Hungary
The Hungarians, moral victors and actual losers in 1954, were a parody of their great team of the early 1950s. Comes the Revolution; in this case, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Honved, the army team into which, willy nilly, the authorities had stuffed almost all their best footballers, was touring abroad; and the authorities were properly hoist with their own petard. The incomparable, irreplaceable inside-forwards, Kocsis and Puskas, exiled themselves and eventually, like Kubala before them, found gainful employment in Spanish football. The excellent winger, Zoltan Czibor, expatriated himself, too, and though Josef Bozsik and Nandor Hidegkuti duly went dutifully home, they were fading veterans by now.
Moreover, it was alleged that there had been a descent by police on the Hungarian players at Budapest airport to confiscate money which they were taking out of the country to buy goods. It may well have been true, for the players seemed very much down in the mouth. Gustav Sebes, who led them in the 1954 World Cup, remarked, ‘I have never seen a Hungarian team in such a deplorable physical condition and nervous state.’ The myth of Hungarian superiority, their supremacy in tactics, men and training, went to the winds, though the comfortable journalese soubriquet of Magic Magyars would be with us for a few wistful years to come.
France
The French arrived nineteen days before the competition started at Kopparberg under the inspiring and benevolent guidance of Monsieur Paul Nicolas, once an international himself, with their former splendid goalkeeper Alex Thépot among the selectors and Albert Batteux an excellent manager assisted by Jean Snella. No one thought France a serious candidate, which if anything helped them by removing pressure. They had not won a game that year, though the release of little Raymond Kopa by Real Madrid was sure to improve them. Banished to the wing at Real by the dominating Alfredo Di Stefano—who could not, even with Kubala’s help, enable Spain to eliminate Scotland—Kopa flourished anew when back in the middle and on the conductor’s podium. A superbly balanced player with exquisite control and a splendid eye for the through pass, his partnership with Just Fontaine would be one of the features of the tournament, bringing Fontaine a record thirteen goals.
Fontaine, born in Morocco, had come to Sweden quite reconciled to being a reserve, and even said, ‘I’m centre-forward only till Kopa comes’. When René Bliard kicked the ground in training, hurt his ankle and went home—singing Fontaine’s praises—his choice was assured. Dark, sturdily built, a fast and determined runner with excellent acceleration and a fine shot, Fontaine was also extremely intelligent in his responses to Kopa’s splendid prompting.
West Germany
Since their victory in Berne little had gone right for the West Germans. Almost at once their team had been smitten with an epidemic of jaundice, which led to wide but unsubstantiated charges that they had been on drugs. No fewer than seven of the 1954 team had fallen by the wayside: Turek, Kohlmeyer, Liebrich, Mai, Otmar Walter and Morloch. But Fritz Walter was still there to be the chief strategist at the age of thirty-seven, and Hans Schaefer would resume his dialogue with Rahn on the wings. Rahn, the enormous right-winger, bombardier of the last World Cup Final, had been drinking heavily since then, but he was rehabilitated, morally and physically, in time to play admirably in Sweden. Moreover, there were two exciting additions to the team in the strong young left-half, Horst Szymaniak, and Uwe Seeler, a stalwart, highly mobile and combative centre-forward from Hamburg, who had been capped initially in 1954 at the age of eighteen and would become the very symbol of German football for years to follow.
Argentina
Argentina played in West Germany’s group, but their team had been sadly plundered by the Italians. Only a year before, its young ‘Angels with Dirty Faces’, its Trio de la Muerte of Maschio, Angelillo and Sivori, had won it a spectacular South American title in Lima. In swooped the marauding Italian clubs to sign all of them, and the accomplished inside-left Ernesto Grillo for good measure.
It was only by rehabilitating the famous forty-year-old inside-left Angel Labruna of River Plate, that Argentina had managed to scrape through the qualifying rounds, in which they had the shame of losing to obscure Bolivia. Another celebrated veteran in the giant, perambulating centre-half, Nestor Rossi, was in the side, but the omens were poor.
