by Nick Holt
The USSR against France was the pick of the matches in the group stages. Both teams had an abundance of talent in midfield; the Soviets were technically sound, quick, eager, full of running and the French were older, craftier and full of imagination. Three of the excellent French quartet had hit thirty, but Luis Fernandez (born in Spain) added zest and bite aplenty. The approach play was patient and excellent, but Bossis and Battiston dealt with Belanov better than Hungary, and, with Stopyra and Papin equally well policed, clear chances were rare. The Soviets opened the scoring when Vassily Rats scored with what could hardly be described as a chance at all, exploding a shot into the top corner with his left foot from fully thirty-five yards. France’s equaliser came after a flowing passing move; Giresse played the killer ball, a chip into the penalty area where Fernandez scored with an adroit two-touch finish. The right result.
France completed the last rites on Hungary with an easy 3–0 win that included Jean Tigana’s only goal for France in fifty-two internationals. He had the most defensive role of the midfield quartet, and fantastic stamina, but finishing was presumably not his strongest point. The goal was a good one, a thumping finish after a neat passing triangle; his team-mates’ celebration was delirious and sincere. They respected the tiring shifts that Tigana contributed to the team. Stopyra headed the first goal after half an hour from right-back Ayache’s excellent cross and the veteran Rocheteau scored the final goal just before the end. This was no intricate passing move; Platini chased down a punt from Joel Bats, flicked the ball across the goal for the unmarked Rocheteau. No one would fancy facing either France or the USSR in the knockout rounds.
GROUP D
Brazil
(0) 1
Spain
(0) 0
1 June, Jalisco, Gua; 35,748
Sócrates 61
N. Ireland
(1) 1
Algeria
(0) 1
3 June, TdM, Gua; 22,000
Whiteside 6
Zidane 59
Algeria
(0) 0
Brazil
(0) 1
6 June, Jalisco, Gua; 47,000
Careca
Spain
(2) 2
N. Ireland
(0) 1
7 June, TdM, Gua; 28,000
Butragueño 1,
Clarke 46
Salinas 18
Algeria
(0) 0
Spain
(1) 3
12 June, Tecnológico; 23,980
Calderé 15, 68, Eloy 71
Brazil
(2) 3
N. Ireland
(0) 0
12 June, Jalisco; 46,500
Careca 15, 87, Josimar 41
1. Brazil 6pts (5–0); 2. Spain 4pts (5–2); 3. Northern Ireland 1pt (2–6); 4. Algeria 1pt (1–5)
In the opening game Spain looked an improvement on the 1982 version. They had a sound defence, which included Andoni Goikoetxea, the Butcher of Bilbao, so named after he gave Maradona a hammering in a game for Athletic Bilbao against Barcelona three years earlier. Ahead of them Michel of Real Madrid was an excellent wide midfield player, and young Emilio Butragueño looked a hard-working and inventive striker. They were unlucky to lose to a slightly jaded Brazil – Michel had a shot bounce down off the bar and wrongly ruled as no goal. Brazil didn’t offer the promise they had four years earlier, but they were sound at the back, with Júlio César looking an authoritative stopper and Branco an excellent attacking full-back. Brazil seemed to have finally realised Júnior wasn’t a defender, he played here in a left-sided midfield role.
Northern Ireland’s triumph was getting here – they had even less in their locker than in 1982, and surely couldn’t expect the same players to raise their game as spectacularly as in that campaign. If they did expect it, they were disappointed; a draw with Algeria was Northern Ireland’s only point. They left themselves a mountain to climb against Spain, conceding twice in the first twenty minutes, and were well beaten by Brazil, who produced three showpiece goals. Careca got two, smashing home Müller’s superb low cross and then playing a one-two with Zico (recovered from injury and on as a substitute) and firing home. The middle one was a punt from Josimar from miles out that left Pat Jennings clutching at thin air on his forty-first birthday. The downside for Brazil was that Josimar tried a repeat every time he got within forty yards of the goal throughout the rest of the tournament, but it was a good way to introduce yourself on your international debut.
Algeria were disappointing after their encouraging 1982 campaign – they had looked easily the strongest African team in qualifying but were eclipsed by Morocco in Mexico. Some of the classy players from 1982 looked a little less eager now, and the team lacked the zest it had shown four years previously. Algeria’s squad contained the first player with an English club to represent an African team at the World Cup Finals – Rachid Harkouk of Notts County played a game and a half in the group.
