Soccer in Sun and Shadow
Page 7
Pedernera
“The penalty kick I blocked is going down in the history of Leticia,” a young Argentine wrote in a letter from Colombia. His name was Ernesto Guevara and he was not yet “Che.” In 1952 he was bumming around Latin America. On the banks of the Amazon, in Leticia, he coached a soccer team. Guevara called his traveling buddy “Pedernerita.” He had no better way of praising him.
Adolfo Pedernera had been the fulcrum of River’s “Machine.” This one-man orchestra played every position, from one end of the forward line to the other. From the back he would create plays, thread the ball through the eye of a needle, change the pace, launch surprise breakaways; up front he would blow goalkeepers away.
The urge to play tickled him all over. He never wanted matches to end. When night fell, stadium employees would try in vain to get him to stop practicing. They wanted to pull him away from soccer but they couldn’t: the game refused to him let go.
Goal by Severino
It was 1943. Boca Juniors was playing against River Plate’s “Machine” in Argentina’s soccer classic.
Boca was down by a goal when the referee whistled a foul at the edge of the River area. Sosa took the free kick. Rather than shoot on goal, he served up a center pass looking for Severino Varela’s head. The ball came down way ahead of Varela. River’s rear guard had an easy play, Severino was nowhere near it. But the veteran striker took off and flew through the air, clawing past several defenders until he connected with a devastating beret-blow that vanquished the goalkeeper.
His fans called him the “phantom beret” because he would fly uninvited into the goalmouth. Severino had quite a few years of experience and plenty of recognition with the Uruguayan club Peñarol by the time he went to Buenos Aires wearing the undefeated look of a mischievous child and a white beret perched on his skull.
With Boca he sparkled. Still, every Sunday at nightfall after the match, Severino would take the boat back to Montevideo, to his neighborhood, his friends, and his job at the factory.
Bombs
While war tormented the world, Rio de Janeiro’s dailies announced a London blitz on the playing field of the club Bangu. In the middle of 1943, a match was to be played against São Cristovão, and Bangu’s fans planned to send four thousand fireworks aloft, the largest bombardment in the history of soccer.
When the Bangu players took the field and the gunpowder thunder and lightning began, São Cristovão’s manager locked his players in the dressing room and stuck cotton in their ears. As long as the fireworks lasted, and they lasted a long time, the dressing room floor shook, the walls shook, and the players shook too, all of them huddled with their heads in their hands, teeth clenched, eyes screwed shut, convinced that the World War had come home. Those who weren’t epileptic must have had malaria, the way they were shaking when they stepped onto the field. The sky was black with smoke. Bangu creamed them.
A short while later, there was to be a match between the Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo teams. Once again, war clouds threatened and the dailies predicted another Pearl Harbor, a siege of Leningrad, and other cataclysms. The Paulistas knew that the loudest bang ever heard awaited them in Rio. Then the São Paulo manager had a brainwave: instead of hiding in the dressing room, his players would take the field at the same time as the Cariocas. That way instead of scaring them, the bombardment would be a greeting.
And that is what happened, only São Paulo lost anyway, 6–1.
The Man Who Turned Iron into Wind
Eduardo Chillida played goal for Real Sociedad in the Basque city of San Sebastián. Tall and skinny, he had a style of blocking shots that was his very own, and both Barcelona and Real Madrid had their eyes on him. The experts were predicting the boy would succeed Zamora.
But destiny had other plans. In 1943 a rival striker, appropriately named Sañudo, which means “enraged,” smashed Chillida’s meniscus and everything else. After five operations on his knee, Chillida bid goodbye to soccer and became a sculptor.
Thus was born one of the greatest artists of the century. Chillida works with materials so heavy they sink into the earth, but his powerful hands toss iron and reinforced concrete into the air, where they discover other spaces and create new dimensions on the fly. He used to do the same thing in the goal with his body.
Contact Therapy
Enrique Pichon-Rivière spent his entire life piercing the mysteries of human sadness and helping to crack open our cages of silence.
