthier foreign clubs did they slip back to the periphery. Gorgon and Szarmach’s club side, Górnik Zabrze, captained by Wlodi Lubanski, had presaged the success of the national team by reaching the European Cup Winners’ Cup Final in 1970, the first time a Polish side had reached a European Final. They lost on the big occasion, 2–1, to Manchester City, but wins over Rangers (very strong at the time) and AS Roma were a reminder that there were talented players in the country.
THIRD-PLACE MATCH
World Cup Heroes No.15
Kazimierz Deyna (1947–89)
Poland
A debate on Poland’s finest ever player is a debate on the merits of Kazimierz Deyna and Zbigniew Boniek. Deyna was a composed midfield “stroller” with an eye for goal and a super temperament, which benefited some of his more excitable colleagues.
Deyna made his debut for Poland at 20 years old and was a key member of the squad by the time of the 1972 Olympics, where Poland won the Gold Medal in the football. Deyna scored nine goals from midfield in the tournament, including both goals in the final against Hungary. Gradually the Poles improved their squad, adding in Lato, Kasperczak, Szymanowski and Zmuda to an already talented line-up. They crept in to the 1974 Finals under the radar as everyone assumed they would lose out to England, and were still under-rated at the start of the competition, with their captain and best player, Lubanski, out injured.
Except Lubanski wasn’t their best player, he was just the totemic figure who dragged them out of the football wilderness. Deyna was their best player, unhurried on the ball, with a powerful shot and a long stride that took him clear of tacklers in a pace or two. In Lubanski’s absence he was made captain and he remained the Poland skipper until the end of the 1978 World Cup Finals campaign. He ended his career with ninety-seven caps and forty-one goals – helluva strike rate for a midfielder (Frank Lampard has twenty-nine in the same number of games). In 1974 Deyna was third in the Footballer of the Year award – big deal, you think, until spotting that numbers one and two were Johan Cruyff and Franz Beckenbauer, which made Deyna the best mortal. He was a notch below those guys, but sill a fantastic footballer.
He spent most of his best years at Legia Warsaw then three years at Manchester City after the 1978 World Cup, but injuries meant City never saw the best of him. Deyna took the Yankee dollar and moved to the NASL with San Diego Shockers; he retired in California but was killed in a motor accident two years later aged only forty-one. Legia Warsaw no longer use the No.10 shirt – this was one of the first instances of a club retiring a shirt in a player’s honour.
Deyna played the Polish prisoner-of-war Pavel Wolcheck in the camp team in the cheesy 1981 film Escape To Victory. His main thespian expression was one of bemusement – not dissimilar to the one worn by most who saw the film.
WORLD CUP FINAL No.10
7 July 1974, Olympiastadion, Munich; 75,200
Referee: Jack Taylor (Eng)
Coaches: Helmut Schön (West Germany) & Rinus Michels (Holland)
West Germany (4–4–2): Sepp Maier (Bayern Munich); Berti Vogts (Borussia Mönchengladbach), Franz Beckenbauer (Bayern), George Schwarzenbeck (Bayern), Paul Breitner (Bayern); Jürgen Grabowski (Eintracht Frankfurt), Rainer Bonhof (Gladbach), Uli Hoeness (Bayern), Wolfgang Overath (Cologne); Gerd Müller (Bayern), Bernd Hölzenbein (Eintracht Frankfurt)
Holland (3–4–3): Jan Jongbloed (FC Amsterdam); Wim Suurbier (Ajax), Wim Rijsbergen (Feyenoord), Ruud Krol (Ajax); Wim Jansen (Feyenoord); Wim van Hanegem (Feyenoord), Johan Neeskens (Ajax), Ari
e Haan (Ajax); Johnny Rep (Ajax), Johan Cruyff (Ajax), Rob Rensenbrink (Anderlecht). Subs: Rene van der Kerkhof (PSV Eindhoven) for Rensenbrink, 45m; Theo de Jong (Feyenoord) for Rijsbergen, 69m
Cautioned: Vogts (WGer) 4m, van Hanegem (Hol) 23m, Neeskens (Hol) 42m, Cruyff (Hol) 45m
At least the two best sides made the final, played the day after Poland clinched third place with a dreary 1–0 win against Brazil – it was obvious which team regarded third place as a triumph and which saw it as failure.
