by Nick Holt
West Germany remained in low gear for their quarter-final, but their solid defence quashed any resistance from a timid Yugoslavia side who did little to justify some pre-tournament predictions that they would be there at the business end. Rahn’s early goal was enough to see West Germany through to meet the hosts after a pretty dire match. Yugoslavia were disappointing; much was expected after their thrashing of England in Belgrade.
Wales Squad 1958:
GK: Jack Kelsey (Arsenal, 28 years old, 20 caps), Ken Jones (Cardiff City, 22, 0) Graham Vearncombe (Cardiff, 24, 1)
DEF: Stuart Williams (West Bromwich Albion, 27, 11), Mel Hopkins (Tottenham Hotspur, 23, 13), Derrick Sullivan (Cardiff, 23, 9), Mel Charles (Swansea Town, 23, 14), Trevor Edwards (Charlton Athletic, 21, 2), Colin Baker (Cardiff, 23, 0), Vic Crowe (Aston Villa, 26, 0)
MID & WIDE: Dave Bowen (Cpt, Arsenal, 30, 11), Ron Hewitt (Cardiff City, 29, 2), Colin Webster (Manchester United, 25, 1), John Elsworthy (Ipswich Town, 26, 0), Ivor Allchurch (Swansea, 28, 30), Terry Medwin (Tottenham, 25, 14), Len Allchurch (Swansea, 24, 6), Cliff Jones (Swansea, 23, 17)
FWD: John Charles (Juventus, 26, 25), Ken Leek (Leicester City, 22, 0), Roy Vernon (Blackburn Rovers, 21, 7), George Baker (Plymouth Argyle, 24, 0)
Northern Ireland Squad 1958:
GK: Harry Gregg (Manchester United, 28 years old, 10 caps), Norman Uprichard (Portsmouth, 30, 15)
DEF: Willie Cunningham (Leicester City, 28, 16), Alf McMichael (Newcastle United, 30, 29), Dick Keith (Newcastle, 25, 3), Bertie Peacock (Glasgow Celtic, 29, 15), Tommy Casey (Newcastle, 28, 8)
MID & WIDE: Danny Blanchflower (Tottenham Hotspur, 32, 30), Jimmy McIlroy (Burnley, 26, 26), Sammy McCrory (Southend United, 33, 1), Billy Bingham (Sunderland, 26, 28), Peter McParland (Aston Villa, 24, 14), Jackie Scott (Grimsby Town, 24, 0)
FWD: Wilbur Cush (Leeds United, 29, 11), Billy Simpson (Glasgow Rangers, 28, 0), Derek Dougan (Portsmouth, 20, 0), Fay Coyle (Nottingham Forest, 25, 0)
Picked but did not travel:
Roy Rea (GK, Glenavon, 23, 0), Len Graham (DEF, Doncaster Rovers, 23, 13), Tommy Hamill (MF, Linfield, 24, 0), Sammy Chapman (MF, Mansfield Town, 20, 0), Bobby Trainor (MF, Coleraine, 24, 0)
SEMI-FINAL
THIRD-PLACE FINAL
Their semi-final is a game that rankled with German supporters for the next generation. Much more than the final against England in 1966, it stands as a game that they feel was stacked against them from the off. West Germany started as slight favourites, their team quicker and more solid than Sweden, who relied on slowing the pace of the game and maximising the craft and guile of their ageing stars. The Germans enjoyed the better chances in the first half, with Uwe Seeler prominent. Seeler had the beating of the Swedish defenders on either side. First he sprinted past Axbom to drive a stinging shot against Svensson’s palms, then he went past Bergmark on the other side and cut back a looping cross to the edge of the penalty area; Schäfer met it with a beautifully clean half-volley, which rocketed into the top corner. Svensson barely moved. There was a handball in the move that led to Sweden’s opener, but it received more protests in the press box than on the pitch.
The real controversy came in the second half when Hamrin – a little wind-up merchant as well as a fine player – reacted to a late tackle by Juskowiak. The pair tangled but it was the German who was singled out by the Hungarian referee and sent from the field. Moments later Fritz Walter was rendered a limping passenger for much of the second half after a reckless challenge from Parling – no punishment, hence the Germans’ ire. The match was tetchy without ever becoming out-and-out violent.
A wonderful strike from Gunnar Gren gave Sweden the lead with ten minutes remaining, hammering a punched clearance by Herkenrath back into the top corner. With West Germany pressing for an equaliser, Hamrin slalomed through the German defence and cheekily chipped the ball home for a third. The hosts were in the final, but would their stylish wingers be enough against the flair of Brazil? It was unlikely to be 0–0 . . .
