by Nick Holt
Sweden’s coach, George Raynor, flexible and innovative and in demand all over the world, returned to England and dropped hints about being available if required. The FA had its ostrich head so firmly planted in the sand it was oblivious to the notion, and they were stuck with the willing and worthy, but regressive, Winterbottom for another four years.
World Cup Heroes No.10
Didi, born Waldyr Pereira (1928–2001)
Brazil
Didi went to play for Real Madrid in Spain a year after winning the World Cup with Brazil. He was a replacement for Raymond Kopa, the French international who was returning to his beloved Reims. Kopa was forced to play on the wing at Madrid, and Didi, too, was used badly and out of position, amid suggestions that Di Stéfano, the Argentinian-born star, and the Hungarian Puskás were not too happy about sharing the limelight with the Brazilian newcomer.
So Didi returned to Botafogo in Brazil, and continued to do his thing and inspire the Brazilian team to another World Cup win in 1962. It was Spain’s loss, he was a fantastic player and a superb team man.
Didi first played for Brazil in 1952 and was part of the side that let themselves down in Berne against Hungary, although his role was mainly that of bemused and slightly ineffectual bystander, one tit-for-tat foul on Bozsik apart.
In 1958 he was the fulcrum of a young team; adept at finding space he was always available to receive the ball and play in the exciting array of young stars around him. He was the one Brazilian who slowed the game, preferring a little time to practise his art – “She’s the one who runs,” he once stated, pointing at the ball. Didi’s set pieces were always dangerous – he had a trademark free-kick that he struck with the outside of his foot that was known as the “dead leaf” because it swirled and dipped unpredictably, fooling many a decent goalkeeper. He was a regular rather than prolific goalscorer by the standards of the day, but, with the likes of Vavá and Pelé in the side, that was hardly a problem.
By 1962 he was one of the team’s wise old men, forming a canny left-sided axis with another 1958 veteran, Mario Zagallo. He called time on his playing career after the tournament and concentrated on coaching; he would return to the World Cup arena eight years later as the coach of the best team Peru have ever had.
1958 Team of the Tournament: 3–3–4
Kelsey (Wales)
Voinov (USSR) Gustavsson (Sweden) Nílton Santos (Brazil)
Kopa (France) Didi (Brazil) Liedholm (Sweden)
Garrincha (Brazil) Fontaine (France) Pelé (Brazil) Hamrin (Sweden)
The unofficial team of the tournament had Harry Gregg in goal – understandable, a nod given for guts as well as performance, but Kelsey was flawless and superb. It also had Bergmark (an odd inclusion, he was exposed in the final); Bellini, the Brazilian captain, was in at centre-half and the workmanlike German half-back Szymaniak was included. The official team also had Skoglund rather than Hamrin. They left out Gustavsson, Liedholm and, extraordinarily, Fontaine. Apparently votes were counted for each position and Fontaine’s were split between inside-right and inside-left. He played as France’s centre-forward. Doh!
There was no Player of the Tournament – it would (certainly should) have been Didi.
The FIFA All-Star team, selected later, was as follows: Gregg (Northern Ireland); D Santos (Brazil), Bellini (Brazil), N Santos (Brazil); Kopa (France), Blanchflower (Northern Ireland), Gren (Sweden), Didi (Brazil); Garrincha (Brazil), Pelé (Brazil), Fontaine (France).
Leading scorers: Fontaine (13); Pelé & Rahn (6); Vavá & McParland (5)
Heaven Eleven No.3
Scandinavia (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden)
Coach:
George Raynor – the English coach was the only one to take a Scandinavian team to a World Cup Final
Goalkeepers:
Peter Schmeichel (Den): big hands, big talent
Thomas Ravelli (Swe): played until he was about a hundred and twelve years old – seemed to, anyway
Antti Niemi (Fin): really good in the Premier League for Southampton – it was like London buses for Finland, two world-class ’keepers at once after a long wait
Defenders:
Gudni Bergsson (Ice): the Ice-man was a late developer but was one of the most under-rated Premiership players at Bolton in his thirties
Sami Hyypiä (Fin): tall, commanding and never replaced at Liverpool
Björn Nordqvist (Swe): the mainstay of Sweden in the 1970s.