Brazil
Not that Brazil had had an easy passage to Sweden, even if they were the favourites by the time they got there. Their last, all-important qualifying match—against Peru in Rio—had been won only by 1–0, thanks to one of Didì’s celebrated foglia secca (falling leaf) free kicks; which by 1970’s World Cup would be known as banana shots. Yet Didì was very nearly not brought to Sweden, and his place was in doubt until the opening game. First, he was criticised for being, at the age of thirty, too old! Second, he had married a white woman; third, he was supposedly not trying hard enough. ‘It would be funny if they left me out,’ he remarked with irony, ‘after I had paid for their ticket.’ He had the remote, brooding aspect of a great jazz musician.
Vicente Feola, a São Paulo man of Salernitan descent, brought to Sweden the best, most thoroughly organised Brazilian side ever to visit Europe. His right-hand man was the large and imperturbable doctor Hilton Gosling, who had covered hundreds of miles in Sweden before he found the ideal place for a training camp among the trees of Hind as outside Gothenburg. The Russians too, had taken up residence there, and sometimes, when they were not fishing, would come lumbering out of the woods like bears to watch the Brazilians joyfully train, with the cacophony of a male voice choir gone berserk.
The Brazilians not only had Gosling, whom the players treated as father or father-confessor, they also had, with memories of Berne in mind, their own psychologist, an amiable eclectic from São Paulo, grey-sweatered, often unshaven, whose precise methods were a little hard to comprehend. He did not, he said, believe in haranguing the players in groups, yet neither did he believe in talking to them individually, since this made their problem bigger. He believed in getting them to draw pictures of a man. The more cerebral players drew sophisticated pictures, the instinctive players drew virtual matchstick-men. The two made good wing partnerships. Forwards must project their aggression, defenders must contain it; a theory which must have taken heavy punishment if he chanced to see such defenders as the terrible Erhardt of West Germany.
Feola, meanwhile, shook his heavy head and said, ‘How can he know the ambience?’ He was also critical of his nineteen-year-old, blond centre-forward José Altafini, known then by the nickname of Mazzola for his resemblance to the old captain of Italy and father of Sandrino. Altafini had just been transferred for a large fee to Milan—the team, indeed, had played two impressive matches in Italy en route to Sweden. ‘He’s nineteen,’ complained Feola. ‘All the publicity about his transfer to Milan; how can it help but go to his head? He doesn’t fit in with the team.’
Feola’s preference and ultimate choice went to the Vasco da Gama centre-forward, Vavà, a sturdy, Aztec figure, while there were two other imponderables. The seventeen-year-old Pelé, already described as the finest player ever produced by Brazil, was injured, while Feola was reluctant to choose the forward the psychologist regarded as the most unsophisticated of all, the outside-right Garrincha.
Garrincha, ‘the Little Bird’, was all the more dangerous and unpredictable because he had been crippled since childhood; he was a footballer of superb natural gifts, astonishing speed and swerve, but utterly inconsistent. The safe and early choice was Flamengo’s Joel—with another Flamengo winger in Zagalo on the left, and their club mate Dida at inside-right, beside Vavà.
The 4-2-4 system, adopted instead of the third back game which was foreign to them, solved the old Brazilian problem of pivotal covering in defence by simply putting the left-half alongside the centre-half; just as Hungary had done with Zakarias. Two players foraged and passed in midfield, while two wingers and two central strikers stayed in attack. If you had the extraordinary talent at your command that the Brazilians had, it was a marvellous
system. If not, it would present as many difficulties as it solved, especially in midfield.
England
England, who were expected to qualify from Gothenburg with Brazil, had compounded the problems created by Munich with their odd choice. They brought only twenty players, though entitled to twenty-two (the Czechs brought only eighteen) and these twenty included neither Stanley Matthews nor Nat Lofthouse, both successes of the 1954 World Cup and both still in imposing form. Matthews, indeed, had run ragged the usually impeccable Brazilian left-back Nilton Santos at Wembley in 1956—at the age of forty-one—while Lofthouse had just scored both Bolton’s goals in the Cup Final.
The loss of Edwards, Byrne and Taylor was thus exacerbated. Any hope of overcoming it was severely compromised by the fact that Fulham and Blackburn Rovers had just been engaged in a fierce, exhausting struggle to emerge from the Second Division which had left its mark on Johnny Haynes, the young Londoner whose superb crossfield and through passing made him the key man in attack, and the talented little right-winger, Blackburn’s Bryan Douglas. Ronnie Clayton, Blackburn’s captain and right-half, gained a place only in the group’s play-off.
