Eight World Cups Page 4
Later, I learned that the Brazilian swarm was called La Torcida, a Portuguese word for something that twists. I had my epiphany: Brazil, with the warmth of Pelé, the three championships, the samba beat, jogo bonito (the beautiful game), was the heart of the sport.
I took myself to Sarrià on July 2 to watch Brazil vs. Argentina—the mystical globe of Brazil’s flag, the three horizontal bands of blanca y celeste of Argentina’s—the best soccer rivalry of the Americas. Their soccer history included racial insults toward dark-skinned Brazilian players in the late 1930s and two Argentine players having their legs broken by Brazilian players on the field in 1946. For the next decade, Argentina and Brazil stopped playing each other except in unavoidable tournaments.
The two nations exported their best players to the rich European leagues and their older players to the United States. Menotti, the Argentine coach, had played for the New York Generals in 1967, while Pelé and Carlos Alberto had gone to the Cosmos in their athletic old age.
Inevitably, Brazil and Argentina had met in the World Cup. The first meeting took place in 1974, in Hannover, West Germany, with Jairzinho of Brazil breaking a 1–1 draw in the forty-ninth minute. The second meeting happened in Rosario, Argentina, in 1978, in what the official FIFA site calls “a bad-tempered stalemate.”
The 1978 World Cup still evokes hard feelings. In the third game of group play that year, Brazil beat Poland, 1–0, early in the day, leaving Argentina in need of a victory and a four-goal differential to advance. Argentina promptly hammered Peru by a comfortable 6–0 score and eventually won the World Cup at home. Brazil still resents that friendly tango between the two Spanish-speaking countries.
Now it was time for their third World Cup meeting, my first glimpse of Brazil, with players going by soccer nicknames like Oscar, Junior, and Zico and, on the bench, Roberto Dinamite.
The gods came out to play in blue shorts and yellow jerseys. The ball came rocketing from the goal line to a willowy, shaggy midfielder named Sócrates, who sent a quick little tictac pass to a teammate, took a couple of slide steps, and received the ball in return. Then Sócrates dispatched a laser pass to a teammate with curly locks named Falcão, who raced forward for fifteen or twenty yards, dodging, evading, keeping the ball in front of him, before unleashing a long floating ball toward the goal, where it was met by the forehead of a human projectile named Zico, who sent a cannonball soaring a few inches above the crossbar.
This was some entirely new sport, a blend of ballet and geometry, quick triangles appearing and disappearing, instant decisions by athletes on the move, so graceful and independent, performing intricate maneuvers with a round ball, on the fringes of their feet.
Who were these people? My new mentor, Jacomini from the Associated Press, filled me in. Sócrates had graduated from medical school; his philosopher’s name was not from soccer but rather had been given him by his classics-minded parents. I assumed that Falcão—“Falcon” in English—was also a nome de futebol in the Latin soccer fashion, but in fact his full name was Paulo Roberto Falcão. He played like a bird of prey and looked like a rock star; Jacomini told me Falcão had played two seasons for rich and powerful AS Roma after a long career in Brazil.
The Brazilians played with a style different than Italy’s or Argentina’s, flicking the ball back and forth, a form of love on the green grass. Clearly, these Brazilian players were not bound by definitions of position. They were footballers. In the eleventh minute, Dr. Sócrates, as he was called, slipped in front of the frustrated, lethargic Maradona and tapped the ball to Zico, who slammed it upfield to Oscar, who moved it to Serginho, who was stopped the only way Argentina could do it, with a trip. Eder took the free kick and hit the crossbar, but Zico headed the rebound into the corner of the goal. The globe on the Brazilian flag shimmered in celebration. Halter tops were removed.
Brazil scored again in the sixty-sixth minute, when Serginho stole the ball, forwarded it to Sócrates, and from there to Eder, Zico, and Falcão, who took his defender to the right side and lofted a cross high above the goal. Serginho, with the vertical leap of a basketball player, headed it home.
In the seventy-fifth minute, Junior scored on a pass from Zico. (Three decades later, I admit it, I still relish typing these names.) Then, finally, in the eighty-ninth minute, Ramón Díaz of Argentina scored past Waldir Peres, the Brazilian keeper.
