Eloy, a fast, skilled little winger, ran down the right to create Butragueño’s first goal. With two minutes left, Butragueño was brought down in the box once again, this time as he took on Morten Olsen, and this time he himself scored from the penalty spot. No one had done as much in World Cup finals since Eusebio, against the North Koreans, in 1966.
So to the quarter-finals, the first of which pitted France against Brazil in Guadalajara in a memorable game, blemished only by the fact that it was shamefully resolved on penalties.
This too was a match which probably turned on a single incident: a missed penalty 17 minutes from the end. Missed, of all people, by little Zico, of the usually unforgiving spot kick. That would have made it 2–1 to Brazil, who had looked, till France equalised, as though they were going to come through in a canter. Up to that moment, moving with beautiful economy and grace, the Brazilians seemed always to have it in their power to raise their game at will, and prevail.
Dr Socrates, strolling about the field in samba rhythm, was never hurried, always inventive, occasionally breaking into a brisk trot. On the quarter-hour, receiving from the mobile Careca, Socrates struck a shot which Joel Bats, France’s brave but inconsistent goalkeeper, could only beat out. Socrates returned the compliment, and Bats had to plunge desperately at Careca’s feet.
France’s defence, suspect in the air, none too certain on the ground, were having far more trouble than the craven Italians ever gave them. Three minutes later, they were penetrated. Muller, the quick mulatto winger, an outstanding talent but an eternal maverick, nonchalantly combined with Junior. Careca put Junior’s ball past Bats. Later, leaving Bossis for dead, he enabled Muller to shoot against the base of the post.
One-way traffic; but it wouldn’t last. A few minutes from half-time, a French team lucky still to be in the game suddenly drew level. Amoros, a dynamic attacking full-back, gave the ball to little Alain Giresse. On it went to Dominique Rocheteau, who crossed from the right. The ball took a deflection to the far post and reached Platini. Quite marginal till then, he had no trouble in scoring. So the teams went in at 1–1.
That goal, coming as it did at such a crucial psychological moment, brought France emphatically back into the game and took a good deal of the virtue out of Brazil. By the end of ordinary time, it would have been fair to say that neither team deserved to lose.
Bats had his adventures. Twice in the second half he blocked shots from the incisive Junior. He would save headers from Zico, Socrates and, in extra time, Socrates again. For good measure, he got his hand to a powerful drive by Alemao. And it was Bats who first conceded and then saved Zico’s penalty. When Branco, Brazil’s attacking leftback, dashed into the box after a swift exchange with Zico, Bats brought him down.
Zico, master of the dead-ball kick, decided to take the penalty with his right foot. It wasn’t good enough. Bats redeemed himself, hurtling to his left to save.
Extra time came. Somewhat surprisingly, a clearly tiring Socrates was kept in play by Tele Santana. Carlos, in the Brazilian goal, now had plenty to do, as France showed that the Brazilian defence were far from impregnable. He blocked resiliently when Tigana came through on a superb exchange with Rocheteau. He thwarted Bossis, shooting after a sustained run out of defence. He was lucky, near the end of extra time, when Bellone, chasing Platini’s pass, was clean through, though possibly offside. The winger, however, though plainly fouled by Carlos on the edge of the box, failed to benefit from a dubious ‘advantage’ played by the referee.
So, deplorably, to penalties. Two years’ hard work by both teams would now be decided by an irrelevant lottery. Santana had cause to regret keeping Socrates on when the doctor missed the first penalty for Brazil. Stopyra scored for France, Alemao for Brazil, and Zico, this time, converted his kick. Bellone, in off post and keeper, and Branco scored in turn, then it came to Platini. Another dead-ball expert; and another failure, on the day. He shot over the bar! Perhaps his readiness to leave the field early against Italy, just as a tempting free kick had been awarded to France on the edge of the box, became explicable.
Bats to the rescue. He flew gloriously across his goal to save the kick from Julio Cesar, the Brazilian centre-back; and Luis Fernandez put Brazil out of their misery. Sad that either team had to go out, especially thus.
