There they were! Chants and songs and horns and drums—not exactly the graceful samba legions of the Brazilian Torcida, to be sure, but not all hooligans, either. The dragnet had caught little old ladies in tennis sneakers, parents and small children, trudging along in this forced march.
I had always wanted to see real live hooligans up close, so I waved my press credential and slipped into the street, alongside a burly young bloke, with skin burned to a flaming crimson and belly extending over his shorts. Identifying myself as a reporter for the New York Times, I asked him how the ferry ride had gone and how the Italian authorities were treating him.
He regarded me with a baleful glare. Then in a thick accent he announced in a loud, cutting voice: “So you’re from the effing You-nited States?”
Yes, I said.
He looked me up and down. Then in an even louder voice, he broadcast:
“Well, then, why don’t you go write about your effing baseball?”
I got the feeling the interview was over. He did not want to enlighten me about the traveling fans, did not want to address stereotypes and injustices, the branding of all Brits as criminals. He just wanted me out of his way.
One fan did confide that he resented the police treating the English “like animals.”
Later that night, Ireland drew with England, 1–1. Afterward, some British lads rioted in downtown Cagliari, before squads of police moved them out. Police arrested fourteen English fans and later deported them.
On the flight back to Rome the next morning, one Italian man praised an Irish fan for good deportment in the stadium the night before.
“We’re not like them,” the Irishman said softly.
The Irish, in their first World Cup, were the hit of Italy when Ireland beat Romania in the round of 16 and arrived in Rome to play the Azzurri in the quarterfinals. The Irish fans wandered around, wearing green shorts and green T-shirts but not carrying much green cash with them. The only place they were not welcome was inside St. Peter’s, where priests and Swiss Guards pointed at their bare legs and shooed them away. Goodness knows where they stayed. But the Irish fans (and their surprising team) made such an impression that Italian tourism to Ireland swelled noticeably the next year, with some Italians staying to wander around or teach Italian or fall in love. A strange little sociological alliance, thanks to soccer.
* * *
Within a few days, my wife had become a regular in the neighborhood, an American who loved the city, who spent a few lire here and there.
“Signora,” one shoplady said, after sussing out that I was a journalist, “you tell your husband that nobody spends money on this World Cup. They come for the match, and they go home.”
It was true. Germans drove down the autobahn, maybe bought a beer or two, and then drove back at 150 kilometers per hour, to be at work the next day.
This exposed the great myth of World Cups and Olympics. Organizers always mooch government subsidies for stadiums and security and infrastructure on the premise that the events will be a boon for business. The fact is, sports fans are not good tourists. They do not bring money, or curiosity, or consumer tastes. They come to see a game, have some beers, cheer loudly, get sick in the street, and go home. Better to schedule a convention of accountants.
It is always pathetic to see shopkeepers stock up on artistic gifts or good food or merchandise for the normal tourist, only to see visiting fans stomp past their shop chanting “U-S-A.” Most major events produce a dip in business, which is the reason I opposed New York’s bid for the 2012 Olympics, which fortunately it did not get. When London held those Games, that city had a lower hotel occupancy rate than New York. Tourists avoided London as if the Great Fire and the plague were raging simultaneously.
No complaints from us about summer in Rome. My wife had the city to herself.
* * *
As per custom, the defending champions opened up the tournament, this time in Milan, the haughty center of business and fashion. Coach Carlos Bilardo, a medical doctor, had lobbied unsuccessfully for a shorter version of the Argentine anthem, which went on for nearly four minutes, as the hostile northern crowd (which hated Maradona as a Napoli player) whistled and jeered.
Maradona, in his own way, made the situation vastly better by visibly cursing during the opening ceremony, with the camera gaping inches away from his face.
Argentina’s opening opponent was Cameroon, which had earned one of only two slots allotted to Africa, the continent often called “the future” by FIFA. Cameroon became the first surprise of 1990 when François Omam-Biyik stunned Argentina by outjumping Roberto Sensini and scoring on a wicked bouncing header in the sixty-seventh minute. The goal held up for a 1–0 upset victory.
