by Nick Holt
Goalkeeper: Jorge Campos (Mexico, 1994, 1998) – oh, but he was such a character, he sometimes played at centre-forward and he designed his own jerseys . . . Yes, but he was a terrible goalkeeper and the jerseys looked like something a colourblind kid with a random basket of crayons might have come up with.
Right-back: Maicon (Brazil, 2010) – touted as the best right-back in the world, within a couple of years was the third-choice right-back at Manchester City.
Left-back: Roberto Carlos (Brazil, 1994, 1998 & 2002) – the free-kicks were laughably bad and a waste of possession, his crossing was amateur hour and he was a woeful defender. The single most over-rated footballer in the history of the international game.
Centre-back: Ronald Koeman (Holland, 1990 & 1994) – good passer, nice free-kicks, but slow and often out of position in defence. If Holland had picked Danny Blind they may have beaten Brazil in 1994.
Centre-back: Taribo West (Nigeria, 1998 & 2002) – well, he must be good, he plays for Inter . . . except that Inter weren’t very good in the late ’90s. Don’t draw attention to yourself by putting ribbons in your dyed hair unless you’re very, very good.
Midfield: Miguel Angel Brindisi (Argentina, 1974) – he was the big bad, coming to take the World Cup away from Brazil . . . or get dropped after the first game and play little part until Argentina were already out.
Midfield: Enzo Francescoli (Uruguay, 1986 & 1990) – great player, a legend in the Copa América, but so disappointing in his two World Cup appearances. His only defence is that his colleagues were worse, but he was meant to set the standard.
Midfield: Hidetoshi Nakata (Japan, 1998, 2002 & 2006) – the new big thing when he came to France in 1998 but he was awful, wasteful in possession and terrible defensively. He improved in 2002 & 2006 but by then less was expected and he was just another decent footballer.
Midfield: Johnny Haynes (England, 1958 & 1962) – maybe the best passer of the ball in the world game at the time, but never got to work in either tournament; his successor in the 1980s, Glenn Hoddle, suffered the same fate in 1986, flattering to deceive.
Forward: Sylvain Wiltord (France, 2002 & 2006) – so many caps, so little impact.
Forward: Gabriel Batistuta (Argentina, 1994, 1998 & 2002) – happy to bang them in against the Muppets, invariably missing when the opposition was a bit more real. Cris Freddi describes him as a rabbit killer, and it’s a neat epithet.
7.4 WORLD CUP 1998
Thirty-two teams. Blimey. In all, 174 entered the qualifying pro cess, with thirty to join France and Brazil in the Finals – that means nearly one in six went through. It meant anyone who was anyone would surely win through, didn’t it? Sort of – but it also meant more countries with no serious chance of winning made the Finals. Still, a liberal scattering of banana skins is always fun isn’t it? Yes, but an equally liberal scattering of dull group games is less so. One definite improvement was the fact that finishing third in a first-phase group meant you were out – no more reward for failure.
Another huge improvement was the outlawing of the tackle from behind. Medical analysis had told football’s administrators that these were the dangerous tackles, the ones that ended careers, and they did nothing for the game as a spectacle. Critics bemoaned the loss of the old-fashioned crunching tackle, but the art of tackling was never meant to be the art of hurting. Defending would become a new art form, one where the best practitioners stayed on their feet. The downside (there always is one) was the need for a new breed of forward to use the rules to buy free-kicks and cards for their opponents by exaggerating the seriousness of a challenge.
So no crashing tackles from the back, no back-passes, we were in for a feast . . .
France seemed a solid and unobjectionable choice as host, and ten cities were chosen from various applicants as the main venues. Two of the stadia were in the environs of the capital; the old Parc des Princes, formerly a velodrome and home to Paris St Germain, and the brand-new national stadium (for both football and rugby union), the Stade de France. The other major venue was the Vélodrome in Marseille, which would host a semi-final.
There were still concerns about hooligans, with the violent element in the English game attaching itself to the national team after finding the police attention a little hot at domestic fixtures. And what better than to beat on Johnny Foreigner, eh? All sorts of solutions were proposed, mostly draconian and stupid. In the end it was the same diligent methods of identifying and eliminating the ringleaders that weeded out the worst culprits and curtailed this poison. A lot of mud gets slung at the British police (some merited, the vilification of their actions at Hillsborough included) but they have done a really good job against hooliganism.
