by Nick Holt
West Germany (4–4–2): Sepp Maier (Bayern Munich); Berti Vogts (Cpt, Borussia Mönchengladbach), Rolf Rüssmann (Schalke 04), Manny Kaltz (Hamburg), Bernard Dietz (MSV Duisburg), Dieter Müller (Cologne), Rainer Bonhof (Gladbach), Erich Beer (Hertha Berlin), Rudi Abramczik (Schalke 04); Karl-Heinz Rummenigge (Bayern), Hans Hölzenbein (Eintracht Frankfurt). Subs: Hansi Muller (Stuttgart) 45m for Beer; Klaus Fischer (Schalke 04) 60m for D Müller
Austria (4–4–2): Friedrich Koncilia (SWW Innsbruck); Robert Sara (Cpt, Austria Vienna), Erich Obermayer (Austria Vienna), Bruno Pezzey (SWW Innsbruck), Heinrich Strasser (Admira Wacker); Eduard Krieger (Bruges), Josef Hickersberger (Fortuna Düsseldorf), Herbert Prohaska (Austria Vienna), Wilhelm Kreuz (Feyenoord); Hans Krankl (Rapid Vienna), Walter Schachner (Alpine Donawitz). Sub: Franz Oberacher (SWW Innsbruck) for Schachner, 71m
Cautioned: Prohaska (Aut) 69m, Abramczik (WGer) 69m, Sara (Aut) 85m
The Germans’ final fixture seemed meaningless; there had been little evidence this side could beat Austria by four or more goals. There was equally little evidence that they would lose – Austria hadn’t beaten their neighbours for forty-seven years and they had found it tough in the second phase – but that’s what happened in a game that is remembered in Austria as the Miracle of Córdoba. This sounds a touch hyperbolic for a dead fixture; but it was Austria versus West Germany, with all the baggage of the Anschluss still hanging in the air.
West Germany’s team looks a shadow of its predecessor; Maier, Vogts, Hölzenbein and Bonhof remained, but the replacements for the other greats of ’74 were invariably weaker by comparison, with the exception of Rummenigge, and he was not yet the great player we saw the following decade. Austria had an experienced (but not old) team that had played together a lot. Their goalkeeper, Koncilia, was one of Europe’s best, Hans Krankl was a livewire striker and the midfield string-puller, Herbert Prohaska of Austria Vienna, was more composed and authoritative than a twenty-two-year-old had a right to be.
Austria had the better of an ordinary first half but it was West Germany who scored. Rummenigge played a delightful double-one-two with Dieter Müller before sliding the ball past the advancing Koncilia – the only moment of real quality in the half. The start of the second half saw roles reversed as West Germany were on top yet conceded the next goal. Bonhof hit a couple of rasping free-kicks narrowly wide and Rummenigge – a handful all game, running from deep – forced Koncilia into an excellent save. It was an own goal by skipper Berti Vogts after an hour that brought things level, but Sepp Maier was at fault. The veteran ’keeper and two attackers all missed a cross from the right, the ball hit the unsighted Vogts and ended up in the back of the net.
The Germans, like the Italians and Dutch before, marked Hans Krankl closely, believing that to negate Krankl was to minimise the Austrian’s attacking threat. It worked for Holland and Italy, but here he showed just why he was receiving such close attention. Krieger’s cross from the left cleared the central defenders and Krankl had given himself a couple of yards. Krankl’s first touch was neat, taking the pace off the cross, and his second was outstanding, cracking a volley across Maier with remarkable power and perfect technique. Now he looked like a player who had just scored forty goals in a season.
The lead lasted less than a minute and the equaliser was absurdly simple. A Bonhof free-kick into the mixer and Hölzenbein rose unchallenged to score. Krankl still had more in his locker. In the closing minutes he burned past Rüssmann, cut inside to leave Berti Vogts on his backside and stabbed the ball past Sepp Maier with his left foot for the winner. If you watch the footage on YouTube, make sure you check out the original Austrian commentary with Edi Finger going absolutely bananas (as was Krankl). It was an extravagant celebration of a particular moment charged with the weight of a century of history. It was entirely disproportionate to the tournament circumstances.
Not much sympathy due a poor German side, but respect due to the distinguished career of Helmut Schön and his distinctive flat cap; it was his last match as manager of the national team.