Cameroon was bolstered by Roger Milla, its great star who had retired once, with fans taking up a collection to build a statue of him in Yaoundé, the capital. Just turned thirty-eight, the living icon was back in uniform, much to the surprise of Coach Valeri Nepomniachi, who hailed from Siberia and needed a French-Russian translator at his side.
The coach’s strategy was to hold the old man out of the starting lineup and wait for the sun to go down over the lip of the stadium.
Milla came on in the eighty-first minute against Argentina. Then he arrived in the fifty-ninth minute against Romania and scored in the seventy-sixth and eighty-sixth minute in a 2–1 victory. Milla came on in the thirty-fourth minute as Cameroon was whacked by the Soviets, 4–0, in the third match, but Cameroon had already qualified for the knockout round.
In the round of 16, the shadows were two-thirds across San Paolo Stadium in Naples when Milla was sent on in the 54th minute of a scoreless match with Colombia. In the cool of the evening, he scored in the 106th minute. Then came one of the highlights of the tournament: Colombia’s keeper, René Higuita, liked making offensive sorties downfield, which was why he was known as El Loco. Higuita tried to dribble his way out of trouble, but Milla stripped him and scored in the 108th minute. Colombia scored later, but Cameroon had a 2–1 victory, to become the first African team ever to reach the quarterfinals.
By now Cameroon was the darling of Naples, but the team’s luck ran out in San Paolo in the quarterfinals against England. Gary Lineker scored a late-penalty goal to tie the match, and then in the 105th minute the Cameroon keeper, Thomas N’Kono, took down an English player, and Lineker made the penalty, and Cameroon was gone.
* * *
Maradona was conducting his personal home stand in Naples. At an early practice in San Paolo, he touched the grass with his right hand and made the sign of the cross.
“Now I’m the one who needs you, although you have given me so much already,” he told the city’s fans. “We must play well for ourselves and for the Neapolitans.”
I used to wonder if Maradona enjoyed manipulating people with words and theories, but later I came to think he really believed the things he said.
“If you want to see me happy, root for me and Argentina,” Maradona said.
Only Maradona could have the gall to commit another handball infraction four years after his infamous Hand of God performance. In Argentina’s match with the Soviets in the first round, while helping out on defense, he swatted a soft shot away from the goalmouth, using his right hand this time. The official documentary for this World Cup made the observation that the Hand of God turned out to be ambidextrous.
Sometimes a round of 16 match can have the aura of a final. With this in mind, fans trekked to Turin, home of Fiat, the Agnelli family, and Juventus, to watch Argentina play Brazil in the round of 16, the countries’ fourth World Cup meeting. Brazil was going through one of its periodic defensive upgrades, assigning a dozen or so defenders to mark Maradona at all times. While proclaiming himself the hero of Napoli, he was not popular in northern cities like Turin.
Unfortunately, the match had fallen into the 5 p.m. slot on a hot day. The teams slogged through a scoreless draw until the eighty-first minute, when Maradona escaped at least four defenders and r
eleased a gorgeous grass-skimmer pass to the left, to the fast-moving feet of Claudio Caniggia, who made a knowing wide swath to his left, drawing out the keeper, and then curling the shot past him. Argentina would live to play again.
The thing I remember most from that day is the overnight shutdown on a crowded train from Turin to Rome. Sciopero! Sciopero! (Strike! Strike!), they belatedly told us as we moldered on a siding outside Genoa. We were going zero miles per hour, and we were at the center of the universe, with fans from a dozen countries recalling Maradona’s magnificent pass to Caniggia. Took us eighteen hours to get to Rome.
Branco, a defender with that Brazilian squad, had a different memory of that sultry evening. Fifteen years later, he began advancing the theory that he had been drugged by a water bottle tossed him from the Argentine sideline during an injury break. Would a team really reserve a water bottle containing a sleeping potion for the possible opportunity to toss it to an opponent? Maradona, who appears to love conspiracy theories more than anybody, has at times encouraged Branco’s lament, perhaps to mess with Branco’s mind. Or perhaps it happened just that way.