By this time, Maradona was no longer on the premises. Having been kicked around by Gentile in the first match, he was a lost and lonely soul in the bear pit of Sarrià. He missed a few shots he could have made, and he gesticulated when he thought he had been brought down in the penalty area. In the eighty-fifth minute, he made a complete fool of himself by kicking Batista of Brazil square in the groin, with the whole world watching.
The Spanish broadcaster promptly included that foul among the gestos feos—ugly gestures—of any World Cup. (“Terrible,” he trilled.) Maradona was expelled from the match minutes before the defending champions were eliminated. The jeers in Sarrià were a predictor that Barcelona was not Maradona’s city, but it was surely a wonderful place for a World Cup.
Everywhere in Barcelona there was genius, particularly among the soaring spires of La Sagrada Familia, the unfinished cathedral planned by Antoni Gaudí, the dreamer and architect whose work is all over that city. My wife, Marianne, and I had been to Barcelona twice, once in 1966 when Catalonia was still essentially an occupied province under Generalissimo Francisco Franco and again in 1977 when Franco was dead and the Catalan culture had begun to reassert itself.
The change was as basic as renaming a thoroughfare from a Franco-era title in Castilian to Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes in Catalan—a revolution depicted in street signs. During the World Cup, folk dancers assembled in the plazas of Barcelona and performed a Catalan dance called the sardana, a sweet, dignified reflection of the ancient culture.
I’ve always had a soft spot for Spain, its regions trying to recover from the wounds of the civil war in the 1930s. Americans don’t do politics very well, with our tea-party types blithely tossing around labels like “socialist” and “fascist” without the glimmer of an understanding of how the political needle points left or right. In Spain, politics had been lethal. Camp Nou was home to the powerful FC Barcelona, a communally owned club that represents the nationalistic Catalan impulse, while Sarrià was the home field of RCD Espanyol, a somewhat less successful team that was understood to represent centralist ties to Madrid.
On July 3, there was no game, so I bought a ticket for a concert by Maria del Mar Bonet, a folk singer from Mallorca. The concert was outdoors in a quiet plaza very late on a hot night, the air so still we could hear every ping of the chime, every chord of the mandolin, every syllable. The audience seemed to know the songs and hummed along at times. The next day I stopped off at the big department store El Corte Inglés and bought a Maria del Mar album called Alenar, the Catalan verb for “to breathe.” When the World Cup was over, I carried the vinyl disk home with me. I play it still on my turntable—songs of love and revolution, songs of a summer night in Barcelona.
* * *
With Argentina gone, fans began to take seriously the onrushing and cranky Azzurri, as the Italian team was known, for its bright blue jerseys. The players had long since stopped talking to the media, proclaiming what is known as a silenzio stampa. So flamboyant in some ways—nobody can wear sunglasses with sweaters tossed gracefully over shoulders like Italians—the players were smoldering after being criticized for the draws in the first round, their negative reputation for the catenaccio, as well as the gambling scandal of 1980, known as Totonero. Now Rossi had come bounding on the counterattack like a bicycle thief to eliminate the casual Brazilians.
Some Italian journalists had made fun of the Italian players for being paid a bonus for advancing from the first round, after three wretched draws. The journalists claimed that the bonuses were $30,000 per player, but team officials insisted they were only $15,000 a man. Without access to the p
layers, the reporters were thereby emboldened to write whatever crossed their minds—which was considered normal, as long as the writing was stylish.
The scribes also wrote about Italy’s adherence to the long soccer (and cycling) tradition of enforced celibacy—keeping the lads away from their wives or girlfriends during the competition. Allegedly this makes men strong, gives them focus and purpose, but a lot of nations never won anything after keeping the boys locked up. Besides, it isn’t the sex that weakens a footballer but rather the demand for tickets from old friends and relatives. With the Italian players sequestered in Spain, two to a room, one journalist wrote that Rossi and Cabrini were spending the World Cup “like man and wife.” That snide and unwarranted phrasing did not go down well with any of the Italian players.
