Mammoth Book of the World Cup

by Nick Holt

  It is possible he is not rated as highly in England as some of his compatriots, because he was largely anonymous in the two memorable encounters between the two sides in 1966 and 1970; the hard-running England midfielders closed down space better than most opponents and Overath liked a bit of time to ply his trade. He was similar in style to Liam Brady, but played a little deeper than the Irishman. Like Gerd Müller he called time on his international career on the high note of winning the World Cup.

  Overath was a one-club man, spending his entire career at 1.FC Köln (Cologne) and winning the league title in 1963–64, one of the three occasions Cologne lifted the trophy.

  Team of the Tournament, 1974:

  Maier (West Germany)

  Vogts (West Germany) Beckenbauer (West Germany) Krol (Holland) Breitner (West Germany)

  Deyna (Poland) Neeskens (West Germany) Overath (West Germany)

  Lato (Poland) Müller (West Germany) Cruyff (Holland)

  Official Team of the Tournament: Most unusually, the official side differs from mine in only one position; they rather curiously selected Rensenbrink ahead of Müller. Both teams feature Krol in a central position, where he would later prove himself equally comfortable, to accommodate Breitner – if picking a true centre-half it would probably be the veteran Björn Nordqvist of Sweden.

  Leading scorers: Lato (7); Szarmach & Neeskens (5)

  Heaven Eleven No.7

  Germany (including West & East):

  Coach:

  Sepp Herberger. Patriotic, crafty, good motivator, and wouldn’t stand any nonsense from the troublemakers.

  Goalkeepers:

  Sepp Maier: World Cup winner who got better with age

  Oliver Kahn: Germany’s best player in their “wilderness years” either side of 2000

  Harald Schumacher: remembered for one incident but was a better goalkeeper after that; a legend at Cologne

  Defenders:

  Franz Beckenbauer: the best ever

  Matti Sammer: best East German player

  Karl-Heinz Schnellinger: uncompromising defender, adept at right-back or in the middle

  Berti Vogts: tough-tackling right-back, just don’t let him near the manager’s job . . .

  Paul Breitner: attacking right-back, converted to midfield where he was never as effective

  Philipp Lahm: wonderful modern attacking left-back

  Karlheinz Förster: great stopper and man-marker

  Midfield & wide:

  Fritz Walter: creative, cultured, deep-lying playmaker

  Helmut Rahn: aggressive goalscoring winger from the 1950s

  Lothar Matthäus: good holding and box-to-box midfielder with a great shot, rubbish centre-back

  Michael Ballack: great goalscoring midfielder, a combination of Lampard and Gerrard

  Wolfgang Overath: sweet left foot, lovely, deceptively lazy style

  Bernd Schuster: great all-round player – not always the best team-player

  Günter Netzer: urgent, aggressive, ball-carrying playmaker

  Pierre Littbarski: tricky winger with quick feet and good distribution

  Strikers:

  Gerd Müller: supreme predator

  Jürgen Klinsmann: hard-working, charismatic and skilful, a complete modern forward

  Uwe Seeler: great target man and hard running striker, super in the air

  Karl-Heinz Rummenigge: striker-cum-wide-player, good finisher, lightning-quick over a few yards and on the turn

  Rudi Völler: great positional player, good poacher

  Omissions: Hardly anyone from the ’80s and ’90s – but then they just weren’t quite at it: Hassler, Andi Möller, Brehme, Kaltz, Kohler – they were all a step short of this class, they just didn’t realise it. Of the earlier generations Jupp Posipal was a top defender, and Max Morlock a crafty inside-forward with a good scoring record. We could as easily have included Jürgen Grabowski as Littbarski. Of the current crop Schweinsteiger has much to offer, while Thomas Müller, goalkeeper Neuer, Mesut Özil and the dominant defender Mats Hummels may all yet reach legendary status. Perhaps the unluckiest is Miroslav Klose – I just have a vague feeling that he is not quite as good as his goals record. The former East German Joachim Streich was considered – a top striker in a second-rate team. Recent retiree Arne Friedrich is not far behind Förster and Schnellinger at centre-back.

  Likely first XI:

  Kahn

  Vogts Beckenbauer Förster Lahm

  Rahn Matthäus Schuster Overath

  Müller Rummenigge

  5.2 REFEREES

  It is a tough job, everyone tells us – players, managers, chairmen, FIFA suits, even referees themselves. Usually they tell us that shortly before complaining about the referee and how he has ruined their team’s opportunity and spoiled their day . . . blah blah blah . . . Fergie, Wenger, Mourinho, all the high-profile managers do it, they needle and carp in the hope that next time that referee will remember not to upset them and earn their opprobrium. Often it works, referees are human and these are powerful, intimidating individuals. It is all part of the mind games.