There was a footnote to Spain’s easy win over Algeria that strikes more of a chord now; Spanish striker Ramón Calderé, who scored two goals, was discovered to have ephedrine in his system. Spain’s plea that the drug was in a remedy administered by a local hospital for a stomach upset was given more credence than it would today and the player escaped without a ban.
Brazil qualified for the next round as the only team to win all three games, but no one was feeling intimidated.
Northern Ireland Squad 1986:
GK: Pat Jennings (Tottenham Hotspur, 41 years old, 116 caps), Jim Platt (Coleraine, 35, 21), Philip Hughes (Bury, 21, 0)
DEF: Mal Donaghy (Luton Town, 28, 42), Alan McDonald (Queens Park Rangers, 22, 5), John McClelland (Watford, 30, 38), Bernard McNally (Shrewsbury Town, 23, 1), Jimmy Nicholl (West Bromwich Albion, 29, 70), John O’Neill (Leicester City, 28, 36), Nigel Worthington (Sheffield Wednesday, 24, 8)
MID & WIDE: David Campbell (Nottingham Forest, 20, 1), David McCreery (Newcastle United, 28, 53), Sammy McIlroy (Cpt, Manchester City, 31, 84), Steve Penney (Brighton & Hove Albion, 22, 8), Paul Ramsey (Leicester, 23, 9), Ian Stewart (Newcastle, 24, 26), Norman Whiteside (Manchester United, 21, 26)
FWD: Gerry Armstrong (West Brom, 32, 62), Mark Caughey (Linfield, 25, 2), Colin Clarke* (Bournemouth, 23, 3), Billy Hamilton (Oxford United, 29, 39), Jimmy Quinn (Blackburn Rovers, 26, 11)
This tournament was the end of the road for a great generation of Northern Ireland players; Gerry Armstrong, Pat Jennings, Billy Hamilton, Jimmy Nicholl, John O’Neill and reserve goalkeeper Jim Platt retired or weren’t picked again, and Sammy McIlroy bade farewell at the next match against England.
GROUP E
The Germans had done the unthinkable in 1984 and fired their coach for the first time, after an underwhelming European Championships. The new man in the hot seat was no less than Franz Beckenbauer. Beckenbauer declared no interest in the job until a national newspaper unilaterally threw a hat into the ring on his behalf. Or so he claimed. Originally he took the job on a caretaker basis waiting for the availability of Stuttgart manager Helmut Benthaus, but Stuttgart had a shocking season and Benthaus’ appointment was untenable. Beckenbauer made no rash promises – he warned the German officials that the team was nowhere near good enough to compete at the World Cup. There were some good players in the squad, but only one of proven world class, the striker and captain Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, and, just as in 1982, he wasn’t fully fit. There was another, but unfortunately for Beckenbauer and West Germany he was one of the most cussed and awkward players the game has known; Bernd Schuster was staying in Barcelona with his wife-cum-manager, Gaby. The defence was robust but limited, and in Rummenigge’s Bayern Munich colleague Lothar Matthäus they had a strong running midfield player – more Bonhof than Netzer but a step on from the class of ’82. The creative burden fell on the thirty-three-year-old (and ever so slightly portly) Felix Magath. The fans’ favourite was the Werder Bremen striker Rudi Völler, one of those rare characters even opposition fans seemed to appreciate
.
West Germany were, frankly, awful in their group games. They conceded a lead to Uruguay, who had a legitimate goal not given after the ball hit the bar, crossed the line and bounced out. Germany introduced a half-fit Rummenigge and the experienced Littbarski and scraped a draw. They conceded another lead against Scotland, to an excellent strike by Gordon Strachan, but came back to win through Allofs and Völler. It was a second defeat for Scotland – they lost their opener 1–0 to a strong Danish side – and they faced elimination at the group stage yet again unless they could beat Uruguay. They didn’t, despite José Batista’s sending-off in the very first minute. It remains the fastest dismissal in the Finals; some reports suggested the referee took out the wrong card, but it was a dreadful tackle, intended to hurt and intimidate Scotland’s best player (Strachan, by a country mile), and fully deserved a straight red. Scotland huffed and puffed but Uruguay looked much more solid than in their previous match and held out with relative ease. Alex Ferguson kept shuffling his forward pack throughout the tournament, but none of his five strikers was international class, and his supposed playmaker, Graeme Souness, gave two wretched displays. His insistence on picking the stomping bruiser Aitken ahead of either his more gifted Celtic colleague Paul McStay or the Rangers winger Davie Cooper did the team no favours. Some sympathy is due – a bruiser did seem to be appropriate against Uruguay, who were a disgrace; dirty, cynical and abusive towards the officials, they were handed an official reprimand by FIFA.