Maradona had his nervous moment in the quarterfinals against Yugoslavia, when his soft penalty kick was saved during the shoot-out. But his teammates rescued him, and Argentina moved on to the semifinals in Naples, against an invader from another country, that is to say, Italy.
Diego Armando upgraded his propaganda campaign for the Neapolitans to root for Argentina—against Italy—citing the city’s history as an outsider, settled by Greeks who named the city Partenope; to this day the Italian sports pages refer to the Napoli club as the Partenopei.
It’s a tough town, and this is not just some tourist’s stereotype. When my wife and I traveled to Naples for the semifinal, she went out for a walk, and older ladies in black would stop her on the street and point to the modest gold chain around her neck and wag their index fingers in that very European gesture: Scusi, signora, but you need to hide that jewelry.
Maradona, the self-styled homeboy, tried to rally the Napolitani around Argentina. Most Neapolitans were street smart on their own and said, Hold on, Naples is still part of Italy, last time we looked.
Italy was going through its own dramatic relationship with the Azzurri—the fierce second-guessing and bickering of a clamorous family. Coach Azeglio Vicini had stunned the fans by selecting Salvatore Schillaci, an extremely late bloomer who had played seven full seasons for Messina in Serie B in his native Sicily before being purchased by Juventus—La Vecchia Signora, as the club is reverentially known. When Schillaci scored fifteen goals in his first season in Turin, Vicini put him on the national squad for the first time. If Maradona presented himself as an outsider, what did that make Totò Schillaci?
Vicini went to Schillaci in the seventy-fifth minute in the opener against Austria, and the Sicilian responded with a wise header for the goal. He was a late sub against the United States and then scored the first goal against Czechoslovakia, the first goal against Uruguay, and the only goal against Ireland. This romp by a reclamation project was looking like 1982, when Paolo Rossi led Italy to the championship, coming off his two-year suspension.
Schillaci’s long years in Messina may have been a blessing to him and the Azzurri. Italians often moaned that the nation did not develop strikers because the rich teams were always signing some Dutch or German or French import to do the finishing. If Schillaci had been called to Serie A earlier in his career, he might have been stuck on a glutted roster, subsidiary to the stranieri who were paid to score, and he might never have developed his instincts for open space. Instead, he came to Juve and the Azzurri as a striker who knew how to strike. Italy could never have enough of those.
Italy’s coach must always be aware of the passionate fans with their strong opinions about the great talent pool in that country. Vicini had been successful juggling his roster, particularly Schillaci. Against Argentina in the semifinal, Vicini did not start Roberto Baggio, the creative young player about to move from Fiorentina to Juventus, or Aldo Serena, Nicola Berti, Andrea Carnevale, or Roberto Mancini, all offensive forces for their clubs. The greatest impediment to any Italian coach was that he could start only eleven players.
Against Argentina in the semifinals, Italy took the lead in the seventeenth minute, completing six touches before Schillaci banged in a rebound of Gianluca Vialli’s shot. At this point, Argentina moved its defenders forward, often trapping Schillaci offside and forcing him to retreat.
Maradona was sometimes most dangerous when he lay in the weeds. In the sixty-seventh minute, he dished the ball forward to Julio Olarticoechea, who lofted it toward the goal, where Caniggia outjumped Riccardo Ferri and scored on a header, his two-tone tresses flailing. The goal was the first scored against Walter Zenga in six matches.
Now that the match was tied, Argentina went into ugly mode. The referee displayed six consecutive yellow cards to Argentina, two to Ricardo Giusti, forcing him out, and one to Caniggia, meaning he would miss the final, if Argentina could get there.
After hanging on for regulation time and overtime, Argentina made four straight goals in the shoot-out, including one by Maradona, who had missed against Yugoslavia. “I felt a great deal of fear,” he admitted later, after converting on a soft ground shot to his left. Roberto Donadoni missed, and Serena was stopped by Sergio Goycochea as Argentina vaulted into the final, over the stranieri from Italy. Maradona’s watchful deity was apparently still perched on his shoulder.
