Sweden had found their way, albeit briefly, into the second round, despite the humiliation of being held to a goalless draw by little Trinidad and Tobago in Dortmund, in their opening group game. Chiefly thanks to phenomenal goalkeeping by the 37-year-old Shaka Hislop, who initially was not supposed to be playing at all. He stepped in only because the first choice, Kevin Jack, was obliged to drop out at the last moment. The Swedes, despite the presence of such as Zlatan Ibrahimovic´ and Henrik Larsson—destined carelessly to miss a penalty against the Germans—found Hislop unbeatable. On shots and headers alike, high up, low down, point blank, he was equal to everything; and Trinidad, down to ten men for almost all the second half, once even grazed the Swedish bar. It was a privilege to be present.
Talking of Swedes, the hapless England manager Sven-Göran Eriksson emerged from the tournament—inevitably at the usual quarter-final stage—a much abused and excoriated figure. Yet though it is beyond doubt that he made an inept job of things, that he unpardonably picked the untried seventeen-year-old Theo Walcott—then hadn’t the courage of his convictions even to play him—that he sacrificed the barely recovered Wayne Rooney, who ultimately, even predictably, went up in flames, a salient question should be asked: were, in that old phrase, the guilty men essentially those who inexplicably kept him in office, rewarding disloyalty with a massive increase in salary, accepting the evasive responses with which he had tried to deny his misbegotten office ‘romance’?
Admittedly, having known him and respected his achievements in Italy, when Eriksson was appointed I was among the relatively few who applauded. Applause indeed was general when England, who had seemed hopelessly devoid of World Cup hopes, went to Munich to thrash Germany 5–1. But it proved to be a false dawn. They struggled at home in the subsequent qualifiers against Finland and would have lost to Greece, had Teddy Sheringham not won a phantom free kick, from which David Beckham equalised. Neither in the subsequent World Cup finals in the Far East, nor in the European finals in Portugal two years later, did Eriksson show any real initiative in the quarter-finals.
To compound such inadequacy, he was known to have talked once to Manchester United and twice to Chelsea about leaving his England post to manage them. His second, surreptitious colloquy with Chelsea should surely have earned him the sack. Instead, incomprehensibly, he was given another million pounds. The egregious chief executive of the Football Association was then Mark Palios, who, having enjoyed what one might loosely call the favours of the secretary Faria Alam, tried to persuade the News of the World—through his chief press officer Colin Gibson—to keep him out of the frame at Eriksson’s expense. He failed, but when he then left the FA it was reportedly—quite inexplicably again—with £650,000 of supposed compensation.
During the World Cup tournament, Eriksson insisted that there was no kind of metaphorical ‘marriage’ between himself and David Beckham. It was hardly convincing. Eriksson, in fact, had long seemed obsessed with Beckham, at the expense of the efficiency of the team as a whole. Beckham beyond doubt had a remarkable right foot, a kind of howitzer, capable of delivering insidious free kicks, corners and crosses, though less effective with penalties. Yet it is arguable that Beckham is essentially a one-trick pony, devoid of the true winger’s qualities of pace, ball control, the ability to swerve outside the full back, reach the goal line and pull back the most dangerous pass in football into the middle. Alternatively, to cut in and go directly for goal. Things which Shaun Wright-Phillips, who began so excitingly against Ukraine but didn’t make the cut, and Aaron Lennon, who did, and scintillated in his two World Cup appearances as a substitute, unquestionably can.
In the event, England came to rely to an alarming extent on Beckham’s free kicks and crosses—one of which, helped by a goalkeeping fumble, produced the meagre victory against Ecuador. This however to the exclusion of what a more natural winger could achieve in open play.
In England’s largely mediocre World Cup qualifying group, both in Cardiff against Wales and in Belfast against Northern Ireland—humiliating victors—Eriksson tried to deploy Beckham in midfield as a kind of quarter-back, thus utterly distorting the tactics of his team.
Having picked Walcott, who was still to make his debut for Arsenal, Eriksson thus left behind several far more experienced strikers, one of whom could well have been used. This in turn made the Swede desperately rush Wayne Rooney into the fray, soon after he had injured his metatarsal, exacerbating this self-serving stratagem—which had infuriated Rooney’s club manager, Alex Ferguson—by using Rooney in a lone role up front, one which he didn’t fulfil even when fully match fit, and now surely made intolerable through the physical pressure it involved.