* * *
It was a triumphant win for Austria, but they were well beaten by Holland in their first match in the group and couldn’t find an answer to the Italian marking in the second. Holland made enforced changes, bringing in Wildschut for Suurbier and Ernie Brandts for the injured Rijsbergen, with Haan recalled in midfield for Neeskens, also injured. Brandts made an instant impact (it was only his second international), scoring with a firm header from Arie Haan’s free-kick, and the Dutch were three-up and cruising at half-time. Italy had equally little trouble with Austria, a 1–0 score was hugely misleading, the goal coming early when Paolo Rossi dispossessed a defender and scored across Koncilia (who was excellent again).
In the deciding fixture in the group, later the same day, Holland met Italy needing only a draw to reach a second successive final. Italy looked much the better team in the early stages and took a deserved lead when Brandts and Bettega chased a through ball, and the Dutch defender’s outstretched leg diverted it past Piet Schrijvers. The Ajax goalkeeper had come in for the second phase and looked secure but now Holland were back to the veteran Jongbloed as Schrijvers was injured in the collision with Bettega and Brandts. Jongbloed was a surprise choice as goalkeeper in 1974 (apparently on Cruyff’s recommendation), and was picked for his skill as a sweeper behind the defence as much as his handling. He did okay but had shown little form since and was a surprising selection for the ’78 squad and not expected to play.
It’s a good thing for Holland that Brandts was okay, as it was his terrific strike that got Holland back in the game shortly after half-time. The winner was outrageous. Johnny Rep’s strike against Scotland was a long way out but this one from Arie Haan (a defensive midfield player, for goodness sake!) was over forty yards and flew like an arrow to crash against the inside of the post and into the goal. Haan later stated in an interview that he still got goose-bumps when he watched a video of the goal. It was the most spectacular long-range hit in World Cup history.
GROUP B
Group A had some good stuff. Group B had very little and had one of the most controversial games in World Cup history as its conclusion. Brazil opened the group with a comfortable win over Peru. At last a team put pressure on the weak Peruvian defence, and Brazil were two-up in half an hour, both from Dirceu, the one player in the line-up who lived up to his heritage. Peru ran out of ideas and their wingers, so dangerous in the first phase, never really got a look in. Argentina beat a disappointing Poland later the same day. Kempes opened the scoring after sixteen minutes, timing his run perfectly to glance Bertoni’s cross past Tomaszewski. So highly rated but often so impotent in front of goal, it was Kempes’ first goal of the tournament, and his first in nearly 700 minutes of World Cup action.
A few minutes before half-time Poland were awarded a penalty when Kempes deliberately handled on the line; it was supposed to earn a booking but he didn’t get one. Deyna missed the penalty, a symptom perhaps of their waning confidence; Fillol later made a much more difficult save from the Polish captain’s curled free-kick. Kempes, full of belief after his goal, executed a cute drag back to take out the last defender and fire past Tomaszewski after a superb run from Ardiles had opened up the defence.
The Argentina – Brazil encounter was barely watchable. Neither side showed much interest in playing football, being far more interest in perpetuating an ancient rivalry by running their studs up each other and throwing punches. Four yellow cards – thirty years later that number would be trebled for a game like this. Brazil’s uncompromising centre-half, Oscar, against the fiery River Plate centre-forward Leopoldo Luque was pay-per-view stuff. Poland beat Peru with Andrzej Szarmach’s only goal of the competition but three days later they were well beaten by Brazil, who raised their game. Nelinho, the left-back, scored with a scorching free-kick, and Roberto Dinamite lived up to his name for the only time in a World Cup match. Dinamite is the all-time leading scorer in the premier Brazilian domestic com
petition, the Campeonato Brasileiro, and a legend at Vasco de Gama, but he never really shone on the big stage, despite a decent overall scoring rate for his country. Grzegorz Lato scored his ninth and final World Cup goal just before half-time but Poland were never really in it. Lato returned four years later, as did Zmuda, the outstanding central defender, and Boniek, but the rest of this team didn’t.
Argentina played Peru later that evening, knowing exactly what was required to reach the final. All sorts of conspiracy theories surround the result; Quiroga, the Peruvian goalkeeper was bribed; the Argentinian authorities agreed to send financial aid to Peru if the Peruvian authorities leaned on the team to lose; aliens from space took over the Peruvian team for ninety minutes and agreed to throw the game in return for shelter from the Klingons. Okay, I made the last one up; the point I’m making is that we just don’t know and never will.