After the ghastly razz-a-matazz in some of the American stadia in 1994, it was the turn of the players to embarrass themselves and make us look away. There was a selection of hideous footwear, with Blanco of Mexico’s tri-coloured pair taking first prize for ostentation. The goalkeeping jerseys were a right old state – I believe I have already passed opinion on Campos’ designer gear, And some of the haircuts, well I know I’m a curmudgeonly middle-aged Northern man, but honestly, there were ponytails of all descriptions, some loose, some braided, there were dreadlocks, Mohicans, tonsures shaved into patterns and messages, ringlets, poodle heads (Valderrama was still with us) and dyed hair of various hues. Jay-Jay Okocha with green hair – imagine if he’d done that at Bolton . . . They say it’s a man’s game, but some of these lads were surely bought a My Little Princess Make-Up and Hair Set by mistake when they were little.
Qualifying
It was a long and complicated road to qualification for some teams. Iran played six matches in an initial group, eight in a final group and then three more play-off matches, one which they lost against Japan, and another two draws against Australia, which saw them through on away goals. It was tough on the Aussies, but they switched off at 2–0 up in Melbourne and goals from Karim Bagheri and Khodada Azizi sent them out. Both scorers, along with Iran’s most famous player, the striker Ali Daei, played in the Bundesliga in Germany for Arminia Bielefeld (Bagheri and Daei) and Cologne (Azizi). Saudi Arabia and South Korea headed the two final groups and also travelled to France. The four Asia sides would muster five points from twelve games at the Finals, which didn’t augur well for Japan and Korea in 2002.
1998
FRANCE
Of the nine grounds used for the 1938 finals in France, only three were used again in 1998. Seven new venues were added to make ten in all.
Paris: Stade de France and Parc des Princes
The Parc des Princes was still a fine venue, but was forced to play second fiddle to the brand-new Stade de France, a stadium for both the national football and national rugby union teams. It was built with a capacity of 80,000 and every seat was taken for the final between the hosts and Brazil. The Stade de France is in Saint-Denis, a northern suburb of the city.
Bordeaux: Parc Lescure
The old Bordeaux ground is earmarked for closure in 2015, but it served in two World Cups and stood for over seventy years. It was filled to capacity (31,800) for all five matches it hosted in the 1998 Finals.
Toulouse: Stade Municipal de Toulouse
The same stadium, with a bit of modernization that served in the 1938 Finals.
Marseille: Stade Vélodrome
The biggest club ground in France served a second term as a World Cup venue and hosted the semi-final between Brazil and Holland. The Vélodrome is currently undergoing refurbishment to increase the capacity to 67,000 for the 2016 European Championships.
Lyon: Stade de Gerland
Home of the successful Olympique Lyonnais club, the Gerland missed out in 1938, but hosted six matches in 1998.
Lens: Stade Felix Bollaert
Now the Stade Bollaert-Delelis, this ground is the home of Racing Club Lens. The capacity is 40,000, more than the city’s official population, but the cities of Picardie are close together and form a large semi-urban sprawl so that
statistic is deceptive. France played their second-round match against Paraguay in Lens.
Nantes: Stade de la Beaujoire
Situated in the city of Nantes at the mouth of the Loire, this stadium was built for the 1984 European Championship and hosted six games at the 1998 World Cup, including Brazil’s classic quarter-final win over Denmark.
Montpellier: Stade de la Mosson
Wealthy Montpellier volunteered to double the size of its ground for the 1998 finals from 16,000 to 32,900 and was rewarded with six finals matches, and a few games at the 2007 Rugby World Cup.
Saint-Étienne: Stade Geoffroy-Guichard
Home to the famous Les Verts of Saint Étienne, the G-G was the venue for England’s brilliant and heartbreaking rearguard action against Argentina in 1998, the team’s finest World Cup moment since winning in 1966.