Shadows of the Falklands War hung over the ensuing game at the Azteca between England and Argentina, though the Argentine players, out at the luxurious sports club where they were in training, were detached and composed. The tall, elegant Jorge Valdano easily parried barbed questions by Latin American reporters. Journalists, he said, had a habit of befouling sporting issues. Argentina didn’t need the issue of the islands to motivate them. Reaching the quarter-finals and playing against a team with one of the finest traditions in the game was enough.
The England players, one assured him, felt the same. ‘A ellos conviene,’ he answered, drily—‘It suits them to do so.’ The reporters roared.
Decent, honest José-Luis Brown said, ‘We all had cousins, fathers, nephews in the Falklands, and some of them didn’t come back. Lamentable things, but we shan’t be thinking of them.’ England, he believed, were a team that let you play, that gave a surprising amount of room to the Paraguayan attackers, Romerito and Cabañas. He expected ‘a very beautiful game’.
And Maradona? ‘You’ve just got to play him the way you see it on the day,’ said Terry Butcher, who, on the day, would be one of the players Maradona danced round for his amazing second goal. ‘You can’t possibly say do this, do that, because he can improvise, he can get out of a hole. No matter how many people are around him, he can somehow come out with the ball. You can try to crowd him out, but that might leave other sectors weak. They’ve got other class players.’
The bearded Batista, who had wandered the midfield to such effect, was confident that Argentina could dominate that area.
England weren’t as comfortably ensconced as the Argentines, though the Americanised hotel where they were now quartered was a great improvement on the hovel they’d been put in when they arrived in Mexico City. Evidently the Football Association had had scant belief in the team’s chances of reaching the Second Round. There was no air-conditioning in the first hotel, which stood by a motorway. So, for that matter, did the second, which lay under a flight path for good, or bad, measure.
Bobby Robson, still gloomily defending England’s performance, even in the earlier games, disputing a foreign journalist’s claim that they had ‘started slowly’, said ‘I’ve got 24 hours to devise a way to stop Maradona. It won’t be easy. Other teams have already tried everything. They’ve assigned one man to mark him, they’ve closed down space, they’ve let him go while attempting to cut off his service. To no avail … Let’s just say that without Maradona, Argentina would have no chance of winning the World Cup. That’s how great he is.’
At least it was a more cheerful Robson than a year earlier in Mexico City, when he’d told the English Press, ‘You people provide the pressure. If you people didn’t exist, my job would be twice as easy and twice as pleasurable.’
Only now did Argentina deploy the players and the formation which would become so famous and familiar. With Garre suspended, Olarticoechea, previously a substitute, took up the wide role on the left, and stayed there. Pasculli, who had both scored and missed against Uruguay, dropped out. Enrique came into the central midfield to mark Glenn Hoddle; Ruggeri and Cuciuffo close-marked Beardsley and Lineker. Brown played sweeper, behind them. England’s attack struggled through the first half to make any kind of impact. The match, surprisingly, had been allotted to an inexperienced Tunisian referee, Ali Ben Naceur, who, in the event, would prove as badly out of his depth as had his Syrian predecessor in the England v. Paraguay game.
England didn’t close-mark Maradona, who did relatively little damage before half-time. But then, England had just one promising moment, when the Argentine keeper, Neri Pumpido, slipped as he challenged Beardsley for a through pass. Beardsley, ho
wever, could only hit the side netting.
Just five minutes after half-time we saw what one might call the obverse side of Maradona, Buenos Aires urchin incarnate. If there was an urchin effrontery about his marvellous sorties, his effortless ridiculing of opponents who tried to stop him, his flicks and touches, so there was about what happened now.
Maradona bored his way into the heart of the English defence, but lost the ball. Valdano couldn’t retain it either, and Steve Hodge, in a moment of fatal insouciance, hooked it over his head, meaning it for Shilton. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, Shilton would doubtless have got it. This was the hundredth, and this was Maradona. Up he went with Shilton, up went his hand, into the net went the ball. The linesman did not object. The referee gave a goal—the worst scored against England since Silvio Piola punched one over his shoulder in Milan in 1939. But at least that wasn’t a World Cup match, and at least England eventually equalised.
Later, brazen and shameless, Maradona was all mock innocence, talking about ‘the hand of God’. For England, it was rather the hand of the devil. Four minutes later, Maradona would score again, a goal to bring the house down and to treasure. But an Italian journalist, later that day, said to me, ‘England were still in a state of shock, like a man who’s just had his wallet stolen.’ Apt enough, for Maradona’s first goal was an act of theft.