Group Matches
Worse still was to come, for in the opening game in Gothenburg’s new Ullevi Stadium where the roof, with its wire suspensions, suggested a monster puppeteer, Tom Finney was hurt. It did not prevent his inspiring the English revival in the last half hour or equalising from a penalty six minutes from time when Douglas was tripped, but his loss was a dreadful blow. Beyond question he was the one forward of world class England possessed, and there was no one now to compensate for the staleness of Haynes and Douglas, the banal crudities of the huge centre-forward Derek Kevan, the patent inadequacy of his successor Alan A’Court—and Walter Winterbottom’s astonishing reluctance to make changes.
It was Salnikov, not Haynes, who was the arch strategist of this interesting match, one in which Russia played much clever football, even without Netto. Voinov and Tsarev, the robust wing-halves, made up for his absence, Krishevski dominated the centre, and it was as well that England’s cool new goalkeeper, Colin McDonald of Burnley, was the equal even of Yachine.
After thirteen minutes, however, he could only block a shot by the vivacious left-winger Ilyin, and Simonian, who usually lay deep, was there to score. England’s short, square, unimaginative passing was making no progress against a Russian defence whose methods often transgressed the rules.
Ten minutes into the second half the second Russian goal arrived. The English defence, in these pre-overlapping days, stood bemused as Kessarev, the right-back, advanced, crossed beautifully; and Ivanov scored. It was Finney’s mastery of Kessarev, however, which began to turn the tide. After sixty-five minutes Billy Wright, an indomitable centre-half and a fine captain, booted a free kick high into the goalmouth. Kevan’s fair head rose above the defence, even above Yachine, and headed down into goal.
Brazil, meanwhile, had had no trouble with ponderous Austria at Boras’ little ground, Mazzola scoring twice, and Nilton Santos strolling through from left-back to get the third. Their critics, however, were dissatisfied, in particularly accusing Dida, who had done some good running off the ball, of lack of courage. Dida promptly disappeared from the side.
Elsewhere there were various alarms and excursions, though Sweden had opened the ball, unscathed, on the afternoon of June 8 with a 3–0 win in Stockholm over indifferent Mexico. Two of their goals were scored by a tall, talented young centre-forward, Agne Simonsson, while thirty-six-year-old Liedholm, at right-half for the moment, got the other from a penalty.
In Group I, the astonishing Northern Irish beat Czechoslovakia by Cush’s solitary goal at Halmstad, while the holders, West Germany, showed up Argentina’s deficiencies at Malmö, defeating them 3–1. Poor Fritz Walter, who would end the tournament in bed nursing his injuries, was horribly fouled by Rossi towards the end; a foul which many thought deserved to be punished with expulsion.
Not even a goal scored by Argentina’s slim and dangerous little outside-right Corbatta in two minutes, cutting past the muscular Juskowiak, could give them the impetus they needed. The Germans were superior in teamwork and stamina, the Argentinians too much inclined to play off the cuff. So Rahn, half an hour after the goal, equalised with a sudden ferocious left-footer from the inside-left position when served by Walter, and five minutes from half-time Seeler, giving and receiving from Schaefer, lunged forward to make it 2–1. Even an injury to Eckel which had him limping on the left wing for most of the second half could not tip the balance, and ten minutes from the end Rahn bent his shot past the veteran Carrizo with the outside of the foot. 3–1.
The Irish used the young Derek Dougan at centre-forward. The first choice, Billy Simpson of Rangers, had pulled a muscle after a mere five minutes’ training in Sweden. Dougan had an awkward first half, but when Billy Bingham was pushed into the middle in the second he made good use of his fine acceleration. Harry Gregg allayed all fears with his performance in goal, Bertie Peacock had an exceptional game at left-half and Wilbur Cush headed the only goal from the rugged Peter McParland’s centre. The lack of Jackie Blanchflower had a seriously negative effect on the team, obliging his brother to play a far more defensive game alongside their makeshift centre-half, the full-back Willie Cunningham, but the defence held out well under vigorous pressure in the closing phases.