Africa had five teams in the Finals and the five qualifiers all won their groups with something to spare; Nigeria finished only a point ahead but had the luxury of switching off in their last match against Guinea and duly lost. Tunisia, Cameroon, Morocco and South Africa would join them in the Finals. Algeria, normally one of the strongest African sides, screwed up big time, losing to Kenya in an initial play-off and not even making the group stage.
North American qualification produced three finalists and was really about who joined Mexico and the United States. It was Jamaica, a new face, who won through in third place in the final group. In the autumn of 1997 they put together a crucial run of games, beating Canada and Costa Rica 1–0 and earning a 1–1 draw against the USA in Washington. All three goals were scored by the young English-born striker Deon Burton, of Derby County. Burton and a few other English pros, including the experienced Wimbledon midfielder Robbie Earle, had swelled the Jamaican ranks to good effect. Jamaica had qualified the Irish way.
For the first time CONMEBOL introduced the idea of a large round-robin group to decide their four entrants (and to generate more cash, of course).
Argentina topped the section, with Paraguay a surprise package in second place. Paraguay got an excellent point in Buenos Aires. Batistuta beat José Luis Chilavert in the Paraguay goal with a superb free-kick, but Chilavert extracted the perfect revenge, bending in a twenty-five-yard free-kick for the equaliser. The World Cup had a character coming. They also had one of the world’s best defenders in Carlos Gamarra, who had just endured a miserable season with Benfica – he never excelled in Europe – but was a colossus for his country in the qualifiers. Colombia also won through comfortably – it was last chance for Valderrama and his generation to live up to the hype on the biggest stage. The last place went to Chile on goal difference from Peru. Chile effectively sealed their fate with a 4–0 win over Peru, a superb hat-trick from Marcelo Salas sealing the deal. They finished off with an equally comfortable 3–0 win over Bolivia. Salas had just signed a deal at Lazio, and his compatriot Iván Zamorano was at Internazionale after a fine spell at Real Madrid in the first years of the decade. Like Colombia, they had to prove they could perform outside South America.
A new qualifying system within UEFA meant only the group winners won through to the Finals automatically, plus the second placed team with the best record. The other runners-up had to get through two-legged play-offs against each other to earn a place. Europe had a lot more countries in the zone after the break-up of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. The new sides had low rankings, so it meant there were dangerous floaters like Croatia and Slovakia in the third pool of seeds and even some good sides in the fourth pool (Ukraine and Yugoslavia, effectively Serbia and Montenegro).
Some of the top sides won through easily enough. Norway romped away with the easiest section, while Spain, Romania and Germany won their groups without losing a game. Romania were especially impressive, scoring for fun and conceding only four in their group while winning every game except a draw in Dublin – a result most sides would take in the 1990s. The Irish did seal second place with a 2–1 win in Lithuania courtesy of two goals from Tony Cascarino, a much-improved player after a late career stint in France with Marseille and now Nancy. The Irish fell at the last hurdle, beaten 2–1 in Brussels by Belgium with a goal from PSV’s Luc Nilis, who also scored the Belgians’ equaliser in Dublin.
Belgium were just squeezed into second in their group by their neighbours Holland – these two are like England and Poland in World Cup qualifiers, magnetically attracted. To be fair, Holland beat Belgium home and away – it was Turkey who gave them problems, their win in Istanbul demonstrated how much they had improved in recent years. We shall draw a veil over Wales’ contribution. They started well, winning their first two matches easily; unfortunately their opponents were San Marino, who got no points and no goals. Wales won no more matches and got a pasting in Holland.
Yugoslavia finished second to Spain, ahead of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Some of the class of 1990 were still there – Stojkovic, now thirty-five, and Savicevic, and they had Savo Milosevic, mocked in his three years at Aston Villa but happier in the more patient Balkan style. Spain’s win in Valencia over the Slavs, with goals from Pep Guardiola and the fizzy new striker Raúl, meant Spain headed the group and stayed there.
Hungary finished second to Norway in their weak group – more impressive was Norway’s 4–2 defeat of Brazil in a friendly in Oslo. Hungary got hammered home and away by Yugoslavia in the play-offs. Another ordinary fivesome saw Bulgaria edge Russia into second place. Ivanov’s goal in a 1–0 win in Sofia gave them breathing space and rendered Russia’s win in Moscow irrelevant.