While there is no question the Argentinian authorities would have stooped to dirty tricks to win the match had they thought it was feasible – this was a foul regime, deeply unpopular abroad and anxious to give their own populace something to distract from the widespread and appalling breaches of human rights taking place on a daily basis. But would Peru have played along? It takes both sides to rig a game and while Peru were weak there is no evidence that they were deliberately weak. The Peruvians put in more tackles than they had against Brazil (where they were lucky to concede only three) and their goalkeeper, far from having a dodgy game, made a couple of terrific early saves. They just had no answer to the exciting Argentinian forward line. “There was never a more macho team,” says Cris Freddi and its clear what he means. This was a gaucho team, you could imagine Kempes and Luque strutting across the ranch with spurs clanking and a bandolier strapped across their chest; they were almost a parody of the dashing Latino male with their thrust-out chests and their long, tumbling hairstyles. If the forwards were the cowboys, behind them was the diminutive, respectable ranch foreman Ardiles; always dapper, both in appearance and movement, and always alert to an opportunity to launch another charge. The defence was familiar to followers of South American football, full of guys who could pass a ball but were utterly merciless on any of the opposition who tried to do the same. The captain, Daniel Passarella, was short and chunky but surprisingly good in the air – he got great lift from immensely powerful thighs. He took the penalties, which he hit with savage power, and a lot of the free-kicks. Passarella came from a line of captains that included Monti and Rattin – I’m the toughest kid on the street so I’m in charge.
Kempes got the first goal against Peru, striding between two defenders to take a return pass and beating a third before sliding expertly past Quiroga; all the uncertainty in front of goal had gone and this was a player at the peak of his game. The second came from a more surprising source. The game was ambling towards half-time; Argentina’s urgency had brought only one goal of the four they needed and they were starting to run out of ideas. A corner from the right was just too high for the intended targets, but behind them was full-back Tarantini, who stooped and pinged the ball into the goal. The ensuing goal celebration involved a forty-yard sprint and a lot of shouting – it would all have been mightily impressive but for the awful bubble perm. It was Tarantini’s only goal for Argentina in sixty internationals. Well thought of in his own country, he is remembered in Britain for a strange season with Birmingham City, which once saw him sent off for fighting with a member of his own team.
The second half was a performance of great power and authority. Kempes scored almost immediately after the break, crashing home after a neat one-two in a packed area, and Luque added the vital fourth five minutes later when Passarella won the ball in the air and left him with an open goal. The fifth and sixth, for Houseman, on as a sub and tapping in after another aggressive run from Kempes, and for Luque again, after some terrible defending, were icing on the cake.
Watching the game, there’s nothing obviously wrong with Peru until they go four-down; they were just a poor team defensively. The captain, Chumpitaz, was thirty-four and looked about sixty-four, overweight and laughably slow, strolling back when his team lost the ball in dangerous positions. Not the performance of one who doesn’t care, just one who couldn’t keep up.
Brazil cried foul, but in truth the better team reached the final. Brazil won the third-place match against Italy in a surprisingly entertaining game; Italy decided to forego the catenaccio and just play, while Brazil scored two spectacular goals through Dirceu and Nelinho.
World Cup Heroes No.17
Teófilo Cubillas (1949–)
Peru
These last games in the second phase heralded the end for Peru’s finest-ever player. I can say that without fear of contradiction. Few countries have such an indisputable stand-out star, a player who stands head and shoulders above any other – the only European equivalent I can muster is Jari Litmanen for Finland.
Cubillas made his name in the 1970 World Cup where he arrived as a twenty-one-year-old unknown quantity (as did his team to European audiences), and left as a major world player, after scoring in every game and impressing with his range of passing and spectacular shooting. In between 1970 and his next World Cup he was instrumental in Peru winning the Copa América for only the second time – their first title since 1939.
Peru again impressed at the 1978 Finals, and they thrived on their superstar’s ability to play long passes out to the express train wingers Muñante and Oblitas. Only in the second phase when teams marked him tightly did his influence recede and the team struggle. Cubillas returned to the World Cup Finals for a last hurrah in 1982 in Spain, but it turned out to be a cheerless farewell as the team went out with a whimper not a bang. That sad end notwithstanding this was a player who for almost a decade would have walked into any side in the world.