This is not to excuse Rooney’s violent assault on Portugal’s Carvalho which had him sent off, but it may go some way towards explaining it. Eriksson, however, could hardly be blamed for the ineptitude of England’s aerial defence, goalkeeper Paul Robinson very much included, in the second half of the match against Sweden, which seemed well won at half time with a 1–0 lead, Joe Cole’s gloriously volleyed goal from the left being among the most spectacular in the tournament—to be ranked with the superb volley from the right with which Maxi Rodríguez won Argentina’s game against Mexico, and Thiery Henry’s against Brazil, the product of Zidane’s massive free kick from the far left.
Yet until their dogged 10-man resistance against Portugal in the quarterfinal, England had not produced a single decent performance. Their opening match versus Paraguay was won—yes, from a Beckham free kick—when the opposing centre-back Carlos Gamarra put through his own goal on three minutes. In the second round, things could well have gone amiss against Ecuador when John Terry’s absurdly clumsy header let through Carlos Tenorio, resourcefully thwarted at the last second by Ashley Cole’s tackle, the ball hitting the bar. There were fine goals from Steven Gerrard, but Frank Lampard was strangely ineffectual. In contrast, the much criticised Owen Hargreaves did vigorously justify Eriksson’s faith in him with his driving performances.
It was a tournament with four Dutch managers. Marco Van Basten, a hero in his playing days, had the national team; Dick Advocaat, former national team coach in 2004, had South Korea, so reluctant to use striker Ahn; Guus Hiddink had Australia; Leo Beenhakker had Trinidad and Tobago. The Dutch went out to Portugal after a repugnant affair which I was unlucky enough to attend. A game in which a feeble Russian referee, Valentin Ivanov, flourished four red cards and a multiplicity of yellows; in which the illustrious Portuguese veteran Luis Figo should have been expelled for head butting but wasn’t, while the Portugal playmaker, Brazilian-born Deco, was sent off but probably should not have been.
Certainly it might have made a difference had Ivanov expelled the ruthless Dutch right-back Khalid Boulahrouz early on for a shocking foul on Cristiano Ronaldo, which he would repeat later in the game before belatedly being expelled. Not for nothing was he named The Cannibal. But, as we know, referees are notoriously reluctant to flourish red cards so early in a game. It surprised me, and not only me, that Van Basten should not have sent on Ruud Van Nistelrooy at all. True, the Manchester United striker had been in somewhat indifferent form, but Dirk Kuyt, who displaced him, looked, as Dutch journalists themselves believed, a good club player clearly out of his depth. To some extent, the game was redeemed by the splendid goal driven home after skilled ball play by Maniche.
Italy, of course, played under the shadow of the massive corruption scandal chiefly concerning Juventus, so many of whose players were involved in the tournament. There were those who believed that the urge to prove that there was still something good to be said about Italian football stimulated the team. Certainly the abrasive midfielder Gennaro Gattuso came out boldly on the azzurri’s return to Rome to demand a newer, cleaner calcio.
Yet Italy teams continue to show the cloven hoof. Thus, Materazzi may deny that he three times insulted Zidane’s wife and mother as the Frenchman insists, yet he has always, not least in his Everton days, been a ruthless performer,
guilty last season of an appalling foul playing for Inter in a Champions League match. And it was thoroughly crass of him to dedicate the fine goal he headed against the Czechs—his header against France was equally spectacular—to Daniele De Rossi, properly suspended for his vicious elbow in the face of the American Brian McBride.
That day, the Italians couldn’t even beat an American team down to nine men, while they had ten. Materazzi, his fortunes in this tournament mixed indeed, was somewhat controversially sent off against Australia, who themselves couldn’t beat ten Italians. Though the penalty whereby Italy eventually won was itself contentious. When Fabio Grosso fell over Lucas Neill’s prone body, was it a foul?
In a remarkable piece of frankness after the game, Italy’s midfielder, Gennaro Gattuso, declared: ‘It was not a penalty. The referee would never have given it if he had not unfairly sent off Materazzi earlier.’
