by Nick Holt
Italy (4–4–2): Dino Zoff (Juventus); Giuseppe Bergomi (Inter), Fulvbio Collovati (AC Milan), Gaetano Scirea (Juventus), Antonio Cabrini (Juventus); Gabriele Oriali (Inter), Claudio Gentile (Juventus), Marco Tardelli (Juventus), Bruno Conti (Roma); Paolo Rossi (Juventus), Francesco Graziani (Fiorentina). Subs: Alessandro Altobelli (Inter) 7m for Graziani; Franco Causio (Udinese) 89m for Altobelli
West Germany (1–4–3–2): Harald Schumacher (Cologne); Uli Stielike Real Madrid), Manni Kaltz (Hamburg); Bernd Förster (Stuttgart), Karlheinz Förster (Stuttgart), Hans-Peter Briegel (Kaiserslautern); Pierre Littbarski (Cologne), Wolfgang Dremmler (Bayern Munich), Paul Breitner (Bayern); Karl-Heinz Rummenigge (Bayern), Klaus Fischer (Cologne). Subs: Horst Hrubesch (Hamburg) 62m for Dremmler; Hansi Müller (Stuttgart) 70m for Rummenigge
Cautioned: Conti (Ita) 31m, Dremmler (WGer) 61m, Stielike (WGer) 73m, Oriali (Ita) 73m, Littbarski (WGer) 88m
Italy, superb against Brazil and efficient against Poland, were determined and unstoppable in the Bernabéu. The pre-match story was of two injured players; one, Antognoni, was missing for Italy, the other, Rummenigge, started for West Germany. The first serious action was another injury, to the willing Graziani and it ended his World Cup Final after seven minutes. Undeterred, Italy kept to their game plan and Altobelli worked manfully, as you would need to to fill Graziani’s boots.
The Italian back four were unruffled and utterly dominant – aren’t they always when the Italians are on song? In front of them Gentile prowled menacingly, moustache bristling, alert to any danger and throwing in the odd heavy tackle – best just to check if Rummenigge really is injured, eh, Claudio? The gap left by Antognoni’s absence was filled admirably by Tardelli, playing slightly further forward than usual; the Juventus player was transformed in his second World Cup from a battling defensive midfielder to a genuine world-class box-to-box all-rounder. With Bruno Conti drifting in from the left to add guile, Antognoni was missed less by the team than the purists.
Italy were together now, completely united and with the bit firmly between their teeth. West Germany were a mess; Jupp Derwall had lost control of his squad, and there was resentment of both the captain Rummenigge, who seemed to have dispensation to decide whether or not he wanted to play, and of Breitner, the returning prodigal, and still a troublesome presence. Reports in the press of arguments in the dressing room and a rift between the captain and Stielike, the senior pro, can’t have helped their mood.
Italy’s midfield moved the ball quickly and neatly; it was as if Brazil had passed on some of their mojo during the enthralling game a week before. The Germans were static and unimaginative; if their policy of working hard, tackling hard and shooting hard didn’t work, then so be it. It didn’t. The midfield had no idea how to penetrate the Italian wall, Littbarski looked frightened of Gentile, and Rummenigge, noticeably less than 100 per cent fit, was a shadow of the player he could be.
Italy should have scored after twenty-four minutes when Conti switched wings and ghosted past Briegel who responded by upending him for a penalty. Kaltz and Briegel, the German full-backs, were heralded as a new breed of footballer, toned and athletic, full of running and stamina and coached in basic technique. Here their footballing deficiencies were exposed; Cris Freddi picks out Briegel (a former athletics champion) as especially culpable, by-passed for all the Italian goals, but Kaltz was equally ineffectual, the Italian game-plan negating the hard, swinging crosses that created so many goals for Hrubesch at Hamburg and Rummenigge for the national team. The excellent Antonio Cabrini took the penalty, but it was horribly mishit and went wide; so the elegant defender took his place in the history books as the first man to miss a penalty in a World Cup Final. Given the outcome, he probably couldn’t give a monkey’s.