The second was astounding, a goal so unusual, almost romantic, that it might have been scored by some schoolboy hero, or some remote Corinthian, from the days when dribbling was the vogue. It hardly belonged to so apparently rational and rationalised an era as ours, to a period in football when the dribbler seemed almost as extinct as the pterodactyl. And if the English defenders were, indeed, still in a state of shock, Maradona would do very much the same again in his country’s next game, against Belgium.
Getting the ball towards the right, far away from goal, Maradona began hurtling through the England defence. A body swerve left Stevens helpless, another feint had Butcher—well might he say that Maradona was irrepressible—careening off in the wrong direction. Fenwick, who’d later elbow him, was negotiated with ease. Finally, as a fourth defender converged on him, Maradona casually beat Shilton. What could he do for an encore? We’d have the answer in the semi-final.
After 65 minutes, Bobby Robson, seeing that Trevor Steven and Steve Hodge were getting nowhere down the wings, brought on the two-footed if erratic Chris Waddle, and took off Peter Reid, who’d had trouble with his ankle. Waddle was not yet the all-around, sophisticated player he’d later become with Marseille; he’d not convinced in the early games, but it was a valid risk.
After 74 minutes, John Barnes came on for Trevor Steven; and the recovery truly began. Barnes was, and remained, a tantalising enigma, a black player of enormous natural talent, son of the Jamaican military attaché in England, who’d been spotted by a Watford fan as a teenager, playing park football.
He had power, pace, control, a swerve, a fine shot. In Rio, two years earlier, he had scored a stupendous solo goal, then made a second for Mark Hateley, to give England victory over Brazil. Since then, he had been disappointingly inconsistent, though there were those who blamed Bobby Robson for demanding, allegedly, that he stay too close to his own full-back.
No such instructions restrained him now. From the first, he ran superbly at and past the Argentine defence. Giusti, on the right flank, was no true full-back, and couldn’t cope with a true winger, least of all one of such talents. Ten minutes from time, five after he’d come on, Barnes roared past Giusti, delivered a perfect centre, and Lineker headed it into the goal. Three minutes from the end, Barnes did it again. Once more, Lineker moved in on the cross, but just as it seemed he must score again, must have the equaliser, it transpired that Lineker himself was in the net, the ball had gone by him. Tapia, Argentina’s own substitute, meanwhile struck a post.
Afterwards, in the Stygian gloom of a bar in their hotel, England’s players spoke gloomily of their defeat, of the punched goal and the inadequacy of the Tunisian referee. Shilton pointed out wryly that when a free kick was chipped to Barnes, he’d have had an excellent chance, had the ball not hit the referee, who had bizarrely stationed himself on the end of the Argentine wall! ‘He said, “Sorry, sorry”,’ remarked Steve Hodge. ‘Too late!’
So England went home with a genuine hard-luck story, though had Maradona not scored his ‘hand of God’ goal and had the English team remained unchanged, it’s hard to imagine them scoring. Lineker’s six goals, meanwhile, would make him the tournament’s top scorer, and Barcelona beckoned.
West Germany were through; they’d beaten Mexico in Monterrey, but only on penalties. The Mexicans, who’d grown as the tournament went on, held them to a 0–0 draw, and went down only on penalty kicks. Thick grass, heat and humidity played their dire part again. Not for nothing had Zibi Boniek derided the quality of football played in the Monterrey group, advising spectators to stay at home and watch its games on television. True, it was all relative. As Gary Lineker remarked drily of the bad Azteca pitch, ‘It didn’t seem to affect Maradona.’
Toni Schumacher, the villain of Seville four years earlier, the terror of the training camp before the 1986 World Cup began, was unbeatable in the West German goal. The West Germans played a dourly cautious game, which Franz Beckenbauer tried to excuse, unconvincingly, on the grounds that they were away from home, in front of a partisan crowd. More significantly, Berthold was sent off after 65 minutes.