Most reports of the Final preferred the angle of German implacability against Dutch invention but that’s nonsense. It was the early seventies, youthful rebellion was still the plat du jour, so the Dutch weren’t quite the iconoclastic mavericks they were painted – it was the Germans who almost refused to play in the tournament and Paul Breitner, their left-back, who liked to be seen reading Karl Marx. Apparently the irony of demanding playboy wages while reading Marx was lost on the big-haired boy.
Nor were the Dutch the upholders of progressive and creative football against the onrushing Teutonic machine. The Germans had Beckenbauer and Overath and (on the bench) Netzer, sublime technicians and wonderful players to watch. And the Dutch were just as happy to crunch into a tackle as Schwarzenbeck or Vogts. Holland had played better in the earlier rounds, but that counted for nothing in the final. Many World Cup winners have started slowly – Italy were rubbish in the group games in 1982, England were a bit wooden in ’66, Spain ineffectual in their 2010 opener against Switzerland.
Most pundits felt that Holland would win if they played to their best. The German tabloids had more pressing concerns, printing a sensational (and unsubstantiated) piece about naked pool parties in the Dutch camp earlier in the proceedings. It probably made little difference to the Dutch, but it was a factor in their 1978 campaign . . .
The referee for the Final was England’s Jack Taylor. Taylor made his presence felt in the right way before the match even started when he noticed there were no corner flags. Reassuring to see even the hyper-efficient Germans could make basic errors.
The opening to the game was even more dramatic, and again Taylor played a role. In the opening seconds Cruyff jogged back to his own centre-half and demanded the ball. A patient interchange of passes followed and Cruyff popped up in the inside-left channel. He beat Vogts with an exhilarating change of pace and was brought down by a rash challenge from Hoeness. Taylor had the courage to give a perfectly legitimate penalty award; Beckenbauer’s hand-waving was – for now – merely arrogant and irrelevant. Neeskens’ penalties were rarely stopped. It was the first penalty in a World Cup Final.
The second came twenty-three minutes later and showed Taylor’s weakness. Beckenbauer had chirruped his way through the first twenty minutes, questioning every decision, and Taylor cracked. Hölzenbein was allowed to run into a crowded area from a position of no threat and he went over the first foot that came towards him. There was no contact, but Taylor fell for it – had he not watched the footage of the semi-final? After that apology for a penalty by Hoeness against Poland, Paul Breitner was allotted the job and he rolled it into the corner. Taylor was standing eight feet away and failed to notice that Breitner had not placed the ball on the spot.
Cruyff had disappeared, suppressed by his marker, Vogts, who let him go deep but picked him up as soon as he ventured into a threatening area. Some of the German tackling was hard but it could never be termed intimidatory, and Cruyff’s protests at halftime as were ill-judged as Beckenbauer’s earlier. Only once did he get room again in the first half and he put Rep clear on the left, but the striker shot hastily and unconvincingly at Maier. Moments later Bonhof ran clear on the right, beat Haan (he could have gone for another penalty but elected to stay on his feet) and crossed low to the near post. Müller took a touch to give him breathing space from Krol, and somehow hooked the ball from behind him with enough power to beat the goalkeeper – brilliant finishing, Krol did nothing wrong.
The second half consisted of a succession of Dutch attacks repelled without too many loud alarms by the Germans. When they did get possession West Germany showed they could keep the ball just as well as Holland, with Overath, playing in a deeper role, always a claiming influence and outlet for beleaguered defenders. What joy the Dutch did get came when they got the ball wide, but their lack of a true goalscorer told, as all too frequently no one got on the end of the cross. Rensenbrink was carrying an injury and was withdrawn at half-time for René van der Kerkhof, Rep had a poor game and van Hanegem went missing. He later claimed Holland overplayed in the first half to taunt the Germans but that reads as too glib; it’s symptomatic of one of the weaknesses of Dutch football that they claimed they were just too good and forgot to win the match. They have never been good at analysing and learning from failure. (England have the same fault, oddly, lots of hair shirt and gnashing and wailing but no conspicuous attempt to do anything different.) It was their normal style of game to play keep-ball, so why is so much made of the fact they did it in a final? On the rare occasions Holland broke the German wall they found Maier in terrific form – the stand-out save was one great block at the near post when he stood tall to parry a fierce blunderbuss of a volley from Neeskens.
