Hungary, Bulgaria and Argentina were the other teams in the Rancagua group, where England were favoured. Their own critics, however, feared they might again distil the familiar, bitter-sweet essence of mediocrity for which they were known in World Cups; and the opening game would bear out this pessimism.
Hungary, though they had just lost to Italy b, were in better plight than in 1958. They had beaten England two years before in Budapest, thanks to the prowess of Florian Albert, a fluent young centre-forward whose skills evoked the earlier Hidegkuti, and who combined beautifully with the lean Gorocs while Tichy was still there to fire his rightfooted shells. Gyula Grosics alone survived from the great team of the 1950s. There was a tall, supple, blond, linking right-half in Erno Solymosi, a formidable double pillar in defence in Sipos and Meszoly, and an insidious right-winger in dark little Karoliy Sandor who played, like Kurt Hamrin, with his socks around his ankles.
The Argentinians had a new young manager in Juan Carlos Lorenzo, but were still playing with the traditional roving centre-half; this time the fair-haired Sacchi. He, with the strong, blond, attacking left-back, Silvio Marzolini, would give the team much of its propulsion. José Sanfilippo, their free-scoring inside-left, had tried to drop out after a period of poor form. Lorenzo had him medically and psychiatrically examined, got highly positive reports—and picked him.
The Bulgarians, built around the CDNA (Sofia) Army team, had beaten France in a play-off, yet seemed to have little to offer apart from the clever left wing of the experienced Ivan Kolev and the young Yakimov. Kolev, with his speed and ball skills, had now moved to the flank.
The Santiago group:
Italy, Chile, West Germany and Switzerland
Italy, playing in Santiago, had arrived in their customary state of chaos, warned by Herrera that it was always a bad thing to fall into the group which included the host country. At once flamboyant and dictatorial, hooded and extrovert, a coiner of slogans and of money, a ruthless manipulator and a superb preparer of players, Herrera had become the best paid, most controversial manager in the world, though the World Cup would elude him.
By now, catenaccio had Italian football in its clammy grip, and bright young players who began with all the traditional joy in ball play and invention soon had it bred out of them when they reached the stony reality of Serie a, the First Division.
To qualify, Italy had to negotiate the low hurdle of Israel; yet at one point in the game in Tel Aviv they found themselves two down. They recovered to win 4–2, thanks partly to the accomplished left-footed finishing of the Veronese, Mario Corso of Inter. By the time the World Cup was due, however, Corso was dropped from the chosen twenty-two. It chanced that shortly before the party flew off he played a leading part in Inter’s victory at San Siro over the Czech World Cup team.
Chilean hostility to the Italians had been aroused by the old policy of oriundi. José Altafini, lately Italy’s chief goal-scorer, had in 1958’s World Cup played centre-forward for Brazil. Humberto Maschio and the immensely talented little inside-left, Omar Sivori of the rolled-down socks, limpid control and deadly left foot, would have played for Argentina in the 1958 World Cup had Italian clubs not swooped on them in 1957. No policy could be more perfectly calculated to offend the South Americans in general, and the Argentinians, playing only ninety kilometres away in Rancagua, in particular.
As though this, and the presence of Italian club scouts hanging round the South American training camps, were not enough, two Italian journalists sent home disparaging articles about Chile which raised local hostility to a crescendo. One had, at all events, to sympathise with the poor Italian (or putatively Italian) footballers, who would be obliged so painfully to bear the brunt of what had been written.
If there were oriundi in the team, there was also an authentic Italian star in Gianni Rivera, one of the most precocious and gifted footballers produced since Meazza. He was still only eighteen, yet already he had been capped against Belgium in their last international, won in Brussels. Already he had had two seasons as strategist of the Milan attack. He was a dark, grave, faunlike figure who, playing in the Olympic football team at the age of sixteen, had already been talking like a man of thirty. His technique was flawless; despite a fragile physique, he struck a ball beautifully, and his passing was wonderfully imaginative.
West Germany were also in this group, bringing with them such doughty warriors as Uwe Seeler, Horst Szymaniak, Hans Schaefer and Karl-Heinz Schnellinger. They had qualified without hardship against Greece and Northern Ireland and, under the cunning leadership of Sepp Herberger in his last World Cup, had the tactical expertise, the physical hardness, to worry anyone.