Italy knew they had the measure of their opponents and the goals came in the second half. Rossi was at the front of a queue waiting to convert Gentile’s cross ten minutes after the restart, and then a clever flick from Scirea – on a rare foray into the opposition penalty area – set up Tardelli for a second. No one deserved a goal more and the midfielder’s face as he turned away shrieking with excitement was the picture in every paper the next day – a mixture of pride and passion and joy. The Italians knew a two-goal cushion was enough against such uninspired opposition, and Altobelli’s third after eighty minutes was the icing on the cake. Breitner drove in an impressively precise consolation for West Germany but a goal flattered them, they were comprehensively outplayed. (It flattered Breitner, too, he had a poor tournament.)
Italy won the cup by dint not just of their outstanding defensive work – a perennial feature of good Italian sides, but by playing cannily and cleverly and imaginatively on the break, and because their destructive players, for all the negative press they received, could pass and move and provide a platform for the creative elements ahead of them. And of course they had Rossi, whose redemptive hour had come. Some critics mourned that Brazil’s vibrancy and artistry hadn’t ended centre stage, but these Italians were no shabby understudies.
World Cup Heroes No.22
Marco Tardelli (1954–)
Italy
The “story” of the 1982 World Cup was the return of Paolo Rossi and his return to favour and form. Rossi would be the first to acknowledge that you didn’t beat a Brazilian team of that quality and then brush aside Poland and West Germany without good team-mates.
The pick of them in this tournament was Marco Tardelli. Tardelli had something for everyone. He bit into tackles, sometimes with a little too much relish, and ran hard. When he joined the attack he could pick a pass and cross and get behind defenders. When Italy needed the dark-blue wall, Tardelli would drop in front of the defence and provide sweeping cover across the line, letting Claudio Gentile pick up the key danger man and administer his own unique brand of restraint. When Italy needed to be offensive Tardelli would morph into the complete box-to-box midfielder, with stamina and pace to offer. One of the great all-round midfielders and one of the great team players. If Tardelli had a weakness it was a shortage of goals. It might explain the exuberance of his reaction when he scored in the 1982 Final – that goal was one of only six he scored in eighty-one internationals.
Like Rossi, Tardelli showed great promise in Argentina in 1978, and he also travelled as an unused member of the 1986 squad. Tardelli wasn’t in great form and was thirty-two, but he would surely have raised the commitment levels of the team in what was a flat defence of their title.
Tardelli was at Inter by 1976 but his best years were spent at Juventus where he won the lot; five Serie A titles, two Italian cups and one each of the three big European trophies. He missed out on only the European Championship, reaching the semi-finals in 1980. Nice haul.
Team of the Tournament, 1982:
Zoff (Italy)
Amoros (France) K Förster (West Germany) Scirea (Italy) Cabrini (Italy)
Falcão (Brazil) Giresse (France) Sócrates (Brazil) Tardelli (Italy) Conti (Italy)
Rossi (Ita)
Official Team of the Tournament: Completely different and nonsensical, we agree only on Zoff, Falcão and Rossi. The Brazilian Luizinho was in at the back along with the wrong two Italians, Collovati and Gentile. Júnior was included, ludicrously, his defensive contribution was inept. Boniek got in on the basis of one match and Platini was picked on reputation, not performance. Zico was selected instead of Sócrates, and Rummenigge, who was only half-fit throughout the tournament, was in alongside Rossi. Nonsensical.
Leading scorers: Rossi (6); Rummenigge (5); Boniek & Zico (4)
Heaven Eleven No.9
British Isles
Coach: Billy Bingham
Goalkeepers:
Neville Southall (Wal): ninety-two caps in fifteen years, arguably Wales’ best-ever player
Packy Bonner (Ire): Jack Charlton’s last line of defence, underrated in England because he played for Celtic
Pat Jennings (NI): huge, huge hands and he knew what to do with them (in a good way . . .)