Thorbjørn Svenssen (Nor): was a rock for Norway before they were a competitive side
Morten Olsen (Den): cool as cucumber, the eminence grise of the first competitive Danish side
Henning Berg (Nor): equally at home at right-back or in the middle, won Premiership titles with Blackburn and Manchester United
Olof Mellberg (Swe): great centre-half – Martin O’Neill played him at full-back to accommodate Zat Knight – that fact alone bars O’Neill from being considered a top manager
Julle Gustavsson (Swe): centre-half in the 1958 World Cup Final team, no shame in being exposed by that Brazil team
Midfield & Wide:
Jari Litmanen (Fin): Finland’s best-ever outfield player by an embarrassingly large distance
Michael Laudrup (Den): ditto for Denmark
Martin Jorgensen (Den): clever and nimble wide player, outlet for Laudrup’s passes
Henning Jensen (Den): playmaker in a bad Denmark side – won the league at Borussia Mönchengladbach, Real Madrid and Ajax, no mean feat
Gunnar Gren (Swe): part of the Gre-No-Li triumvirate that served Sweden and (especially) AC Milan so well in the 1950s.
Nils Liedholm (Swe): he was the Li part
Kurt Hamrin (Swe): quick-footed winger in the Sweden team in the late 1950s and early 1960s – a good finisher
Strikers:
Zlatan Ibrahimovic (Swe): the great enigma – if only he lived up to his own billing of himself
Preben Elkjaer (Den): he galloped rather than ran; big, leggy rangy striker, a real handful
Brian Laudrup (Den): not even the best player in his family, but worth a place here
Gunnar Nordahl (Swe): “No” (see above)
Henrik Larsson (Swe): great movement, superb finisher, and quite a nice chap
Omissions: Ole Gunnar Solskjaer & Tore André Flo of recent Norwegian vintage deserve mention, as does long-serving Danish defender Thomas Helveg. Niemi was a six of one half a dozen of the other pick ahead of Jussi Jaaskelainen; Roland Nilsson and Patrik Andersson were both excellent defenders for Sweden, while the massive Kennet Andersson was a powerhouse forward for a few years just before Larsson. Whisper it quietly to Crystal Palace fans but Thomas Brolin was once a damn fine player too.
Strengths: Plenty of talent and determination; great playmakers in Laudrup and Litmanen
Weaknesses: Inclined to be a bit predictable and a bit slow at the back
Likely first XI:
Schmeichel
Berg Olsen Gustavsson Hyypiä
Liedholm Gren
Hamrin Litmanen M Laudrup
Larsson
3.2 AGE
When does a player cease to be promising and become an established star? And when does an experienced international suddenly become a veteran? Age is odd. It is there, a stark fact, a statistic – so and so has been alive for x many years, months and days. But it is also a perception. When I was a kid a twenty-eight-year-old footballer seemed vastly experienced, a role model for adulthood, far more interesting than Dad or Uncle John-Joe-Jack. Now that I’m a middle-aged man, a player of thirty-three seems young, a guy just entering his best years, when you know stuff but also acknowledge there’s lots of stuff you don’t know – an awareness that passes you by in those earlier years of absolute conviction.
The simple answer: in football terms players age at very different rates. Some play their best football in their instinctive, youthful years – Michael Owen exploded onto the international scene, enjoyed a few years as a potent striker and then let inju
ries and a changing game leave him behind because he didn’t learn to grow into a new role or new systems. Others need time to mature and find their best role; Teddy Sheringham was regarded as just another big lad up front and far from international class until Terry Venables saw his potential as a striker partner for Alan Shearer. Sheringham was deployed just behind Shearer where his football intelligence and use of the ball were an advantage and his lack of pace or fancy footwork not an issue – Sheringham was still getting in the England squad at thirty-six, while Owen retired in 2013 three years shy of that mark.