After the manic night in Naples, I did not have to make the trip to Turin for the England–West Germany semifinal the next night. One thing I had learned from my first two World Cups was that the Germans were going to be around toward the end. They are professionals who almost never dog it, never get caught up in intramural squabbles, at least ones that the whole world could see.
I’m not the only one who thinks so. Gary Lineker scored four goals for England in 1990, including the clutch tying goal in the eightieth minute against West Germany, and he also delivered on the first penalty kick in the shoot-out. Only later did I appreciate Lineker as a true leader, who tried to calm his troubled teammate, Paul Gascoigne, after England lost to West Germany in the shoot-out.
Lineker delivered this epigram about his sport: “Football is a simple game; twenty-two men chase a ball for ninety minutes and at the end, the Germans always win.”
* * *
Before the final between Argentina and West Germany, the third-place match between England and Italy was held in Bari on the same night as the Three Tenors concert in the Baths of Caracalla in Rome. I skipped both. I’ve never seen a third-place match, come to think of it. Instead, half a dozen American reporters went out for dinner, alfresco, on a gorgeous Roman evening.
With the Italy-England consolation match about to start, the staff served us wine and antipasti, took our orders, then vanished for forty-five minutes. They returned at halftime bearing our main course, steaming hot, al dente; I don’t know how they did it. Then they vanished again for forty-five minutes as Italy beat England, 2–1, for third place. We could hear cheering in the kitchen as they brought us the dolci. What a wonderful country. Perhaps I have said that already.
* * *
Caniggia was out for the final, so Maradona had no fast-moving target up front. He also had no hustler’s edge, and he seemed to know it. He knew many of the Germans from Serie A. What kind of mind game could he attempt on these guys?
For the final, Dr. Bilardo prescribed one of the most cynical game plans I would ever see. The Mexican referee, Edgardo Codesal, started waving yellow cards and red cards, tossing Pedro Monzón in the sixty-fifth minute. West Germany finally earned a penalty kick in the eightieth minute, and Andreas Brehme, a left back who used his right foot for penalty kicks, iced the soft shot. Argentina was down two players by the end of ninety minutes, and, mercifully, the final was over, with West Germany winning, 1–0.
After a month of Milla and Totò and the Irish and other charming faces
, this stinker of a final gave more ammunition to Americans who are spooked by soccer. Plenty of diving. The championship decided by a penalty kick. My attitude was, this is soccer; get over it. But still, the final stunk.
What else do I remember about that evening? Franz Beckenbauer, who had just become the first man to be both captain and coach of a World Cup champion, arrived for his press conference. As he stood in front of a live mike, waiting for the media swarm to assemble, Beckenbauer spotted my colleague Lawrie Mifflin, who had covered the Cosmos back in the day and was now a deputy sports editor at the Times. Speaking into the open mike, Beckenbauer said, “Ah! Lawrie! How are you! How is New York?”
Beckenbauer had been cool while earning his nickname Der Kaiser in the Bundesliga. Now he had coached the World Cup champs, and he was still cool.
* * *
The next day my wife and I went downstairs for our last meal in Rome and discovered both trattorias, the leftist and the rightist, jammed with Italians sitting territorially at their favorite tables. The air was thick with smoke from the kitchens and tobacco from the patrons. It was the liveliest Rome had been since we arrived.
The waiters explained: Instead of waiting for the annual monthlong holiday in August, Romans had gone away for June—to the shore, to the mountains, to ancestral homes, to California, to New York, anywhere there was no soccer, and no cheapskate tourists honking and wearing shorts and waving banners. Now the Romans were back. They had reclaimed their city.
We flew home. I have not been back to that piazza since, but once in a while, I turn on the satellite world view on the Internet and zero in on Piazza Sforza Cesarini, “our” piazza. I can smell the delicious smoke from the two kitchens. I wonder if the two staffs speak to each other.
8
MR. BLATTER COMES TO AMERICA
NEW YORK AND LAS VEGAS, 1993
Sepp Blatter was worried. He was visiting the United States in 1993, terribly concerned that the 1994 World Cup could be a disaster.
Eight World Cups Page 10