WORLD CUP CLASSIC No.3
24 June 1958, Råsunda, Stockholm; 27,100
Referee: Mervyn Griffiths (Wales)
Coaches: Vicente Feola (Brazil) – France had a coaching team
Brazil (3–4–3): Gylmar (Dos Santos Neves) (Corinthians); Nilton De Sordi (São Paulo), Hilderaldo Bellini (Cpt, Vasco de Gama), Nílton Santos (Botafogo); José Ely de Miranda, known as Zito (Santos), Waldir Pereira, known as Didi (Botafogo), Orlando de Carvalho (Vasco de Gama), Mário Zagallo (Flamengo); Manuel dos Santos, known as Garrincha (Botafogo), Edvaldo Neto, known as Vavá (Vasco de Gama), Edson do Nascimento, known as Pelé (Santos)
France (3–3–4): Claude Abbes (St Ètienne); Raymond Kaelbel (Monaco), Bob Jonquet (Cpt, Reims), André Lerond (Lyon); Armande Penverne (Reims), Raymond Kopa (Real Madrid), Jean-Jacques Marcel (Marseille); Maryan Wisnieski (Lens), Just Fontaine, Roger Piantoni, Jean Vincent (all Reims)
The scoreline isn’t a true reflection of a game that was far from one-sided and swung on an injury to French captain Jonquet after a late, heavy tackle from the muscular Vavá. Even with Jonquet France would have struggled to keep Brazil out; with him limping on the wing they were completely at sea defensively – and with goalkeeper Abbes not having his best day, Brazilian goals were inevitable.
They had scored one before the injury when Jonquet had an aberrant moment and passed the ball straight to Garrincha – as Cris Freddi deliciously put it, like “throwing a grenade at a trampoline”. Jonquet chased the little winger and made a good tackle but the ball broke to Didi and the midfielder deftly picked out Vavá, standing where Jonquet should have been; the big man just whacked it and Abbes stood no chance.
France came back strongly and Fontaine’s pace was unsettling the Brazilian defence. He had three decent chances in the first fifteen minutes, once when put through by a clever kick and once from a first-time pass from Wisnieski. He missed those, but in between played a wonderful one-two-three with Kopa, scuttled past Gylmar and shot high and decisively past the last man. It was a finish worthy of Jimmy Greaves or Thierry Henry at their absolute best.
Didi, such a clever player, was the first to exploit Jonquet’s absence, shooting home after thirty-nine minutes when he drifted into the box while the French backs were watching the Brazilian strikers.
The second half was more like the one-sided affair later reports had us believe; the stuffing went out of the French when their goalkeeper dropped a harmless cross at Pelé’s feet; the youngster couldn’t miss – Harry Redknapp’s proverbial missus would have put it away. Pelé added a fourth for Brazil when Vavá made a complete marmalade of a pass, the ball rebounding to Pelé who showed him how it should be done. Pelé’s best was his third, cushioning the ball on his thigh before striking it early when the defender and the goalkeeper thought he would try to beat his man. It was an early sign that the great man had instinctive football intelligence to complement his ability; it can’t have hurt that he had such hard-working, crafty players as Didi and Zagallo around him. There was time for the French to score another classy goal, when Piantoni nutmegged a defender, ran on and hit a terrific shot from the edge of the penalty area.
Brazil had won well, but there were enough questions – and France were the first opponents to ask any – about the Brazilian defence that the final wasn’t a foregone conclusion, for all the inventiveness and technique of their forwards.
Pelé became the youngest player to score a hat-trick in the World Cup Finals, eclipsing Edmund Conen of Germany in 1934. The record has lasted – all five of the youngest players to score a hat-trick played in tournaments no later than 1962. Five days later he became the youngest player to play in the final, another record that still stands.
France – and Fontaine – were among the goals yet again against West Germany in the third-place match. West Germany left out a few of their semi-final team, including the injured Fritz Walter, who had played his final match. Helmut Rahn played and signed off his own personal World Cup history with a
nother great goal, ending a weaving run by thrashing the ball past Abbes, who could only twitch like a marionette as the ball passed him by a few inches.
But this was Fontaine’s game, the German reserves simply had no answer to his pace and the accuracy of Kopa’s through balls. The striker finished with thirteen goals in the tournament, a record that will take some beating, even in the modern competition in which a team plays seven games – Fontaine played only six.