Switzerland, the fourth team in the group, had accounted for Sweden in a play-off in Berlin, but were little fancied.
Of the Chileans themselves not a great deal was known, though they had lately thrashed and drawn with Hungary, and lost narrowly to Russia in Santiago. They were under the sophisticated managership of Fernando Riera, a debonair, good-looking man who had played football in France, they used a 4-2-4 formation, and were bound to be galvanised by an impassioned crowd.
The Arica group: Uruguay, Russia, Yugoslavia, Colombia
Finally, in Group I, up in remote Arica, there were three giants and a probable pygmy. The giants were Uruguay, twice Cup winners; Russia, who had beaten them during their splendid November tour of South America; and Yugoslavia. The pygmy was Colombia, who had come down from high altitudes after unexpectedly putting out Peru. There were Yachine, Sekularac, Gonçalves.
The Opening Games
In their opening game, Chile showed they would need to be reckoned with by beating Switzerland 3–1 in Santiago before a delighted 65,000 crowd. The mis-en-scène was glorious—bright sun, a soaring, snowy mountain. The President of Chile spoke, Sir Stanley Rous spoke and the President of the Chilean Federation spoke. After this came what seemed a brisk anticlimax when, in only seven minutes, a banal error by the Chilean defence allowed Wuthrich to score from over twenty-five yards. The Swiss verrou was working wonderfully.
Chile, with the tall, strong left-half Eladio Rojas and the energetic inside-right Toro giving them power in midfield, took half an hour to get into their stride. Their equaliser came at the most delicately telling moment—a minute before half-time, Leonel Sanchez, the rapid outsideleft and son of a professional boxer—there would be reason to remember this—converting Landa’s centre.
In the first ten minutes of the second half, Chile grasped their psychological advantage, overrunning the Swiss defence. Ramirez gave them the lead. Leonel Sanchez, tackling Grobety, beating man after man, then shooting home from the twenty-five yards, got the third.
In the same group the following day, Italy and West Germany walked round and round one another like two cautious boxers, under a suitably leaden sky. There were no goals. Italy played, as expected, with the tough Torino half-back Ferrini as ‘false’ outside-right; a decision which, in those still relatively innocent days, had roused much displeasure in their Press. Salvadore was sweeper; the inside forwards were Rivera, Altafini and Sivori. Germany, too, played catenaccio, with Schnellinger as sweeper. The two stoppers, Erhardt, a forbidding force in Sweden, and Willy Schulz, tackled implacably, and Seeler once struck the bar, but there was little variation of pace. Italy, matching greater power with greater skill, held their own, till the game degenerated into a kind of tank battle; a few of their movements were beautifully conceived and carried out. Their morale seemed to equal their skill, their possibilities seemed great; but for the Chilean match, they would make six silly changes, and their hopes would go out of the window.
In Rancagua, Argentina began by beating Bulgaria 1–0 through Facundo’s early goal in a harsh, dull game, while Hungary beat England 2–1 the day after. The Argentinians, far from backward in physical contact, themselves cut an impressive figure when similarly treated. The gesture of hurt incomprehension, the slow, concertina-crumpling to the ground, the final, corpse-like prostration, w
ould have touched a heart of stone.
England’s prosaic attack found Hungary’s packed defence an insoluble puzzle. No English player could match the splendidly supple Albert and Solymosi, and it was a glorious individual goal by Albert which won the game, eighteen minutes from time. One of Tichy’s long-range cannon balls had given Hungary the lead on the quarterhour, and shown up Springett’s costly weakness; Ron Flowers had equalised on the hour from a penalty given away by Meszoly’s handling. So England went dispiritedly up the hill to Coya. ‘You want us to lose,’ Haynes reproached a journalist.
In Viña’s little jewel of a seaside stadium, Brazil were given a surprisingly hard time by a brave Mexican team which lost four or five good chances to score. Brazil, aware that several of their team were bearing the burden of the years, had already pulled Zagalo deeper, in a 4–3–3 formation, and Zagalo it was, from the brilliant Pelé’s cross, who headed the first goal.
Pelé, in splendid form, scored the other goal against Mexico—both came in the second half—after beating four defenders and then Carbajal, with a prodigious shot.