Some of the truly great players have adapted their game to suit their advancing years. Pelé started off as an out-and-out attacker for Brazil, but by 1970 he was playing in a leisurely free role behind the forwards. Franz Beckenbauer was an energetic attacking midfield player at the 1966 World Cup, but lifted the trophy eight years later as a ball-playing central defender. Occasionally it backfires – Lothar Matthäus did the same, largely because he wanted to be as revered as Beckenbauer, but unfortunately he was never in the same class as a defender. Ryan Giggs, once an exhilarating winger, now plays as a crafty, old-fashioned inside-forward when his hamstrings allow. Giggs has just signed a further one-year deal with Manchester United that means he will almost certainly play in the Premiership at the age of forty; he made his debut at seventeen in 1991.
Pelé set a few World Cup records when he played for Brazil aged seventeen in 1958. He was the youngest scorer in the competition’s history, at 17 years and 239 days, against Wales, and the youngest to score a hat-trick (that’ll be a tough one to beat) five days later against France. He was the youngest player to appear until Norman Whiteside turned out for Northern Ireland against Yugoslavia in 1982, aged seventeen years and forty-one days. Injuries finished Whiteside’s international career at twenty-four.
The oldest player (and oldest scorer) accolade is held by the inestimable Roger Milla of Cameroon. In 1994 Milla’s penultimate game at the World Cup was played alongside Rigobert Song; Song was a week shy of his eighteenth birthday, twenty-four years younger than the wiggle-hipped wonder.
The next four on the oldies list are goalkeepers and include England’s Peter Shilton, who played (and captained, the oldest to do so) when just coming up to his forty-first birthday. He is just below another evergreen ’keeper, Northern Ireland’s Pat Jennings. Tottenham sold Jennings to their great rivals in 1977, when he was thirty-two, believing he was past his best. Arsenal got eight years out of him; Spurs waited an age for an adequate replacement. England can boast the oldest debutant – David James was thirty-nine when he made his first Finals appearance in 2010, having been an unused squad member in 2002 and 2006. Just below Shilts is Italy’s Dino Zoff, the oldest player to win the World Cup, captain of the Italian side that won in 1982. Like Milla, he had a team-mate who probably called him Uncle Dino – Giuseppe Bergomi was only eighteen.
The vast majority of World Cup squads have an average age between twenty-six and twenty-nine. No surprise there, the optimum age for a player, allowing for all the exceptions noted above, is late twenties. Hence the observation that the German squad in 2010, which averaged only twenty-five, would be ripe for success in 2014 – only Arne Friedrich has subsequently packed in, and the only other over-thirty in the first team, Miroslav Klose, looks like he may play for ever.
Examine the winning teams and no clear pattern emerges. The team with the lowest average age of its ten starting outfield players in the final was Argentina in 1978 (it surprised me, too); the oldest was the 1962 Brazilian side – eight of the same eleven as the 1958 team, which was the second youngest to date. Here’s the order, youngest first, for those who like that sort of thing: Argentina ’78; Brazil ’58; Italy ’38; Brazil ’70; Uruguay ’50 & Argentina ’86; England ’66; Italy ’82; Brazil 2002; West Germany ’74; Uruguay ’30 & Spain 2010; West Germany ’54; West Germany ’90; France ’98; Brazil ’94; Italy ’34; Italy 2006; Brazil ’62.
There may be no message to be gleaned here; if there is, it is that over-reliance on youth or on old heads probably won’t pay off, and a team that balances both or has a group of players in their prime who grew up together will probably prevail. It’s common football knowledge that Italian sides like to have a weight of experience (the 1982 side was vastly experienced, but had an eighteen-year-old), and equally common knowledge that the South American sides are more likely to throw in a talented teenager. Lies, damned lies and statistics. Ghana will probably win with a squad of twenty-three-year-olds.