World Cup Heroes No.8
Just Fontaine (1933–)
France
In modern times France has fielded teams replete with players of various ethnicities, but in the 1950s it was much more unusual for European sides to have players from former colonies, first or second generation. In 1958 France had two, Celestin Oliver, an Algerian, and Just Fontaine, born in Marrakech, Morocco to a French father and Spanish mother, and brought up in Casablanca.
Fontaine was an inside-forward in the successful Stade de Reims side in the 1950s; he missed the 1956 European Cup Final but was in the side that lost 2–0 to Real Madrid in 1959, and he scored ten goals en route. Lightning fast and a composed finisher, Fontaine thrived on through balls down the centre of a defence where he was adept at finding space between the full-backs and the centre-half. He was particularly expert at rounding the goalkeeper while retaining full control of the ball – as evidenced by his fabulous goal against Brazil in the semi-final. He made his debut for France in 1953 (scoring a hat-trick against Luxembourg), but never cemented a regular place in the French side until the tournament in Sweden.
Although Fontaine’s great moment was the 1958 World Cup, his scoring record beyond that marks him as a special finisher; thirty goals in twenty-one internationals leaves him with seventeen in fifteen even without the extraordinary scoring streak he enjoyed in Sweden.
The ease with which players such as Fontaine, Pelé, Di Stéfano and, later, Greaves found these channels led more and more sides to use one of their half-backs as not just a deep-lying midfielder but a permanent second centre-back. Is it pushing it a bit to include Fontaine alongside these greats? He retired at twenty-eight after two serious leg injuries – without these he might have achieved much more, and in his one chance to shine on the international stage, he looked world class.
World Cup Heroes No.9
Helmut Rahn (1929–2003)
West Germany
One of the great characters of post-war football. Rahn played his best football for his home-town club, Rot-Weiss Essen (Red & White Essen). He earned a call-up while with the unfashionable Ruhr team but found himself unpopular with the German fans in a team held in contempt by their own press. All that changed a year later.
Rahn wasn’t even picked in the provisional twenty-two for the World Cup, and only got the nod when Herberger heard he was in special form on Essen’s tour of South America. Rahn flew home immediately to join up with the squad and was appointed room-mate to the introspective Fritz Walter. Introspection around Rahn was a challenge; he was a good-natured, light-hearted “hail fellow, well met” type, fond of a smoke and a beer (or two, or ten, or more . . .)
Rahn played well in the otherwise calamitous group match against Hungary and never looked back, scoring twice against the same opponents in the final and doing much to salve the wounds of a conscience-stricken nation.
Four years later Herberger was on the phone again, imploring Rahn, who was drinking heavily and overweight, to get his act together and help out. Rahn responded, and got better and better through the 1958 tournament, dragging West Germany through the quarter-final against Yugoslavia. Only in the semi-final when Sweden doubled up on him, using the abrasive Parling to help the left-back, did Rahn not impress. He finished with ten goals in two World Cup tournaments, most of them at important times in crucial matches – but none more so than the two in The Miracle of Berne.
Rahn left Essen in 1959 and was never the same. A season at Cologne and then three in Enschede in Holland ended with him in prison after causing a motor accident while under the influence – a horrible downside of his over-fondness for beer. He was brought back to play for Meidericher (in Duisburg) in the newly formed Bundesliga in 1963, but the first impression he made wasn’t a good one – sent off for headbutting an opponent.
In 2004, a year after his death, a statue of Rahn was erected in Helmut Rahn Square, just down the road from the stadium in Essen – a fitting tribute, but it’s missing a foaming tankard.