The Czechs then beat Spain 1–0 with a goal scored by their right-winger Stibranyi ten minutes from time; a brisk piece of opportunism when the injured Reija failed either to control a ball or to reach Santamaria (Uruguay’s 1954 stopper) with his pass. That the Czechs were by then in a position to win was thanks to the way their defence, especially the impressive Schroiff, had withstood Spain’s early pressure. Finally the ponderous Martinez had vented his frustration by kicking Schroiff in the stomach; which simply moved the stronger Czechs to punish their opponents with a series of mighty tackles. Schroiff continued, undaunted, to perform small miracles, and at last Spain exposed themselves to the counter-thrust which brought Stibranyi’s goal. Czechoslovakia, with Masopust and the tall, lean, jog-trotting Kvasniak so skilful in midfield, had announced their candidature.
In far-off Arica, strange things were happening. Little Colombia, opening the ball, took the lead against Uruguay from a penalty and succumbed, 2–1, only a quarter of an hour from the finish. It took a characteristically clever run by little, dark Cubilla, the Uruguayan outside-right, and a thumping shot by Sasia to beat Sanchez, Colombia’s fine goalkeeper, after half-time.
The next day a Russian team, including such heroes of 1958 as Yachine, Voronin, Ivanov, Netto and two lively wingers from Torpedo in Metreveli and Meshki, beat Yugoslavia 2–0 in a grim game. The Yugoslavs committed themselves furiously to the conflict, Mujic going so far as to break Dubinski’s leg and to be sent home by his team in consequence. For all this, it was a fine, technically pleasing match; the only one in which the celebrated Yachine would justify his immense reputation.
Ponedelnik, Russia’s muscular new centre-forward, was involved in both goals. After fifty-three minutes he struck a thundering free kick against the bar, and Ivanov beat Soskic, Yugoslavia’s fine goalkeeper, to the rebound. Four minutes from the end Ponedelnik himself scored the second. He would later complain that his team’s atmosphere was too cold, too impersonal; that at one crucial stage he and his roommate had lain awake, side by side in their beds, far into the night, unable to speak a word to one another.
In the second round of matches Germany, in Santiago, beat Switzerland 2–1 in a tedious game which was spoiled when Szymaniak’s brutal tackle broke a leg of the Swiss forward, Norbert Eschmann, after fourteen minutes. In the circumstances, the Swiss did well to hold the score to 2–1 and to have the last word, the last goal, themselves, when Schneiter scored fifteen minutes from the end.
The game was played in the deep shadow of what had gone on the day before in Chile’s ghastly game against Italy; a game which produced two expulsions, a broken nose and a welter of violence. The ground, as we have seen, had been abundantly prepared by those two inflammatory articles, while the question of the oriundi, the recent accusations of drug-taking among Italian clubs, had made things worse.
For the Italian players, as their own correspondents wrote, were far too easily provoked by the Chileans, who were from the first busily spitting in their faces. The referee himself, tall Ken Aston, was accused by the Italians of being ‘hostile and provocative’. He in turn, limping through the rest of the World Cup, hors de combat with a damaged Achilles tendon, insisted that the match was ‘uncontrollable’. What is beyond dispute is that from this day Aston’s career in refereeing went from strength to strength; to membership of FIFA’S Referees’ Committee, to the surveillance of World Cup referees in 1966 and 1970.
Certainly he was ill-served by his linesmen who, when Leonel Sanchez, behind his back, broke Maschio’s nose with a left hook that was televised around the world, elected to behave like the three wise monkeys. Thus Sanchez stayed on the field while Ferrini, for hacking down Landa in the seventh minute, and David, for a retaliatory kick at Sanchez’s head, went off. Reduced to nine men, Italy still resisted till fifteen minutes from time, when Ramirez headed in Leonel Sanchez’s free kick, Toro adding the second, in the last minute. It had been altogether a dreadful day for football.
The group concluded with a 2–0 win by a much more sophisticated, economical German team over Chile, and an easy but meaningless 3–0 victory by Italy against Switzerland. So Chile and Germany passed into the quarter finals.
In Rancagua, England found form at last, beating Argentina by a clear 3–1; their first World Cup victory since 1954 outside the qualifying competition.