3.3 WORLD CUP 1962
After the extravagant football of the World Cups of the 1950s, we were due a dismal tournament and Chile duly delivered. Apathy from the home crowds towards anyone other than the home team, combined with the unwillingness of European supporters to travel to a volatile country, meant crowds were small and quiet away from the main stadium in Santiago. European attitudes towards Chile as a venue proved a source of no little animosity during this tournament. FIFA mandated a South American country to host the competition as far back as 1954, but everyone assumed it would be Argentina, who had a far superior infrastructure in place and more than enough large stadia. But Carlos Dittborn, the President of the Chilean Federation, worked tirelessly to ensure Chile’s voice was heard, using the relative political stability and tolerance of the country compared to other South American nations – and of course he was speaking of the military influence in Argentina, where the President was deposed by the army in 1955. Dittborn’s campaign worked, and Chile won the bid by thirty-two votes to eleven against a complacent Argentina.
At first glance it seems a shocking choice of host, with too few venues, too few spectators and poor organisation. But there were mitigating circumstances – a massive earthquake that claimed 50,000 casualties shook the seaboard of the entire country (which is nearly all seaboard . . .). The government was old-school and conservative and was heavily criticised for its unsympathetic response to the disaster. Jorge Alessandri had won an election victory in 1958 against General Ibañez del Campo, the ageing “benevolent dictator” of Chilean politics. The social reforms of Salvador Allende and subsequent coup and persecution under General Pinochet’s rule was a decade away, but the factors that saw Allende come to power were evident; widespread poverty, rank inequality and social deprivation. Chile wasn’t an especially wealthy country, and most of the money was in mining, not an industry noted for wide-scale distribution of largesse amongst its workforce in the post-war years. The response to the disaster was slow, and the aid agencies that offer invaluable support in such times of crisis in modern times were only in their formative years and not geared up for missions on this scale. The earthquake set the preparations for the tournament back significantly – what was intended as an eight-venue competition became four, and two of these cities needed significant outside help in order to be ready – the stadium at Rancagua, one of the four eventually used, was “borrowed” from its owners, an American copper mining company. Tragically Dittborn never saw the fulfilment of his dream, as he died from a huge heart attack a few weeks before the start of the tournament.
1962
CHILE
With the problems the country faced after the catastrophic earthquake prior to the tournament, Chile could offer only four stadia for the 1962 finals, so the games were carefully spread out to prevent the pitches becoming overused – easier in a dry country like Chile than would have been the case in Europe.
Santiago: Estádio Nacional
Started in 1937, the main stadium in the capital Santiago was extensively refurbished to host the 1962 final and fortunately escaped any significant damage in the earthquake. It had a capacity of 66,660, now reduced to 47,000 and is the home of Universidad de Chile as well as the national team.
Viña del Mar: Estádio Sausalito
The 18,000 capacity stadium at Viña del Mar was damaged but repairable, and was ready in time for the finals. It still stands and is home to the local top-flight club, Everton.
Ranc
agua: Braden Copper Company Stadium
The stadium in Rancagua was owned by an American company which ran the local copper mine; the Braden Company rented it to the organizers for the finals tournament. The stadium, still in use, is the home of the splendidly named local team O’Higgins FC. Rancagua played host to England’s 1962 campaign.
Arica: Estádio Carlos Dittborn
Arica is the northernmost city in Chile, right on the north-eastern tip. The stadium was hurriedly renovated after the earthquake with a capacity of almost 18,000 and had the honour of hosting Chile’s quarterfinal win against the Soviet Union.
Qualifying
The qualification was weighted towards the stronger sides yet again. Chile and Brazil were already in, and another three South American sides would join them. Eight teams from Europe also qualified automatically. That makes thirteen – keep up at the back. The North American (CONCACAF) challenger would have to beat another South American side to earn a place, while the two best African and Asian sides would also have to get through a play-off, against two European sides. A tough proposition for sides who played few competitive fixtures against European or South American opposition.
With Venezuela not bothered and Paraguay sent direct to a play-off against the CONCACAF winners, three South American sides qualified after winning just a home-and-away tie. Argentina thumped Ecuador, while Uruguay and Colombia scraped past Bolivia and Peru respectively.