Cubillas made his name in South America with Alianza Lima before trying his luck in Europe with first Basel and then Porto. Cubillas was one of many international stars who played in the NASL (for Fort Lauderdale Strikers); the USA showpiece league was no forum for keeping your game at international level, which may explain his poor form at the 1982 World Cup. Later in the decade Cubillas returned to Lima and played for Alianza for free for a season after their entire playing staff was wiped out in an air crash; Cubillas was still good enough to score eighteen goals the following season.
THIRD-PLACE MATCH
WORLD CUP FINAL No.11
Referee: Sergio Gonella (Ita)
Coaches: César Luis Menotti (Argentina) & Ernst Happel (Holland)
Argentina (4–4–2): Ubaldo Fillol (River Plate); Jorge Olguín (San Lorenzo), Luis Galván (Talleres), Daniel Passarella (Cpt, River Plate), Alberto Tarantini (free agent); Daniel Bertoni (Independiente), Américo Gallego (Newell’s Old Boys), Osvaldo Ardiles (Huracan), Oscar Ortiz (River Plate); Leopoldo Luque (River Plate), Mario Kempes (Valencia). Subs: Omar Larrosa (Independiente) 65m for Ardiles; René Houseman (Huracan) 75m for Ortiz
Holland (3–4–3): Jan Jongbloed (Roda Kerkrade); Ernie Brandts (PSV Eindhoven), Ruud Krol (Cpt, Ajax) Jan Poortvliet (PSV Eindhoven); Wim Jansen (Feyenoord), Johan Neeskens (Barcelona), Arie Haan (Anderlecht), Willy van de Kerkhof (PSV Eindhoven); René van de Kerkhof (PSV Eindhoven), Johnny Rep (SC Bastia), Rob Rensenbrink (Anderlecht). Subs: Wim Suurbier (Schalke 04) 72m for Jansen; Dick Nanninga (Roda Kerkrade) 59m for Rep
Cautioned: Krol (Hol) 15m, Ardiles (Arg) 41m, Larrosa (Arg) 94m, Poortvliet (Hol) 96m
The Dutch were convinced they would not be allowed to beat Argentina in the final. It wasn’t a good way to start the game. Nor was the undignified delay, when Argentina objected to the cast René van deKerkhof was wearing to protect his injured arm – five other opponents had all played against him without any issue – likely to help their mood. Referee Klein of Israel, demoted to the third-place match, also at Argentina’s insistence, would just have told them to get on with it, Gonella of Italy prevaricated and tugged his forelock and made van de Kerkhof add a pointless extra layer. I
t all had the feel of a preconceived plan to give Argentina an edge. On the touchline Menotti frowned and swept back his hair in a gesture that had become familiar to TV viewers – one never sensed he was comfortable with all the shenanigans surrounding his team, not in the way Passarella, his captain, seemed to be. Menotti was a footballing man, with a philosophy that took Argentina back to an earlier age when they used flair and speed to unlock defences.
Menotti was appointed to revive the team’s fortunes in 1974 after their failure at the World Cup. He was helped by a curious turn of events the following year when the big Buenos Aires clubs initiated a policy of refusing to release their players for international duty. Menotti was forced to look to the provincial sides for his squad and it paid off as he introduced players of the calibre of Galván, Ardiles and Gallego to the team. As an articulate man of left-wing leanings, it was widely anticipated he would be replaced after the coup of 1976, but the authorities stuck with him, and by the start of their home World Cup he had forged a competitive and entertaining team.
That’s all they ever were. None of the teams at this World Cup was extraordinary, but at least two of the best three reached the final; Italy were unlucky to lose out to Arie Haan’s thunderbolt.
The first half was nip and tuck. Holland’s best two chances fell to Rep, who should have done better with a free header and saw a snap shot saved athletically by Fillol. At the other end Passarella stayed up after a set piece and broke the Dutch offside trap, but blazed his half-volley wildly over the bar. It was Kempes who broke the deadlock, a good first touch nipping the ball between the central defenders and the long stride getting him there just before Jongbloed. The air filled with ticker tape – an annoying practice that blighted sporting events for the next twelve months – and the intimidating noise got much louder in Dutch ears.