It was impossible to hear the players’ version because locker rooms were (and remain) closed in world soccer, probably for good reason, given the swarms of journalists. American reporters were accustomed to some access to athletes, but FIFA had no clue how to showcase the great players in its signature event. Rare press conferences by coaches were stilted. Enzo Bearzot, the gabby pipe-smoking Italian coach, fancied himself something of a linguist and would quibble over the translation from Italian to other romance languages, thereby eating up most of the interview time. Team guidebooks were nonexistent; the primitive computers at the media centers contained little information. Soccer details were locked inside the secretive skulls of the correspondents. Asking questions was not cool. So people made stuff up.
With the Italian players incommunicado, my new friend Jacomini took the gracious step of asking Dino Zoff, Italy’s forty-year-old goalkeeper, to grant an interview to an American outsider. To my delight, Zoff agreed. I showed up at the team’s hilltop hotel, where I spotted several of his teammates, half his age, recuperating from the Argentina match in the hotel pool. I also noted that whereas the younger Italian players wore the skimpiest of bathing suits and sported deep tans and youthful muscles, Zoff kept on his floppy white T-shirt and wore baggy bathing trunks. He looked more like a middle-aged man who had put in a hard week at the office and was hoping to catch a few winks alongside the pool.
Zoff was tall and dark and angular, vaguely Dean Martin–esque, with none of the energy and gestures of his younger teammates on nearby lounges. His taciturnity was later explained as a trait of his home region in the Friuli, in northeast Italy, which is known for its good wine and earnest frugal laborers who gave a day’s work for a day’s pay. He did not speak English, and I was more confident with my poor Spanish than my rudimentary Italian, so we spoke two different languages, and sometimes Jacomini interpreted—a normal transaction in the polyglot world of soccer.
I had ascertained that Zoff was a mainstay of Juventus since coming over from Napoli. I asked him a series of questions—about his age, his diet, his workout, the Italian renaissance in soccer—and received polite, modest responses, which I took to be part of the Friulian calm. Plus, he was a keeper, a breed that sees the game and the world from a different angle. The taciturn man said he liked his job and hoped to keep playing for years to come.
I got just enough to write a column, and I felt proud that I had actually talked to the Italian keeper. I had no way of knowing how much this journey to the heart of Italy would stay with me over the years.
* * *
On July 4 in Camp Nou, Poland needed only a draw with its dear friends from the Soviet Union to move into the semifinals. The small number of Polish fans with enough money and freedom to get to Barcelona taunted the few Soviet fans who had come for the tournament. Still, police had to go into the two-thirds-empty stands to take down a Solidarity banner and separate the two factions.
This Iron Curtain intramural was not as vicious as the infamous water polo match in the 1956 Olympics. Known as the Blood in the Water match, it took place during the Hungarian revolt against the Soviets. The Poles were keeping the Soviets occupied in the match—and why not, inasmuch as the Soviets had been occupying Poland for years. Late in the match, the Poles were killing the clock, and the Soviets were hacking away at them, pretty much within normal range.
Zibi Boniek, the author of the diversified hat trick against Belgium, was clearly cut down by Sergei Baltacha, who was quickly given a yellow card. Then, as Boniek writhed on the ground, he directed a petulant kick in the direction of a Soviet player—hardly as punishing as the shots the Soviets were taking at the Poles. The referee, Robert Valentine of Scotland, who had passively observed the Austrian and West German waltz in the first round, suddenly became a legalist and unobtrusively booked Boniek—his second yellow card of the tournament.
As the Poles celebrated the 0–0 draw, Boniek left the field, his pale face doubly ashen as he realized he was now ineligible for the semifinal against the winner of the Italy-Brazil match the following day.
Bravo, arbitro. I was just getting some slight feel for the impossible role of the solitary ref. From observing umpires and referees in other sports back home, I knew that one trait of a good official is knowing when to look the other way. Valentine did not seem to know that.
And then, on July 5, the whole world crammed into Sarrià for the decisive match between Italy and Brazil. Brazil had a better goal differential than Italy, which meant that Italy had to beat Brazil in order to advance. A draw would do Italy no good.