In soccer he found an effective ally. Back in the 1940s, Pichon-Rivière organized a team among his patients at the insane asylum. These locos were unbeatable on the playing fields of the Argentine littoral, and playing was their best therapy.
“Team strategy is my priority,” said the psychiatrist, who was also the team’s manager and top scorer.
Half a century later, we urban beings are all more or less crazy, even though due to space limitations nearly all of us live outside the asylum. Evicted by cars, cornered by violence, condemned to isolation, we live packed in ever closer to one another and feel ever more alone, with ever fewer meeting places and ever less time to meet.
In soccer, as in everything else, consumers are far more numerous than creators. Asphalt covers the empty lots where people used to pick up a match, and work devours our leisure time. Most people don’t play, they just watch others play on television or from stands that lie ever farther from the field. Like Carnival, soccer has become a mass spectator sport. But just like Carnival spectators who start dancing in the streets, in soccer there are always a few admiring fans who kick the ball every so often out of sheer joy. And not only children. For better or for worse, though the fields are as far away as can be, friends from the neighborhood or workmates from the factory, the office, or the faculty still get together to play for fun until they collapse exhausted. And then winners and losers go off together to drink and smoke and share a good meal, pleasures denied the professional athlete.
Sometimes women take part too and score their own goals, though in general the macho tradition keeps them exiled from these fiestas of communication.
Goal by Martino
It was 1946. The Uruguayan club Nacional was beating San Lorenzo from Argentina, so they closed up their defensive lines to meet the threat from René Pontoni and Rinaldo Martino, players who were known for making the ball speak and who had the unfortunate habit of scoring.
Martino got to the edge of Nacional’s area. There he retained the ball and caressed it as if he had all the time in the world. Suddenly Pontoni crossed like lightning toward the right corner. Martino paused, raised his head, looked at him. Then the Nacional defenders all jumped on Pontoni, and while the greyhounds pursued the rabbit Martino entered the box like a parrot into his cage, eluded the remaining fullback, shot, and scored.
The goal was Martino’s but it also belonged to Pontoni, who knew how to confound the enemy.
Goal by Heleno
It was 1947. Botafogo against Flamengo in Rio de Janeiro. Botafogo striker Heleno de Freitas scored a chest goal.
Heleno had his back to the net. The ball flew down from above. He trapped it with his chest and whipped around without letting it fall. With his back arched and the ball still resting on his chest, he surveyed the scene. Between him and the goal stood a multitude. There were more people in Flamengo’s area than in all Brazil. If the ball hit the ground he was lost. So Heleno started walking and calmly crossed the enemy lines with his body curved back and the ball on his chest. No one could knock it off him now without committing a foul, and he was in the goal area. When Heleno reached the goalmouth, he straightened up. The ball slid to his feet and he scored.
Heleno de Freitas was clearly a Gypsy. He had Rudolph Valentino’s face and the temper of a mad dog. On the playing field, he sparkled.
One night at the casino he lost all his money. Another night, who knows where, he lost all his desire to live. And on his last night, delirious in a hospice, he died.
The 1950 World Cup
Pedro Albizu Campos, who had fought long and hard for Puerto Rico’s independence, was being sentenced to seventy-nine years in prison in the United States. An informer had squealed on Salvatore Giuliano, the legendary bandit of southern Italy, and he lay dying, riddled by police bullets. In China, Mao’s government was taking its first steps by outlawing polygamy and the sale of children. Wrapped in the flag of the United Nations, U.S. troops were invading the Korean Peninsula with guns blazing, while soccer players were landing in Rio de Janeiro to vie for the fourth Rimet Cup after the long hiatus of the World War.
Taking part in the Brazilian tournament in 1950 were seven countries from the Americas and six from a Europe recently risen from the ashes. FIFA would not let Germany play. For the first time, England joined in the World Cup. Until then, the English had considered such skirmishes to be beneath them. The British side was defeated by the United States, believe it or not, and the goal that put the Americans over the top was the work not of George Washington but of an immigrant from Haiti, a black center forward named Larry Gaetjens.