WORLD CUP FINAL No.6
29 June 1958, Rasunda, Stockholm; 49,737
Referee: Maurice Guigue (France)
Coaches: Vicente Feola (Brazil) & George Raynor (Sweden)
Brazil (3–4–3): Gylmar (Corinthians); Djalma Santos (Portuguesa), Hilderaldo Bellini (Cpt, Vasco de Gama), Nílton Santos (Botafogo); Zito (Santos), Didi (Botafogo), Orlando (Vasco de Gama), Mário Zagallo (Flamengo); Garrincha (Botafogo), Vavá (Vasco de Gama), Pelé (Santos)
Sweden (3–2–2–3): Kalle Svensson (Helsingborg); Orvar Bergmark (Örebro), Bengt Gustavsson (Atalanta), Sven Axbom (Norrköping); Reino Börjesson (Norrby), Sigge Parling (Djurgården); Gunnar Gren (Örgryte), Nils Liedholm (Cpt, AC Milan); Kurt Hamrin (Padova), Agne Simonsson (Örgryte), Lennart Skoglund (Inter Milan)
The game was an interesting clash of the European and South American football culture. Sweden were a good side full of technically accomplished players. They had vast experience in defence and midfield and two dangerous wingers in the deceptively languid Hamrin and inconsistent but rapid Skoglund (pronounced Shka-lund). For all their talent Sweden were an old-fashioned side, playing a standard European formation with an excellent centre-half (Gustavsson) between the full-backs and two tough-tackling half-backs prepared to drop in and help – Parling was the Rottweiler, Borjesson the more cultured of the two. All the attacking play stemmed from the veterans Gren and Liedholm at inside-forward. Both could pass and shoot exceptionally well, but opponents could hope to run past them with some ease when in possession. The Germans’ attempt to do this was baulked by the injury to Walter and by George Raynor’s clever deployment of Gren in a deeper role to combat Walter and Schäfer; but Uwe Seeler had shown how vulnerable the defence was against pace and energy.
Brazil were using a more fluid, modern system. Orlando, ostensibly a half-back, rarely ventured beyond the defence but would set up play with sensible, economical distribution; Zito would roam the area in front of the defence and break up the opposition’s attacks. Didi, the playmaker, and Zagallo, a defensively minded left-winger, would bolster the midfield, while Garrincha, the other winger, had licence to play more offensively as Zito would cover his forays. Vavá was an old-fashioned brute-force centre-forward, but alongside him Pelé would come off the defenders to receive the ball and run at them or play in the wingers; he was proving a real handful to pick up for the more conventional sides.
Raynor wanted a good start and the first goal in the hope it would bruise the Brazilians’ morale, which he perceived to be fragile. He got the former, but was misguided in believing the latter; all Liedholm’s opener did was galvanise Brazil and remind them the opposition were not to be taken lightly. It was a good goal, too – two neat sidesteps to take out the retreating defenders and an accurate shot past Gylmar’s right hand into the corner.
The first two Brazilian goals were a carbon copy of each other; Garrincha down the right, too quick for Axbom – hard, low cross – goal for Vavá, sliding in. Half-time came with Brazil 2–1 ahead and completely dominant – a vicious strike from Pelé that streaked across Svensson and hit the post nearly made it 3–1. Didi seemed to be everywhere, slowing down the pace when receiving the ball deep to look for options, then quickening it where the Swedes didn’t like it in their own half. Whenever the ball went wide towards the Swedish wingers, Zito and Zagallo were in position to help Djalma Santos (recalled to negate Skoglund) and his namesake Nílton Santos. When Nílton Santos burst forward to help launch attacks, the disappointing Hamrin was nowhere to be seen.
The se
venteen-year-old Pelé needed only ten minutes of the second half to get his goal and it was a masterpiece of technique and inventiveness. Nílton Santos hit a long cross into the penalty area where Pele was waiting. He had a lot to do. He chested the ball down to eliminate the defender behind him, then nipped it over the covering man, Gustavsson, the best centre-half in the tournament. There was still another man trying to get across so Pelé hit the ball first time past Svensson, low into the corner. A moment of unadulterated genius – the game’s greatest player had announced himself on the biggest stage of all.
With just over twenty minutes to go, Zagallo ended the game as a contest. Sweden dithered as they tried to clear and Zagallo dispossessed the last man and shot past Svensson – unfussy and effective, like everything the under-rated winger did. Brazil took their foot off the pedal and Gren carved open the defence with a slide-rule through ball; Simonsson, who ran his heart out for ninety minutes to help his older colleagues, converted coolly. There was still time for the boy wonder to have the last word. Pelé started the move with a cheeky back-heel to Zagallo; Zagallo simply bided his time while his colleague sauntered into the box, then floated up an enticing cross. Pelé got there first – in mid-air he had the presence of mind to realise the cross was high and that too much power on the ball would take it over the bar. He simply let the ball hit the side of his temple, cushioning it past the already committed goalkeeper.
The old order was blown away – Sweden had a great tournament and it was a fitting last hurrah for their veterans, stupidly ignored for so long by their own FA. But it was Brazil and their adventurous new flexible football that now held sway – a new blueprint had been drawn up, and it was down to European coaches to try to catch up.