  And it’s nothing new. The Italian manager in the 1930s, Vittorio Pozzo, was fond of pointing out to referees which opposing players were most likely to transgress. Bobby Moore was always unfailingly polite and respectful with referees – it perpetuated the notion that he was the perfect gentleman and would never, never commit a foul, your honour, not Bobby. Once, when a referee was poleaxed by a shot, Moore even did the decent thing and grabbed the whistle to bring the game to a halt – well that referee was hardly going to book him next time out, was he? Italian and South American captains in the 1960s liked to act as a second referee on the pitch, offering advice and guidance to the official official. Not all referees appreciated the help – Herr Kreitlein got so fed up of Rattin’s “assistance” he sent him off in 1966. Eight years later Beckenbauer’s innocent-seeming comment to Jack Taylor when he awarded an early penalty against West Germany – “you are an Englishman” – was delivered with such weight that it manifestly affected Taylor’s judgement when he next had to make a decision, resulting in the penalty given for Hölzenbein’s dive.

  Referees can reasonably be divided into three types; authoritative, unobtrusive and visible. Most referees opt for the unobtrusive style, try to keep a low profile and let the players get on with it, intervene if necessary but don’t make a big song and dance and try and be consistent. Dermot Gallagher, Avraham Klein, the great Israeli referee, and Arppi, the Brazilian who did a great job in the 1986 World Cup Final, were all referees who preferred to fly under the radar. The problem with the unobtrusive style is that if the game gets out of hand it can be hard for the referee to wrestle back control. In the 2010 World Cup Final Howard Webb was in no way to blame for the nonsense that took place – that would be the Dutch – but he wasn’t the sort of figure to scare the players back into submission.

  Those kind of figures are rare, they are the authoritative referees, the ones who keep control just because they are who they are. Strong personalities for the most part, they don’t need a plethora of cards to keep a grip; Pierluigi Collina, Kim Milton Nielsen and the great Scottish referee Bobby Davidson all kept control through willpower and reputation rather than by flagrant wielding of power. Just occasionally these referees can be a little too convinced of their own rectitude (because they are usually right); Nielsen’s dismissal of Beckham in 1998 was born of disdain for Beckham’s persona rather than football common sense.

  The visible referees are the ones to avoid. They embrace every rule change with great relish and feel the need to display their awareness of every nuance and ensure that not just the players, but the crowd and TV audience know exactly who is in charge. When the FA introduced a rule to the Premier League that stated goalkeepers had six seconds to release the ball from hand once it was under their control, the first instance of a goalkeeper being penalised for such an offence was when David Elleray awarded an indirect free-kick in a televised game between Newcastle
and Bolton. Alan Shearer scored and it changed the course of the game, all because Elleray desperately wanted to be the centre of attention – he was the first referee to visibly enjoy being interviewed on Match of the Day. It is the same need that made Clive Thomas claim he had blown the whistle to end the first-half just as Zico was heading the ball into the goal. It is the same desire to be the centre of attention that led Jorge Larrionda to disallow Frank Lampard’s goal against Germany in 2010 – one glance at the body language of the German defenders told him the ball was over the line, but where was the headline in that? There is a simple hard and fast rule – when the referee is the centre of attention, it is bad for the game.

  Here are the nineteen gentlemen who have refereed a World Cup Final:

  1930

  John Langenus

  Belgium

  1934

  Ivan Eklind

  Sweden

  1938

  Georges Capdeville

  France

  1950

  George Reader

  England

  1954

  Bill Ling

  England

  1958

  Maurice Guigue

  France

  1962

  Nikolai Latyshev

  USSR

  1966

  Gottfried Dienst

  Switzerland

  1970

  Rudi Glöckner

  East Germany

  1974

  Jack Taylor

  England

  1978

  Sergio Gonella

  Italy

  1982

  Arnaldo Coelho

  Brazil

  1986

  Romualdo Arppi

  Brazil

  1990

  Edgardo Codesal

  Mexico

  1994

  Sándor Puhl

  Hungary

  1998

  Saïd Belqola

  Morocco

  2002

  Pierluigi Collina

  Italy

  2006

  Horacio Elizondo

  Argentina

  2010

  Howard Webb

  England

  England has provided four World Cup Final referees, France, Italy and Brazil two apiece, and nine other countries have supplied one.

  For a long while there was an assumption within the British press that our own officials were in some way more impartial and accomplished than Johnny Foreigner. The abject performances of Arthur Ellis and Ken Aston in crucial World Cup matches should have scotched that but the notion persisted. Jack Taylor wasn’t rubbish in the 1974 Final, but he did succumb to Beckenbauer’s subtle promptings; later suggestions that he was overly fussy are unfair and mainly based on the delay to the start because Taylor insisted on corner flags being placed correctly. He was absolutely right to do so and the blame lay entirely with the organisers, although one of the officials might have spotted it earlier.

  English referees have not had a glorious time in recent years either; Graham Poll (a decent referee who was given an unduly hard time by the media) made a basic error in the Croatia game in 2006 and Howard Webb (a really good referee) was much criticised for his handling of the 2010 Final. Maybe we could just accept that our lot are okay, but just as prone to error as any other.