The truth was Holland thought they were going to win, but were outthought tactically. Vogts did a great marking job despite an early booking, and Cruyff was irritated rather than flattered and inspired by the attention. The rest were so dependent on Cruyff to make the play that no one stepped up to fill the void; Neeskens and van Hanagem were exceptional players but neither shone here. West Germany used Beckenbauer a little further forward alongside Overath to deny the playmakers room, leaving Schwarzenbeck and the full-backs to pick up the attackers if they wandered into the area. Hölzenbein played wider than usual and he and Grabowski pushed back the Dutch full-backs, reducing their efficacy as an attacking force. Müller did his thing, and behind him Bonhof covered quite awesome amounts of ground in both supporting the centre-forward and helping the defence – it was the game the Gladbach star really stepped up to belong in this august company.
Holland were a great side, man for man they were better than West Germany, but Holland never seem to have the team ethic the Germans can boast and the togetherness was crucial. West Germany had to be at their best, and were; Holland never came close to theirs after the first fifteen minutes. And West Germany had Gerd Müller, the finest predator the penalty area has known. Müller was rarely seen in wide positions and rarely ventured into his own half. Müller’s territory was the penalty area and the land in a line between the area and the halfway line. He would prowl there, bandy-legged, innocuous-looking, ready to explode if his side mounted an attack. He wasn’t exceptionally quick (except over ten yards and in his head), wasn’t amazing in the air, didn’t possess a hammer of a shot and didn’t have the dribbling skills to take out two defenders in a mazy run. But still he scored sixty-eight goals in sixty-two internationals, few of them easy pickings against muppets. They key was anticipation – when the ball came to Müller he always knew what he was going to do with it, and prepared his body shape accordingly. His first touch was designed not to bring the ball to his feet necessarily, but to take it where a defender couldn’t reach it, and his low centre of gravity gave him impeccable balance and he was able to get shots or headers away with only a fraction of the room lesser players required. Football writers and fans use an apparently meaningless term “he/she knows where the goal is” – it is used for strikers who can find the target without lifting their head to aim. Puskás had it, Jimmy Greaves had it, Davor Suker had it; Müller was the ultimate expression of knowing where the goal is.
Müller retired from international football at the top after West Germany won the World Cup and a year later went to play in the USA. He struggled with alcohol in the ’80s until some of his former team-mates helped him clean up (togetherness, right?) and he still works at Bayern Munich. One of the all-time greats.
West Germany were the first, and deserving, rec
ipients of the brand new FIFA World Cup Trophy designed and created by the noted Italian sculptor Gazzaniga. Defeat or no, Holland were hailed as one of the great teams and by all accounts their party after the match was an epic affair – unlike the Germans, who mostly boycotted their official “do” after the German FA, in typically misanthropic mode, refused to allow wives and partners to attend.
World Cup Heroes No.16
Wolfgang Overath (1943–)
West Germany
West Germany in 1974 had six world-class players, and by that I mean players of the very, very highest quality. Five of them were Sepp Maier, Paul Breitner, Franz Beckenbauer, Gerd Müller and Gunter Netzer, but Netzer didn’t even make the team. The reason Netzer wasn’t picked was Wolfgang Overath. At the 1972 European Championships Netzer was outstanding, dictating play and offering a goal threat with his powerful shooting.
But Helmut Schön was unconvinced. He (and, it is alleged, the caucus of Bayern Munich players within the team) preferred the less obvious but subtle skills of Overath alongside the graft of Hoeness and Bonhof. Less likely to do something sensational, unless one was an aficionado of deliciously curled left-foot passes, Overath was also less likely to give the ball away, which suited Schön’s plan. Only in the unexpected and painful defeat by East Germany did Netzer get an airing, twenty minutes as substitute for Overath.
The press demanded the inclusion of the Gladbach player, but Schön (and Beckenbauer by this stage) stood firm, and Overath’s game improved in the second phase, where his telling looped passes on stodgy pitches were one of the Germans’ best assets.
Overath made his debut for West Germany in 1963, and was in the team during both the 1966 and 1970 World Cup Finals tournaments. His eventual nineteen appearances in the Finals by the end of the 1974 contest was second only to his countryman Uwe Seeler at the time. By the end of the tournament Overath had silenced the German press, and achieved a new status amongst German football fans – they loved him because he didn’t play for Bayern Munich as well as for being gifted.