Much was achieved with the replacement of the disappointing Hitchens at centre-forward by Middlesbrough’s Alan Peacock, a tall, straight-backed, guardsman-like figure even to the short haircut, who won many balls in the air despite ill usage from Navarro. Though it was his first international, he showed great aplomb, provoking the first goal after seventeen minutes. When Charlton, in ebullient form, centred from the left, Peacock skilfully headed the ball on, Navarro desperately handled, and Flowers scored his second penalty of the series.
Argentina were clever but unincisive, but served by Sacchi and the adventurous Marzolini; but Moore and Flowers tackled briskly, Jimmy Armfield was impeccable, Bryan Douglas far more lively than he had been against Hungary. Charlton, with a crisp, low, right-footed shot, made it 2–0 before half-time.
Then Hungary, in remarkable form, whipped Bulgaria 6–1, with a goal by Albert in the first minute and four goals by the twelfth. Albert and the greyhound Gorocs worked their fluent one-twos, their clever changes of pace, as easily as they had done in the 1960 Olympiad. Deprived of Iliev and Diev, Bulgaria could do little but let the wave wash over them. Hungary’s was an iridescent performance, Solymosi, Albert and Gorocs bestriding the field as in the good old days of Bozsik, Hidegkuti and Puskas. Albert scored three; the result was 6–1.
In the final game, Lajos Baroti, the shrewd Hungarian coach, told his team not to exert themselves; a point was sufficient, and it was what they got, drawing 0–0 with Argentina. Albert and Sandor were rested. Gorocs, alas, tore a muscle in the eighteenth minute, while Meszoly, the blond stopper, played so majestically that the watching England players clapped him off the field.
England themselves, next day, gave a wretchedly mediocre performance against Bulgaria, drawing 0–0 in their turn, and lucky indeed to survive when Kolev beat Armfield on the line, to expose their goal with a cross nobody converted. England, second in the group, now had the daunting task of playing Brazil in Viña del Mar; while Hungary were much favoured to beat the Czechs in Rancagua.
Brazil had cataclysmically lost Pelé, victim of a torn thigh muscle, in their 0–0 draw with Czechoslovakia. After twenty-five minutes, taking a pass by Garrincha, he shot powerfully from twenty-five yards against the foot of the post; then hobbled off the field and out of the 1962 World Cup.
Brazil, with Pelé useless on the wing, drew all but Vavà and Garrincha back in defence; the Czechs gladly settled for a stalemate. No longer threatened by Brazil’s explosive change of pace, they went their precise, skilful, somewhat monotonous way to a draw.
Braz
il now pulled out of the hat the twenty-four-year-old Amarildo, Botafogo’s inside-left; no Pelé, certainly, but a lithe, quick enterprising player with a nose for a goal, a cheerful and emotional child of nature, brown-skinned, curly-haired, effervescent. Succeeding Pelé was clearly less of a burden than an adventure.
The final qualifying match, against Spain, proved a tough one. A goal by Peirò in the last minute had given Spain meagre victory against surprising Mexico, so well coached by the Argentinian, Scopelli. Carbajal, in his fourth World Cup, had kept an impeccable goal, and now Spain needed at least a draw, probably a win, to qualify. Herrera gambled by dropping his two famous forwards, del Sol and Suarez, his goalkeeper Carmelo, and his centre-half Santamaria. Now Puskas would lead an attack which had three Atletico Madrid players, and the flying Paco Gento at outside-left. This was the game, one had heard, in which Didì planned his revenge on di Stefano for the humiliations of Madrid; but di Stefano was still not playing. Greatest all-round forward of his generation, inexhaustibly versatile, he never took part in the finals of a World Cup.
The ‘new’ Spain played with immense commitment and no little flair. Indeed, the match was possibly the best of the whole tournament, and it took the sudden, soaring flight of Garrincha to save and win it for Brazil.
Herrera, high priest of catenaccio with Inter, now used it with Spain, Rodri playing sweeper, the other defenders marking man to man. For an hour these tactics, given force and bite by the team’s intense commitment, had Brazil at full stretch, and in the thirty-fourth minute a short, swift dribble by Puskas, a clever pass, made a goal for the energetic Adelardo.
The Story of the World Cup Page 13