Defenders:
Kevin Ratcliffe (Wal): cultured defender, captain of title-winning Everton side in ’80s
Paul McGrath (Ire): best centre-back from British Isles after Bobby Moore
Denis Irwin (Ire): Mister Reliable
Jackie Blanchflower (NI): cut off by Munich air crash, as highly rated as his brother
George Young (Sco): comfortable as a full-back or centre-half in the tight Rangers and Scotland defence after the war
Danny McGrain (Sco): quick, aggressive attacking full-back, sorely missed in 1978
John Greig (Sco): hard as nails and a great motivator
Midfield & wide:
Roy Keane (Ire): drive and panache, if overly irascible
Danny Blanchflower (NI): great passing ability, pace of my mum
Dave Mackay (Sco): he could play as well as tackle – even intimidated Billy Bremner
Ryan Giggs (Wal): what more is there to say . . .?
Liam Brady (Ire): wonderful left foot, who cares if he couldn’t use the other? He deserved better team-mates
George Best (NI): an apt surname
Martin O’Neill (NI): clever player, brought out the best in others
Jim Baxter (Sco): gifted, strolling playmaker
Billy Bremner (Sco): gritty, determined character, rarely wasted the ball
Strikers:
John Charles (Wal): emergency centre-half as well, but at his best as an imposing target man
Denis Law (Sco): great poacher and a skilful dribbler
Gareth Bale (Wal): exciting player, shame we’ll never see him in a World Cup tournament
Kenny Dalglish (Sco): never quite as good as he was for Liverpool, but still a handful
Omissions: Shay Given – it was a toss-up between him and Bonner. The eighties defenders for Scotland, Hansen, Willie Miller and Alex McLeish never quite convinced at the top level, and Richard Gough was a shade short of the players here, as was David O’Leary. Jimmy Johnstone is unlucky not to be included, one of a host of good Scottish wingers, as is Gordon Strachan, a much better player for Scotland than Graeme Souness. Johnny Giles was Ireland’s best player in a weak generation, and Frank Stapleton was a great target man. Craig Bellamy might have made the squad but for the emergence of Gareth Bale, Joe Jordan is the unluckiest of the other Scottish forwards. Many of the most-capped for these sides were ordinary players, picked for lack of an alternative than for any great qualities.
Likely first XI:
Southall
McGrain McGrath J Blanchflower Irwin
Best D Blanchflower Keane Giggs
Law Charles
6.2 SUBSTITUTES
It seems bizarre, from a twenty-first-century perspective, to think football matches once didn’t have substitutes. We’re not talking pre-war here, but as recently as the 1960s, before teams were allowed to replace injured players. Prior to that, injured players who were not entirely incapacitated would often hang around on the wing and try to be a nuisance to the opposition without getting too physically involved. In the 1962 World Cup Pelé pulled his groin in the second match of the tournament against Czechoslovakia and wandered off to graze on the left wing; later he spoke about how touched he was that the Czech right-side defenders Jan Lála and Jan Popluhár declined to hammer into tackles and cause him further injury. Not all defenders were as courteous.
Substitutes were introduced to the English league in 1965; Charlton’s Keith Peacock was the first to be used when he replaced injured goalkeeper Mike Rose after ten minutes of a second division game against Bolton at Burnden Park. Sadly for Charlton, Peacock wasn’t a goalkeeper – an outfield player went in goal and they lost 4–2. FIFA still hadn’t embraced this innovation for the World Cup the following year.
By 1970 substitutes were permitted at the World Cup Finals. The first to take the field was Anatoly Puzach of the USSR, who replaced Viktor Serebrianikov at half-time in the opening game of the tournament against Mexico at the Azteca Stadium. In Mexico’s very next game we had the first instance of a substitute replacing a substitute. Mexico’s Horacio Lopez replaced Enrique Borja at half-time, but was injured half an hour later and himself replaced by Juan Ignacio Basaguren. Basaguren became the first sub to get on the scoresheet when he scored Mexico’s fourth goal.
In 1970 substitutes were named players, and could not be selected from any member of the team’s squad. In the modern tournaments any member of a team’s squad of twenty-three who does not start the game is de facto available as a substitute, unless suspended for disciplinary reasons.
Substitutes seem a logical contribution to the rules; why should a team suffer because a player is injured through no fault of his or her own and through no fault of the team – often, in fact, through deliberate foul play from the opposition? The expression kicking someone out of the game came from attempts to do literally that.