The Laudrup brothers helped Denmark put the disappointment of 1994 behind them and win their section, while the Ukraine edged out Portugal, who drew too many games they should have won. Would they ever deliver? Northern Ireland managed only a single win over Albania; their ranking was plummeting and their contribution reduced to that of occasional spoiler. Croatia won the battle of the newbies for a place in the Finals, but Ukraine had cause for future optimism in the form of their strikers, Andrei Shevchenko and Sergei Rebrov, both still in their early twenties. Croatia’s best forward, Alen Boksic, was injured just before the Finals; he was a great player but too often injured.
Group 4 contained a very strong Swedish side, a well-managed and hard-working Scotland team and a similarly well-organised Austrian squad. Three former Soviet states, Estonia, Latvia and Belarus made up the numbers. A cold group. The 1994 quarter-finalists started well but then inexplicably lost at home to Austria, to a goal by Andy Herzog of Werder Bremen after a shocking mistake in the Swedish defence. Kennet Andersson had a penalty saved by Konsel – there was justice there, as the kick was given for a superb saving tackle, not a foul. The Swedes lost their next game, too, to a seventh minute goal from John McGinlay for Scotland. Now Sweden were struggling, because Austria and Scotland were gritty sides and were grinding out results against the weaker teams. Sweden needed a result in Vienna.
The game was rough, and Austria’s Pfeffer saw red just before half-time, but things evened up when Roland Nilsson followed for a debatable professional foul. That man Herzog (later he became Austria’s most capped player) came up trumps again, scoring the only goal with a glorious run and left-foot strike. There was more drama to come when Konsel was sent off for another professional foul with eight minutes left but Austria hung on. There was nothing Sweden could now do but hope one of the other two sides dropped silly points. They didn’t, and a team that should have gone to France and would have been fancied to do well were out. Scotland qualified automatically as the best second-placed team. Good job, there were some tasty sides in the play-off pot.
The weirdest game for Scotland came when they were due to play Estonia in Tallinn. Scotland objected, not unreasonably, to the poor-quality floodlights temporarily rigged up on a lorry in each corner. FIFA ordered the kick-off time to be moved forward, but Estonia had a strop and didn’t turn up. Scotland kicked off and were promptly awarded the game. Estonia cleverly did turn up for the second kick-off, claiming they had ask
ed for confirmation of FIFA’s decision and received none. FIFA were soft and ordered the game replayed and it finished 0–0 – just was well it didn’t affect Scotland’s qualification. The best moment came when the assembled Tartan Army (the real sufferers here) stood forlornly in one end of the ground for the earlier kick-off chanting “One team in Tallinn, there’s only one team in Tallinn . . .” (Only funny if you go to local derbies – an explanation would spoil it.)
And England? Oh, you know, nothing to fret about, just the usual roller-coaster. They were excellent in Euro ’96, albeit on home turf. Under Terry Venables they showed a new grasp of a modern way of playing, keeping the ball for longer until an opportunity to attack at pace presented itself. They had a team filled with players who were comfortable on the ball and Venables used Teddy Sheringham to complement Alan Shearer’s strength and aggression, and the partnership clicked, releasing Shearer as a genuine threat at this level.
But Venables had gone, ousted by the FA suits who didn’t think he was the “right sort of chap”, and in his place was Glenn Hoddle, who had done well at Swindon and Chelsea, and certainly understood the need for patient, sophisticated football at the top level. Qualification was fraught, a home defeat to a Gianfranco Zola goal for Italy seemed to have condemned England to second place at best, and Hoddle was lambasted (rightly) for picking only one proper centre-half.
England did have talent coming through, especially at Manchester United, and a briefly renascent Gascoigne helped engineer a good away win in Poland, where Italy dropped a point. The big result for England was Italy’s 0–0 draw with Georgia in Tbilisi, which meant they only needed a point in Rome, not a victory. They got it, on a teeth-grindingly tense night, due in part to a good defensive performance and in the main to the innate caution of the Italians. Italy joined England in France after scraping a draw and a 1–0 win against Russia, but, like England, they hardly looked contenders.