There is no doubt the Italians had their finest game against Germany when Marcello Lippi, bolder than he would ever be in the Final, after which, of course, he resigned, threw extra strikers and full backs alike into attack. When Grosso scored he was actually in a central striking position, total football indeed, while Alessandro Del Piero, with his well-taken, well-engineered second goal, did much to erase the unhappy memories of the two easy chances he so expensively missed in the European Championship Final against France in Rotterdam in 2000.
What did surprise and perplex was the failure of the Italians to maintain their first-half aerial bombardment against the French, when every high ball that came over the box—mostly from the right and the effective Andrea Pirlo—looked a potential goal, so vulnerable did the French defenders appear, especially the ever erratic keeper Fabien Barthez, controversially preferred by Raymond Domenech to Grégory Coupet. Nor did the Italian full backs overlap with the enthusiasm they had shown against Germany, though the French use of two wingers may have been an inhibiting factor.
One of those was the 23-year-old Franck Ribéry, who came to Germany with just a couple of caps, but proved a marvellous foil to Zidane in the games against Spain and Brazil, justifying perhaps, with his bold, electric runs, Domenech’s decision to leave out an incensed Ludovic Giuly, who had been in such ebullient form for Barcelona.
Though he was comprehensively out-jumped by Materazzi for the Italian equaliser in the Final, this was a tournament in which Patrick Vieira, after an uneasy start, in common with his team, did much to justify his great reputation. He made a fine goal for Ribéry against Spain and scored one himself, once again the old, dominant figure in midfield.
The Japanese were something of a puzzle. Against Australia, they went ahead with a goal which should never have been allowed, the Aussie keeper Mark Schwarzer being palpably fouled while the ball sailed into the net from the right; the referee, rara avis, actually had the grace to apologise afterwards. But just as they had done in their opening 2–2 draw with Belgium in 2002, the Japanese wilted in the closing minutes. Tim Cahill was given far too much space and time to put the Australians ahead, and John Aloisi, you might say, was allowed to go Waltzing Matilda through a flaccid defence to get the third.
It was something of an irony that, when Japan unexpectedly took the lead against Brazil with a cracking goal, the superb through pass which set it up came from Alex, the naturalised Brazilian!
Out of Africa, always something new, wrote the Roman Pliny. There were, indeed, new African teams present in Germany in the shape of Ghana—knocking at the door for decades past—Togo, Angola and the Ivory Coast, but of these only the Ivory Coast, a shade unlucky to lose their opening game in Hamburg to Argentina, made any real impression. Togo and their predicament was almost a paradigm, not merely of sub- Saharan football, but of sub-Saharan life at large.
Togo had performed small miracles by qualifying at all, but things began to fall apart in Egypt at the subsequent African Nations Cup when the lanky Emmanuel Adebayor, scorer of no fewer than 10 goals in the qualifiers, fell out bitterly and badly with the well-liked coach Stephen Keshi. He was replaced in Germany by the German Otto Pfister, long experienced in African soccer, but such was the turmoil in the team that he was in and out of office three times. On the eve of the match against Switzerland in Dortmund, which I saw, the players unsurprisingly threatened to go on strike. It was the old, sub-Saharan story; they’d still not been paid their large bonuses for qualifying. Andreas Herren of FIFA warned them of the disciplinary dangers they faced and play they ultimately did, with complete commitment. Indeed, they should have equalised had they been given a clear first-half penalty when Adebayor was brought down by Patrick Müller. In the event, they were beaten.
I also saw Angola’s strange game against their former colonists, the Portuguese. The match had hardly begun when the veteran Luis Figo, advancing from the left, was able to give Jamba, the big Angolan centre-back, a couple of yards start and still cruise past him to make the easiest of goals for Pauleta. And that was that. Portugal, thus encouraged, could score no more, but squeezed through on a mere 1–0.