Brazil and Uruguay waged the final in Maracanã, the home team’s new stadium, the largest in the world. Brazil was a sure winner, the final was going to be a party. Before the match began, the Brazilian players, who had crushed all comers with goal after goal, were given gold watches with FOR THE WORLD CHAMPIONS engraved on the back. The front pages of the papers had been printed up in advance, the immense carnival float that would lead the victory parade was all set to go, half a million T-shirts with slogans celebrating the inevitable victory had already been sold.
When the Brazilian Friaça scored the first goal, the thunder of two hundred thousand voices and at least as many firecrackers shook the monumental stadium. But then Schiaffino rammed in the equalizer and a shot from the wing by Ghiggia gave Uruguay the championship with a 2–1 victory. When Ghiggia scored, the silence in Maracanã was deafening, the most raucous silence in the history of soccer, and Ary Barroso, the musician and composer of “Acuarela do Brasil,” who was providing commentary on the match for the entire country, swore off broadcasting for good.
After the final whistle, Brazilian commentators called the defeat “the worst tragedy in Brazil’s history.” Jules Rimet wandered about the field like a lost soul, hugging the cup that bore his name: “I found myself alone with the cup in my arms and not knowing what to do. I finally found Uruguay’s captain, Obdulio Varela, and I gave it to him practically without letting anyone else see. I held out my hand without saying a word.”
In his pocket, Rimet had a speech he had written to congratulate the victorious Brazilians.
Uruguay had won cleanly: they committed eleven fouls to the Brazilians’ twenty-one.
Third place went to Sweden, fourth to Spain. Brazil’s Ademir led the list of scorers with nine goals, followed by the Uruguayan Schiaffino and the Spaniard Zarra with five apiece.
Obdulio
I was a little kid and a soccer fan, and like every other Uruguayan I was glued to the radio in 1950, listening to the World Cup final. When the voice of Carlos Solé broadcast the awful news of Brazil’s first goal, my heart sank to the floor. Then I turned to my most powerful friend. I promised God a heap of sacrifices if He would appear in Maracanã and turn the match around.
I never managed to remember my many promises, so I couldn’t keep them. Besides, although Uruguay’s victory before the largest crowd ever assembled for a soccer match was certainly a miracle, it was the work of a flesh-and-blood mortal named Obdulio Varela. Obdulio cooled the match down when the steamroller came at us, and then he carried the entire team on his shoulders. By sheer courage he fought against all the odds.
At the end of the day, reporters surrounded the hero. Obdulio didn’t stick out his chest or boast about being the best. “It was one of those things,” he murmured, shaking his head. And when they wanted to take his picture, he turned his back.
He spent that night drinking beer in one Rio bar after another, his arm around the defeated fans. The Brazilians cried. No one recognized him. The next day he dodged the crowd that had turned out to meet him at the Montevideo airport, where an enormous billboard had his name in lights. In the midst of all the euphoria, he slipped away, dressed like Humphrey Bogart in a raincoat with the lapels turned up and a fedora pulled down to his nose.
The top brass of Uruguayan soccer rewarded themselves with gold medals. They gave the players silver medals and some cash. Obdulio’s prize money was enough to buy a 1931 Ford. It was stolen a week later.
Barbosa
When it was time to select the best goalkeeper of the 1950 World Cup, journalists voted unanimously for the Brazilian Moacyr Barbosa. Without a doubt, Barbosa was the best keeper in the country, a man with springs in his legs whose calm self-assurance filled the entire team with confidence. He continued to be the best until he retired years later when he was in his forties. Over such a long career, who knows how many goals Barbosa blocked, and he never hurt a single striker.
But in that final match in 1950, the Uruguayan attacker Ghiggia surprised him with a bull’s-eye from the right wing. Barbosa, who had come forward, leaped back and his fingers grazed the ball as he fell. He got up convinced that he had knocked the shot away and found the ball in the back of the net. That was the goal that left Maracanã Stadium dumbstruck and crowned Uruguay as champions.