The best team in this group by a distance was Denmark, the first European team to have more than half their squad in a Finals tournament playing in leagues outside the country. The Danish league was mediocre, so fifteen of the squad earned their living in Belgium, England, Germany, Holland or Italy. They put down a marker when they annihilated Uruguay in their second match, a result no one predicted. Uruguay had a man sent off (Bossio) after less than twenty minutes – the ferocious and indiscreet tackling of the sixties teams had not gone away – but they were already a goal down and the Danish strikers pulled their much-vaunted defence all over the pitch. This wasn’t one of the along-for-the-ride teams Denmark slaughtered, but a team regarded as a sneaky outside bet for a tournament played in conditions that suited them. Uruguay’s tiny consolation came from a penalty converted by Francescoli, but it was a painful tournament for the No.10. Francescoli was a huge success with River Plate in Argentina and did well in France and Italy after this tournament, but he never flourished in a World Cup.
Denmark had a great combination up front, the passing and positioning of Michael Laudrup alongside the inexhaustible running and powerful finishing of Elkjaer. Laudrup led his markers a merry dance while Elkjaer galloped through the empty spaces he left and helped himself to a hat-trick. Denmark confirmed their supremacy by beating West Germany 2–0 in the game to decide who won the group, despite the Germans raising their game from their first two efforts. It is a quirk of World Cup Finals tournaments that winning the group isn’t always rewarded, and Denmark would surely have preferred Germany’s last sixteen match against Morocco to their own encounter with Spain.
Scotland Squad 1986:
GK: Jim Leighton (Aberdeen, 27 years old, 26 caps), Andy Goram (Oldham Athletic, 22, 3), Alan Rough (Hibernian, 34, 53)
DEF: Arthur Albiston (Manchester United, 28, 13), Richard Gough (Dundee United, 24, 23), Maurice Malpas (Dundee Utd, 23, 10), Alex McLeish (Aberdeen, 27, 43), Willie Miller (Aberdeen, 31, 48), David Narey (Dundee Utd, 29, 28), Steve Nicol (Liverpool, 24, 8)
MID & WIDE: Roy Aitken (Glasgow Celtic, 27, 20), Eamonn Bannon (Dundee Utd, 28, 9), Jim Bett (Aberdeen, 26, 17), Davie Cooper (Glasgow Rangers, 30, 14), Paul McStay (Celtic, 21, 14), Gordon Strachan (Man Utd, 29, 34), Graeme Souness (Sampdoria, 33, 15)
FWD: Steve Archibald* (Barcelona, 29, 26), Graeme Sharp (Everton, 25, 6), Frank McAvennie (West Ham United, 26, 2), Charlie Nicholas (Arsenal, 24, 15), Paul Sturrock (Dundee Utd, 29, 17)
GROUP F
England found themselves in a winnable group. English football needed a fillip. Their clubs were serving an indefinite ban from European competition after the tragic events at the European Cup Final at the Heysel Stadium in Brussels the previous year. The hooligan effect was less conspicuous at club level than in the late seventies, but a nasty element with racist undertones had attached itself to the England team and officials held their breath every time the team travelled abroad. In 1980 fans had rioted after a match in Turin and Italy, and the riot police of Europe – some of them also little more than hooligans, but uniformed – had their cards marked. Fortunately Mexico was a long way away.
England plus one of Poland or Portugal, it was widely thought. Not after two rounds of matches they didn’t; England were bottom of the group and the whipping boys, Morocco, hadn’t conceded a goal. They hadn’t scored one either, admittedly, but they had the best of their first match against Poland and kept England at arm’s length easily enough.
The games were a disaster for England. This was a good squad, with an excellent core in Shilton, Butcher, Bryan Robson, the playmaker Hoddle and exciting new striker Gary Lineker. The tactics didn’t match it. Wilkins, a passable holding player in 1982, was now just pedestrian and Mark Hateley, his Milan colleague, didn’t have enough subtlety against international defences. And there was a gap in the centre of the defence, where Robson hadn’t found a consistent partner for Butcher. He had tried Alvin Martin (in the squad) of West Ham and Mark Wright of Derby, but had settled for the Finals on the converted full-back Terry Fenwick.