Even tactical substitutions can enhance the game; it is a test of a coach’s skill at using his available resources, as well as a test of a club or team’s strength in depth. Helmut Schön for West Germany was a good early example of using a specific player to turn a game. His winger, Jurgen Grabowski, was a tricky little beggar, but tended not to play so well if used for a full ninety minutes. Schön used the substitute rule to introduce Grabowski at key moments – he did so with devastating effect against England in the quarter-final in 1970. For many modern coaches, brought up in an era of three permitted substitutes, their use and timing is a key skill.
Some coaches like to use subs early, so they can get into the game; Italian coach Valcareggi in 1970 used the rules to give his two playmakers Rivera and Mazzola part of a game each – a strange solution (cop-out?) to a selection headache. Other coaches prefer to use their starting XI for as long as possible unless things are going disastrously wrong, bringing on replacements when they know which players are tiring late in the game. The most popular time span for substitutions is between fifty-five and seventy minutes. Ebbe Sand came on for Denmark after fifty-nine minutes of their 1998 game against Nigeria; sixteen seconds later he was on the scoresheet. Impact sub indeed.
There are certain players who get a reputation for their impact as a substitute; David Fairclough and Ronnie Rosenthal with the great Liverpool side of the eighties, and the greatest impact sub in football, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer at Manchester United. There are others who get used a lot off the bench, either because they are more effective not playing ninety minutes, or they just aren’t worth a starting place. Denilson, the Brazilian midfielder, played in the World Cup campaigns of 1998 and 2002. In 1998 he started one match and came off the bench in all six of the others. In 2002 he missed two games entirely, but was used as a substitute in five. At least he got on in the final, even if coach Scolari did leave it until the very last minute to give him a run. Denilson’s eleven appearances as a substitute is a World Cup Finals record.
As with most rules the modern game has distorted the original intention and used substitutions as a negative tactic. The substitute used as a device to run down the clock. How often have we seen, with a minute or so left, the dreaded board come out to signal to the player furthest from the dugout that he should trudge wearily back, stopping to applaud the supporters and re-tie the laces on the boots he no longer needs? Or a substitute used just at the moment a penalty is awarded to disrupt the thought processes of the penalty taker. These devices could be easily dealt with – no subs after a dead ball has been blown until play resumes again, unless to replace an injured goalkeeper; no subs in the last five minutes of a match, even for an injury.
Sadly, as with so many of the issues that blight the game, FIFA lack the will to address these issues. Instead, they leave loopholes so farcical that friendly internationals can proceed with ten substitutes either side and managers can hand out caps like fairground trinkets.
6.3 WORLD CUP 1986
The 1970 World Cup in Mexico had been an exciting affair, but there were issues with the altitude, some of the stadia and the ticket pricin
g. So why did FIFA choose the same country as host only sixteen years later? The fault lay largely with Colombia, who were accepted as the hosts at a vote in 1974, but left it eight years before they withdrew, conceding they couldn’t afford to fulfill all that FIFA’s criteria demanded of the host nation, most of which involve filling FIFA’s pockets. Colombia withdrew their candidacy and the Americas were due the tournament, so Mexico announced their availability. A strong bid from the USA was ignored in Mexico’s favour, with no satisfactory explanation offered as to why the debutants should be ignored in favour of a country who hosted the event with only moderate efficiency sixteen years previously.
With twenty-four teams now taking part in the Finals, the five stadia offered for the last tournament in Mexico were clearly not adequate, particularly as the final round of matches in each preliminary group now had to be played simultaneously. The old Olympic stadium from 1968 was added to the roster – it wasn’t used in 1970 – as was a third Mexico City stadium in the suburb of Nezahualcoyotl. Two stadia were added in the Monterrey region, another in Queretaro, one in Irapuato and a second in the Guadalajara area.
An earthquake late in 1985 did Mexico no favours, but none of the stadia was affected, and it was too late to change venue again at this eleventh hour, so the competition went ahead in the exhausting heat. And in appalling playing conditions; short notice it may have been but some of the training facilities and pitches were non-league quality.
1986
MEXICO
With more teams involved, Mexico needed more than five grounds for their next job of hosting, and managed to find the extra venues and capacity in the three years between Columbia’s resignation as hosts to the opening match on 31 May 1986.