France got away to a spectacular beginning, annihilating the Paraguayans 7–3 at Nörrkoping, five of their goals coming in the second half; a rampant Fontaine got three. Paraguay actually scored first through Amarilla, and were level, 2–2, at half-time. Thereafter the superb combination of the French inside-forwards, Kopa, Fontaine and the incisive Roger Piantoni, was simply too much for them.
Scotland, at Vasteras, did a great deal better against Yugoslavia than had feeble England in Belgrade, holding them to a 1–1 draw in a strangely schizophrenic match.
Yugoslavia, far superior in technique, began the game as if they were going to treat Scotland as they had England. With the blond, elegant Milos Milutinovic in splendid form at centre-forward and abetted by a new star, the dark little gipsy inside-left Dragoslav Sekularac, and the admirable Boskov at wing-half, they assailed the Scottish goal. At first, wrote one commentator, the Scots seemed like juniors getting a lesson. The right-winger Petakovic gave Tommy Younger, the big, blond Scots goalkeeper, no hope; from Milutinovic’s pass Eric Caldow kicked off the line; Younger made a fine save, and somehow no more goals resulted.
In the second half Scotland’s immense determination and robust challenge ground down the more fragile Slavs. Petakovic had scarcely hit a post when Turnbull crossed, Beara—in goal—and Krstic confused one another, and Murray headed the equaliser. Though Veselinovic also hit the post, Yugoslavia had lost their command.
In Group I Wales held Hungary to a draw at Sandviken. In Gothenburg, England would now play Brazil for the first time in a World Cup. Bill Nicholson, Tottenham Hotspur coach, having watched the Brazilians, evolved a defensive scheme whereby Don Howe, the tall, cool West Bromwich right-back, would play as a second centre-half beside Billy Wright; Eddie Clamp, the big, dark Wolves half-back, as an attacking full-back; while another Wolves man, the studious Bill Slater, would play ‘tight’ on Didì.
With Pelé and Garrincha still missing from Brazil’s attack, though Vavà now lined up beside Mazzola, the scheme worked remarkably well, Brazil dominated the first half, Didì and the attacking right-half, the bald Dino, dominating midfield, but Vavà hit the bar, Clamp kicked off the line, and Colin McDonald made two spectacular saves from headers by Mazzola.
In the second half, the pattern changed and England might even have won. If some had cast doubt on the English penalty against Russia, claiming that the foul took place outside the box, then England were most unfortunate not to get one when Bellini hauled Kevan down as he thundered after one of Haynes’s rare through passes. But by and large, however, the England attack was as grey as it had been against Russia.
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br /> In Boras, goals by Ilyin and Valentin Ivanov gave Russia a 2–0 win over Austria and put England’s qualification in doubt.
The Irish, paying for bad intelligence on the Argentinian team, lost 3–1 to it at Halmstad. The sheer skill of the Argentinians overcame an Irish team which lacked bite in the middle, Coyle’s unexpected replacement of Dougan bringing no improvement. This above all was a game in which Danny Blanchflower’s subtle talents, his always imaginative use of the ball, were needed not in defence but in midfield, where Rossi and the splendid veteran Labruna dominated.
West Germany at Hälsingborg brought Hans Schaefer in from the wing to inside-left, and it was his controversial goal, scored on the hour, which turned a game they seemed to be losing to the lively Czechs. Two goals down, they made it 1–2 when Schaefer charged the Czech goalkeeper Dolejsi over his line with the ball, and the goal was surprisingly allowed to stand. Helmut Rahn—again—equalised.
An unexpected result was the defeat of France 3–2 by Yugoslavia at Vasteras, despite two more goals for the prolific Just Fontaine. A lack of authority in defence, despite the composed presence at centre-half of the accomplished Bob Jonquet, an inability to get the best out of two excellent wingers in Wisnieski and Jean Vincent, a penalty refused when Fontaine was fouled; all these played a part in France’s defeat. So did the opportunism of Veselinovic, who got two of the Yugoslav goals. The winner came three minutes from time when France were besieging Beara’s goal. Then Yugoslavia broke away, Roger Marche—France’s bald, experienced left-back—erred, and Veselinovic scored his second.
The Story of the World Cup Page 10