But with Hugo Sanchez ineffectual, Tomas Boy forced to go off after a tackle by Andy Brehme, playing in midfield, after only half an hour, Mexico were no real threat. Aguirre, who had forced a good save from Schumacher late in the game, was sent off after 99 minutes by the weak Colombian referee, Palacio. When it eventually came to penalties, only Negrete could score for Mexico. Quirarte and Servin both had their kicks saved by Schumacher, who’d now renew acquaintance with Patrick Battiston, the player he could have killed in Seville.
Belgium and Spain drew too, in Puebla. The Belgians, whose Frenchand Flemish-speaking layers seemed to have found a modus vivendi after reported early squabbles, went ahead through the dominating Ceulemans after 34 minutes, though Renquin’s abject miskick a quarter of an hour earlier should have given Julio Salinas a goal.
Thereafter, Belgium’s tall, lanky, confident defenders gave even Butragueño scant scope. Belgium’s goal came against the run of the play, but was admirably made and taken. A left-wing cross by the persistent Vercauteren, a diving header by an unmarked Ceulemans, and the Belgians led. Curiously enough, Ceulemans, seven minutes after halftime, spurned the chance to sew up the game for his team.
Nico Claesen broke away—something the Belgians did so well—and found Ceulemans, once more left alone, some 12 yards out. Commendably but fatally unselfish, Ceulemans turned the ball on to Veyt, who missed by a fraction.
This spurred the Spaniards into a long period of pressure. With only six minutes left, Victor pulled a free kick back to the substitute, Señor, who drove in a tremendous first-time shot from a good 30 yards. It took such a shot to beat Jean-Marie Pfaff, in marvellous form in the Belgian goal.
Two weary teams went on to extra time; and penalties. Pfaff came into his own again. As each Spanish kick was taken, he did his best to gain the upper hand, and appeared to succeed. Eloy’s second Spanish penalty was saved dramatically by Pfaff, leaping to his right. So Leo Van der Elst, a Belgian substitute, was able to qualify his team by driving in their fifth penalty.
Now for Argentina, and Maradona. Alas for the Belgians, they were no more successful in coping with him than England had been. There was to be no repetition of the opening game of the 1982 World Cup in Barcelona, when Belgium’s defenders, playing a game of Pass the Parcel, handed Maradona on to one another, effectively subdued him and so, surprisingly, won the game. In the immortal if apocryphal words of Samuel Goldwyn, we had all passed a lot of water since those days.
The Belgians survived the first half in the hot Azteca; you could
not put it any higher than that. Their attack was as impotent as England’s had been until the arrival of Barnes. Their massed defence watched anxiously when, at the start, the Argentines confidently and casually played ‘keep ball’. Jorge Burruchaga, in midfield, had clearly found new confidence and authority, a splendid foil to Maradona. Jorge Valdano was equally self-assured up front. But a greasy pitch as much as the many Belgian defenders kept Argentina out. When Valdano did get the ball into the net, he had clearly used his arm; and this time, Argentina found no indulgent referee.
Just now and again, Belgium showed signs of life, and initiative. Enzo Scifo, the Belgian-born Sicilian who’d done disappointingly little thus far in his team’s midfield, had flashes of class. Jan Ceulemans, predictably, was not over-awed. But half-time came without a goal. It was clearly time for Maradona to do something.
And he did. Two things, in fact: two marvellous goals, which even the resilient Jean-Marie Pfaff could do nothing about. Six minutes into the second half, Enrique and Burrachaga combined on the right. As the ball came across, Maradona glided into the penalty area, bisecting two defenders, and beat Pfaff with the outside of his remarkable left foot.
That goal was good enough. The one that followed, a dozen minutes later, was extraordinary, a solo of sublime inspiration; and no one had, metaphorically, robbed the Belgian defence of its wallet. He did not run as far as he had done against England, but this made his goal only the more remarkable. There was so little space, around the edge of the box, as he swerved, dashed and dummied by four bemused defenders in turn, finally to shoot past Pfaff.
Belatedly, Guy Thys gambled, taking off his sweeper, Renquin, and putting on a winger in Philippe Desmet, but Desmet proved no John Barnes. Indeed, Argentina could well have scored a third, Maradona shooting just wide, then giving a simple chance to Valdano, who blazed high over the top. Belgium, perhaps, had lived beyond their means, exceeded all their hopes, made a virtue out of necessity by replacing injured players with youngsters.
The Story of the World Cup Page 35