  Well, not quite any other. None of the British referees has been involved in any of the true shockers, where it was hard to watch the game without the impression that something odd was going on. Either that or the officials involved were just truly incompetent, in which case why were they there? I’m teasing, there is no widespread conspiracy, but there has always been bias towards the home nation (England were beneficiaries in 1966), conscious or otherwise. It makes commercial sense to keep the hosts in as long as possible and if it makes commercial sense then you can be sure it matters to FIFA.

  Award for the worst decision

  in a World Cup Finals match

  Hmmm, I’m English, so Ali Bin Nasser is up there for Maradona’s Hand of God goal against England (1986) that our three-quarters-blind Siamese cat would have spotted, as is the aforementioned Mr Larrionda for failing to see Lampard’s shot land about eighteen inches over the goal-line against Germany in 2010. If I were German I would probably put in a mention for Dienst and Bakhramov in the 1966 Final. Señor Aranda’s sending-off of Laurent Blanc against Croatia in the semi-final in 1998 was one with really sad repercussions, while Charles Corver’s refusal to censure Harald Schumacher’s assault on France’s Patrick Battiston in 1982 was one of the most cowardly decisions. For an all-out dire performance, the hapless Byron Moreno Ruales of Ecuador during Italy v South Korea in 2002 takes some beating, culminating in Totti’s ridiculous dismissal for diving; if he’d sent him off for having a truly awful game, fair enough, but not for that.

  Do you know what, I don’t care if I am English, I am a reasonably impartial man and I can’t find a worse decision than the Hand of God goal. It wasn’t cheating (at least not by the referee) just a rank bad decision by an official who was hopelessly out of his depth. I know the referees pool needs to be reflective of the full FIFA membership, but don’t give a big game between two sides with a history of animosity to a guy with limited experience.

  5.3 WORLD CUP 1978

  FIFA persisted with the awful second-phase groups, but this was the last World Cup with only sixteen sides in the Finals; the lure of ever more lucre meant twenty-four teams would turn up in Italy four years later. FIFA announced that in the knockout rounds (which in this format meant only the third-place match and the final) penalties would decide the winner if the scores were level after extra-time.

  When the choice of host was made in 1966 Argentina seemed perfectly acceptable; they were the biggest South American football country yet to host the event and they had agreed to withdraw their application for 1970 in Mexico’s favour in return for a reciprocal free run at the nomination, which they got. On football grounds they were an ideal host; enthusiastic, knowledgeable (if partisan) fans, big grounds (two in Buenos Aires and one each in Córdoba, Mar del Plata, Rosario and Mendoza). The final was scheduled for the Monumental in Buenos Aires, home of the River Plate club.

  The problem lay in the fact that, two years prior to the start of the tournament, Argentina had suffered a military coup. President Isabel Peron, widow of Juan Peron, had ordered the elimination of the rebels, primarily left-wing guerrilla forces in the Tucumán province in the north of the country. The military campaign was brutal and effective, and the generals used it to expand the political situation into a general state of emergency, with the military taking precedence over the civilian government. The war on Tucumán was expanded to a general war on anything left-wing and, with the silent complicity of Washington, they proceeded to weed out any dissidents and protesters as well as the arms-bearing resistance. The operation is known now as the Dirty War and the junta (military dictatorship) retained control of the country until 1983, when they agreed to hand back power to a civilian government after suffering a costly defeat in the Falklands War.

  Trace the path of football and you don’t see the pattern of history emerging because football is just an edited highlights version, its contribution to history consequential, not causal. Football isn’t a mirror of society – or, if it is, it is like the hall of mirrors in Orson Welles’ Lady from Shanghai, a carnival of distortion and disproportion. Equally, to trace the history of football and ignore the socio-political context in which events took place is to do the game a disservice. The influence of the Nazi party on the fortunes of the Germany-Austria team in the 1930s, the use of the 1978 World Cup as a propaganda vehicle by the military junta in Argentina, the awarding of the 2018 tournament to a morally bankrupt oligarchy – these are moments where football and politics intertwine. Just let’s not ever believe that what takes place on the field is ever the primary motivation for the power brokers of the game.

  Prior to the tournament one or two European FAs questioned the wisdo
m of travelling to Argentina (Holland, Italy) in the face of incontrovertible evidence of abuse of power and torture brought forward by Amnesty International, but the left-wing youth movement, the Montoneros, declared a ceasefire for the duration of the competition. Even so there were bombings in Buenos Aires only weeks before the teams were due to arrive.

  Another political upheaval had changed the balance of power within football since the last World Cup. In 1974 – just before the Finals tournament – Stanley Rous had lost the vote to elect the President of FIFA. The new incumbent was a charismatic, friendly, media savvy one-man PR machine called João Havelange. Havelange made a tour of all the smaller federations in the preceding months, fostering goodwill and promising a much bigger say for the non-Europeans in the running of the game. It worked; he won the election easily against an unimaginative and old-fashioned regime and football had a new world order. The starch and stiff upper lip had given way to gold teeth and self-aggrandisement. Only time would tell if the game would benefit – Havelange’s bank account certainly did.

  ARGENTINA

  Six stadia in five cities hosted the 1978 finals, with two situated in the capital Buenos Aires.