Years went by and Barbosa was never forgiven. In 1993, during the qualifiers for the World Cup in the United States, he wanted to wish the Brazilian players well. He went to visit them at their training camp and those in charge would not let him in. By then he was dependent on the generosity of his sister-in-law, living in her home with nothing but a miserable pension. Barbosa commented: “In Brazil, the most you can get for any crime is thirty years. For forty-three years I’ve been paying for a crime I did not commit.”
Goal by Zarra
It was at the World Cup in 1950. Spain was all over England, which only managed to shoot from afar.
Gaínza, on the wing, gobbled up the left side of the field, left half the defense sprawled on the ground, and lobbed a cross toward the English goal. Ramsey the fullback was turned around, his back to the ball, off balance, yet he managed to reach it. Then Zarra stampeded in and rammed it home off the left post.
Telmo Zarra, leading scorer in six Spanish championships, had inherited the adulation formerly bestowed on Manolete, the bullfighter. He played on three legs, the third being his devastating head. His best-known goals were headers. In 1950 Zarra did not score that winning goal with his head, but he certainly used it to celebrate loudly, while squeezing the little medal of the Immaculate Virgin that hung on his chest.
Top Spanish soccer official Armando Muñoz Calero, who had taken part in the Nazi invasion of Russia, sent a radio message to Generalissimo Franco: “Excellency: we have vanquished the perfidious Albion.” Thus Spain finally got even for the defeat of the Invincible Armada in the waters of the English Channel in 1588.
Muñoz Calero dedicated the match “to the greatest Caudillo in the world.” He didn’t dedicate the next one to anyone. Spain faced Brazil and had to eat six goals.
Goal by Zizinho
Again, it was at the World Cup in 1950. In the match against Yugoslavia, Brazil’s midfielder Zizinho scored a double goal.
This lord of soccer grace scored a clean goal and the referee disallowed it unfairly. So Zizinho repeated it step by step. He entered the box at the same spot, dribbled around the same Yugoslav defender with the same delicacy, slipping by on the left as before, and he drove the ball in at exactly the same angle
. Then he kicked the ball angrily several times against the net.
The referee understood that Zizinho was capable of repeating that goal ten more times, and he had no choice but to allow it.
The Fun Lovers
Julio Pérez, one of the Uruguayan champions from 1950, used to cheer me up when I was a child. They called him “Pataloca,” which means “Crazy Leg,” because he could take himself apart in the air and leave his adversaries rubbing their eyes. They couldn’t believe that his legs could fly one way while the rest of his body headed off in precisely the opposite direction. After eluding several opponents with such bodily taunts, he would back up and repeat the maneuver. In the stands we loved to cheer this party animal of the playing field, whose antics unleashed our laughter along with anything else that happened to be tied down.
Several years later I had the good luck to see the Brazilian Garrincha play, and he too had fun cracking jokes with his legs. Sometimes, when he was at the point of climax, he would back up, just to prolong the pleasure.
The 1954 World Cup
Gelsomina and Zampanò sprouted from Fellini’s magic wand and were unhurriedly clowning around in La Strada, while Fangio was surging ahead to become Formula One world champion for the second time. Jonas Salk was concocting a vaccine against polio. In the Pacific the first hydrogen bomb was going off. In Vietnam General Giap was knocking out the French army in the decisive battle of Dien Bien Phu. In Algeria, another French colony, the war of independence was just beginning.
General Stroessner was being elected president of Paraguay in a close contest against himself. In Brazil the noose tied by businessmen and officers, money and guns, was tightening around President Getuio Vargas and soon he would burst his heart with a bullet. U.S. planes were bombing Guatemala with the blessing of the OAS, and an army created by that northern power was invading, killing and winning. While in Switzerland the national anthems of sixteen countries were being sung to inaugurate the fifth World Cup, in Guatemala the victors were singing “The Star Spangled Banner” and celebrating the fall of President Arbenz, whose Marxist-Leninist ideology had been laid bare when he touched the lands of the United Fruit Company.