I thoroughly expected Brazil to win. If the Italian press was still down on the Azzurri, why shouldn’t I be? Brazil was one of the most beautiful teams ever seen—people still say that, to this day—but beauty generally refers to offense. Defense can be negative, even ugly, hence the general contempt for the catenaccio. Still, in a sport where one goal is crucial, taut defense can produce offense via the counterattack.
Early in the match, Brazil began taking jaunts down the sidelines, because that was the only way Brazil knew to play. Italy slammed the bolt shut, with Antonio Cabrini, a left back, racing down the left sideline, lashing a left-footed cross that hooked violently until it met the forehead of Paolo Rossi, streaking down from the right. Bizarrely open, Rossi had plenty of space to blast the ball past Waldir Peres for the 1–0 Italy lead.
The Italian press had been calling for Rossi to be benched, saying the nation had been patient enough with him following the gambling scandal. Now Rossi had scored his first goal of the tournament. The match was only five minutes old.
The Brazilian gods knew how to score. Sócrates put the ball under Zoff in the twelfth minute, but Rossi scored in the twenty-fifth minute. Italy led for forty-three ominous minutes, until Falcão stutter-stepped into the Italian defense, mesmerizing them and scoring past Zoff, who may have been screened.
With the match tied at 2, Brazil could not tighten its own bolt. In the seventy-fourth minute, Rossi scored again for a 3–2 lead. Brazil threw all its offense for the draw that would get them through. In the closing moments, Zoff had to stop a shot and then grovel on his belly as he snagged the squirming ball, inches from the goal line.
Zoff impassively cradled the ball as long as he dared, then released it, and soon the match was over. I was stunned, and so was everybody who believed in Brazil. John McDermott, who was working the sidelines that day, recalled how Brazilian photographers were crying as they clicked away. Several years later, Rossi published a book entitled Ho fatto piangere il Brasile (I made Brazil cry).
The Italian players, having taken gibes from their own nation, passed through the mixed zone, where hordes of reporters brandished microphones and cameras and begged for a few words. The players tossed their fashionable locks and delivered a patronizing sneer. Something smelled, they said. Like shit.
* * *
As I took a taxi back to my hotel after the Italy triumph, the city was silent. The national team of Spain—known as La Selección—was playing England in Bernabéu Stadium in Madrid. The cab driver, listening to the match on the radio, proudly asserted he was a member of La Raza Pura (he spoke Castilian, with its lisped z—“Ra-tha Poo-ra”) and empha
tically not Catalan.
Up to now, I had been so entranced by the two groups and Barcelona that I had overlooked the hopes of the host nation. Spain had been depicted as recidivist underperformers by the great Brian Glanville in the 1967 documentary; fifteen years later, it still was.
Language and regional divisions were a huge issue for Spanish soccer, seven years after the death of Franco. People paid attention to who was starting for La Selección, where the national matches were played, which flags and banners were waved. Did the differences detract from La Selección? In 1982, Spain was known for great individual talent and a strong national league including its two signature teams—Barça and Real Madrid—but little cohesion and durability in a long and demanding tournament.
The 1982 players had made a commercial for El Corte Inglés, the chain department store, wearing stylish suits on the field as they performed volleys and headers and bicycle kicks. Making commercials was much more fun than digging in against grittier squads.
Spain had to beat England by at least two goals to be assured of advancing, but in the long summer evening, neither team could score, which sent West Germany through to the semifinals. Barcelona remained silent, as if in mourning. I was getting my first taste of the angst of any host team. La Selección was twenty-eight years away from fulfillment.
* * *
We were in the first primitive decade of computers; almost all the reporters at this World Cup were still tap-tap-tapping their stories on portable typewriters. The Times had sent me to Spain with a rudimentary TeleRam Portabubble computer in a thick square case that made me look as if I was carrying a bowling ball. One night the electrician in the press box cut off the power and blew out my computer; I had to find a pioneer computer store in Barcelona to buy new fuses.
These were dangerous times. Dave Kindred of the Washington Post and Hubert Mizell of the St. Petersburg Times did not have the right plugs for the outlets at their hotel, but the electrician rigged up a connection between a live wire in their computers and a live wire in the air-conditioning unit. One wayward drip of condensation could have electrocuted either of them, but they lived to tell the tale.