Despite masses of possession, England didn’t hurt Portugal in the opening game and, when Diamantino skinned the laboured Sansom and crossed, no one picked up Carlos Manuel. It was a sucker punch and a scarcely deserved win for Portugal, who were very defensive and just as uninspired as England.
In that first game Ray Wilkins was just anonymous, in the second he became the first England player to be dismissed in a World Cup Finals match. Wilkins was booked on forty minutes, and then Bryan Robson left the field after aggravating a shoulder injury. Stoic to the last, Robson spent a few moments trying to click the shoulder back into place; it’s a bit painful, this was the extent of his moaning about an injury that would have had lesser men weeping. When a decision went against England a minute or so later, Wilkins hurled the ball towards the official. He surely didn’t mean to hit him but it was a bit school playground and clear dissent so Wilkins took the long walk. He only played a few more games, and it was a tame end for a man who started at Chelsea as an attacking, goalscoring midfield player of untold potential.
Morocco should have gone on and won the game and put England out but they were too scared of losing. The point meant England could guarantee qualification by beating Poland in their last group game.
Poland, not the force of the last three tournaments, beat Portugal in their second game, and now topped the group. In another poor game Smolarek’s breakaway goal decided things, but neither the Poles nor Portugal looked up to much and the one supposedly great player on the pitch, Boniek, looked disinterested.
England needed replacements for Wilkins and the injured Robson, and they found them in Peter Reid and Trevor Steven, both of Everton, champions and then runners-up in the past two seasons. Steve Hodge came in on the left for the disappointing Chris Waddle, and Peter Beardsley came in up front as a more subtle foil to Lineker.
The feisty Reid and the more conservative selection of Hodge allowed Glenn Hoddle to play further forward – he had just pottered around on the right side of midfield in the first two matches – and actually hurt the opposition, while Lineker exploded into life. England went two-up inside fifteen minutes. After some neat passing Trevor Steven received the ball in the centre and immediately slipped the ball to his Everton colleague, right-back Gary Stevens, overlapping down the right. Stevens’ cross was hit first time and Lineker, as was his wont, read it better than the defenders and bundled it in. Five minutes later Kenny Sansom cleared up the left and found Peter Beardsley who
spun and hit a great pass in front of Steve Hodge. Again the cross was instant, and again Lineker was first on the spot, crashing home on the half volley. A class goal; defence to back of the net in four seconds. The third, which effectively ended the game before halftime, was a gift from Poland goalkeeper Mlynarczyk, who dropped a corner – perhaps he felt Polish goalkeepers owed England one after Tomaszewski in 1973. Lineker swivelled and rocketed the ball into the roof of the net – another great piece of finishing and England’s first Finals hat-trick since Sir Geoff. Panic over – inhale, breathe deep, relax.
Over in Guadalajara Morocco became the first African team to reach the second round with a fine win over Portugal. Abderazzak Khairi scored twice, the second a class finish from a long, hanging cross and Krimau scored a third when put clear with no defenders within shouting distance. Portugal, under their old warrior centre-forward Jose Torres, were poor against England, worse against Poland and indescribably awful against Morocco. Morocco even headed the group with that win.
SECOND ROUND
Thankfully FIFA dispensed with the hideous second-round group phase for 1986, but it did mean a complicated system whereby the third-placed teams in the initial groups scrambled through to the last sixteen, which seemed an inappropriate reward for failure. The system produced an unexpected semi-finalist. The others were less unexpected – would it surprise you, dear reader, to learn that West Germany was one of them?
A word about the heat, here is as good a place as any. World Cup games (any major game) are played to suit TV channels, not players – TV channels give FIFA money. The TV channels that cough up most for soccer are in Europe, so the games were played, in Mexico, at times to suit peak-time audiences in a completely different time zone. This meant kick-off times were midday and four o’clock, when the sun was highest and temperatures reached forty degrees; temperatures which are exaggerated in sports stadia, where the heat gets trapped in the lowest area – the playing surface. Players lost between six pounds and a stone per game (2.5–6 kilos) – no, not an exaggeration, a stone. Gerry Armstrong claimed it made him the player he was in 1982, as he tended to carry too much weight and stripping down made him leaner and quicker. Not all were as positive about the experience; John Aldridge recalls a game in the United States in 1994 when he was asked to give a urine sample after the game and had to wait nearly two hours before he could produce a drop.