FIFA used the tournament for a half-baked, superficial initiative to ‘kick out racism’, whose irrelevance was sharply exposed when Italy played Ukraine in the quarter-finals. When the teams lined up, the respective captains, Fabio Cannavaro of Italy, who had an outstanding competition (bar the error which led to France eventually gaining their penalty kick in the Final), and Andrei Shevchenko, whose tournament was largely disappointing, stood there reading pledges to expel racism from the game. But right at the end of the Ukrainian line stood their manager and former star attacker Oleg Blokhin, poker-faced, as well he might have been. It was only some weeks previously that he had made a venomous, unashamedly racist attack on the use of black footballers in his region. What had FIFA or UEFA done about that? Present at the tournament was another manager, Spain’s Luis Aragonés, guilty of a gross and gratuitous piece of racism when, in an evident but clumsy attempt to motivate one of his players some while before the World Cup, he had referred to Thierry Henry of France as ‘that black shit’. The Spanish Federation fined him, but if UEFA, not to say FIFA, were looking for someone to punish as an example, here surely was a clear candidate.
Aragonés’s Spain team came to the conflict trailing clouds of glory, long unbeaten. They began with panache, annihilating Ukraine 4–0, with a coruscating performance by the twenty-four-year-old striker David Villa, fresh from a splendidly prolific season for Valencia in the Primera Liga, in which he finished behind only Samuel Eto’o of Barça as top scorer. Capped just five times before the tournament, he ran rings around Ukraine’s ponderous defence, scoring a penalty in the first half and another goal in the second, until Raúl eventually replaced him on 55 minutes. The other well-known striker, Fernando Torres, was also in lively form, and scored the fourth goal.
Hopes were high, but the crass optimism of the Madrid sports daily Marca, with its pre-match headline before France were met in Hanover, WE’RE GOING TO SEND ZIDANE INTO RETIREMENT, proved an empty boast. It was principally Zidane, with a glorious performance, who sent Spain out of the Cup, even though they went ahead on 28 minutes with a penalty converted by Villa. In vain did Aragonés try to ring the changes early in the second half, when it grew clear that he had over-egged the pudding. Starting Raúl, Villa and Torres all together simply hadn’t worked. But taking off both Villa and Raúl didn’t work, either. Zidane ruled, finishing with a glorious last flourish of a goal. Spain went out, 3–1.
Condign punishment alone will ‘kick out racism’, whether it be in Spain, where Real Madrid’s Ultras Sur maintain a vindictive presence at the Bernabéu, or in one of those Balkan countries where black players in visiting teams are routinely subjected to abuse. All the bland statements by all the international captains in the world, or World Cup, won’t make the smallest difference, while the Blokhins of the game stand by, unrepentant.
As for the match between Italy and the Ukraine, it was a somewhat different affair than the score, a 3–0 win for Italy, would suggest, and
cast some doubt on the solidity of the Italian defence. Ukraine had reached this stage after a depressingly dull goalless draw in the previous round with the Swiss, when their attack, even with the presence of the much-lauded Shevchenko, had looked ineffectual. Yet here they were against the supposedly far better organised Italians, making chance after chance, forcing from the azzurri keeper, the agile Gianluigi Buffon, save after save. Some four in all, including a double block when he was equal to the shot which followed the initial rebound. In addition, the Ukrainians hit the bar. It was, football being the tantalising game that it will always be, immediately after one of those saves that Italy went straight up the field, forced a corner and took it short, enabling Francesco Totti to make a simple goal for Luca Toni. Curiously enough, not one of those previous shots had been the work of Shevchenko, who did not oblige Buffon to save again, and without great difficulty, until the 86th minute.
The enthusiasm of the German fans rose to a crescendo as the tournament progressed and with it, after so poor a start, their team. But blessedly, the infinite prophecies of doom which had preceded the competition—a rabid invasion by Polish hooligans, violence by neo- Nazis, a risk of death to any black fans who found themselves in areas of the old East Germany—proved wholly groundless.
In the concluding stages of the tournament, immense numbers of German fans who couldn’t get into the stadia congregated in areas with television screens set aside for supporters. There were instances of city centres being so crowded that people could not reach their hotels or use their cars. Far from being the dull anticlimax which third-place matches are, and which an unhappy Scolari claimed this one to be, the German public embraced it as if it were indeed the Final which had been denied them.
The Story of the World Cup Page 52
