The bride isn’t always the prettiest girl – How the World Cup taught us to adore those lovely losers.
At the World Cup, the teams that lift the biggest award the sport has to offer can go on to become the style setters for a generation. It happened after 1966 with England dispensing with genuine wingers. The Brazilians did it on a number of occasions, but especially perhaps in 1970, when they reinfused the game with an injection of Joga Bonito that made everyone want to play with such unfettered joy and in 2010, Spain raised the Roja banner for tiki-taka. For all the glory and acclaim that winners receive, and the flattering sincerity of imitation that so often follows however, love and affection doesn’t always go to the winners. In football’s four-yearly jamboree, whilst the bride is the star of the show, it’s often the bridesmaid that everyone falls for. It’s a World Cup legacy that taught us to cherish those who never make it to the alter. Continue reading →
1966 and all that!
After taking the job as manager of the national team in 1963, using calm, measured terms, and with an understated confidence bereft of any braggart posturing, Alf Ramsey publicly declared that England would win the World Cup in 1966. Not that they might, or that they could, or even that they should; but very definitely that they would. Those practised, clipped tones were simply stating facts. England will win the World Cup in 1966. And they did! Of course, with hindsight it doesn’t sound so much ‘out there’ but back in 1963, to use the modern vernacular it took some bottle. Ramsey had one key factor on his side though, he knew that by adding his ideas and a few new faces to the players bequeathed him by Walter Winterbottom he could turn England into the best team in the world and one of the greatest in World Cup history. Continue reading →
When the heirs of the Magnificent Magyars met the Samba Boys.
Over the years, especially since the war, international football has seen a number of teams rise to prominence, and then be swept away by the next wave. These teams haven’t necessarily won everything, scooping the board of honours over a given period. More accurately, they have been the teams that have been widely acknowledged as the game’s leaders. The players at the forefront of the game’s development, setting new paradigms and patterns that others have copied or adapted.
Some ended their time in the sun with a hatful of trophies; others entered the field and left again, empty-handed. On occasions, there’s a game when the handing-on of the torch can be identified. In the World Cup of 1974, for example, Johan Cruyff’s ‘Oranje’ destroyed a street-fighter of a Brazil team that would have embarrased Pelé and the ‘Joga Bonito’ Samba Boys of four years earlier. It was a game when the Dutch ‘Totall Voetbal’ won the day and cherished the stewardship of ‘the beautiful game’ for a few years. In other times though, the change is seamless, but no less apparent for that.
In the fifties and sixties, two magnificent teams rose above the rest to dominate football for a generation. In the early part of the fifties, it was Hungary and the Magnificent Magyar team of Puskás, Hidegkuti and the cherry-shirted magicians playing under Gusztáv Sebes. The team that went from May 1950 to February 1956, winning 43 games, drawing a mere half-dozen, and losing just one – that one game however was the World Cup Final of 1954, and it denied the Hungarians the crown that would have rubber-stamped their dominance. Continue reading →
The man who broke Brazilian hearts and the world transfer record.
Juan Alberto Schiaffino was pretty much the embodiment of precisely what you would not expect a footballer to look like. Short and slender, with a pallor complexion, he could easily have passed for some someone in need of a good meal, rather than an outstanding athlete. Here was a player though that reached the very top of the football tree, and at the height of his powers, was deemed to be worth more money than any other player on the planet before him. Continue reading →
Careca – The Napoli years.
Antonio de Oliveira Filho was born in the city of Araquara, in the São Paulo state of Brazil on 5th October 1960. His nickname, Careca, which roughly translates as ‘bald’ came to him during his childhood due to his like of the famous Brazilian clown Carequinha who, very much the same as the young boy, had a fulsome mop of black hair.
His early career was spent with local club, Guarani, whom he joined in 1978. The young striker’s pace, natural ability to score goals and uncanny knack of knowing how to be in the right place, at the right time, to finish off attacks, quickly blossomed and his first season brought him 13 goals in just 28 games. For a newcomer to the league, it was an impressive opening statement, but there was more to come. In his five years with the club, he scored more than a century of goals, and his continuing development brought him to the attention of São Paulo FC. In1983 he moved to the state capital and joined the Tricolor. Continue reading →
Gérson de Oliveira Nunes, the ‘Brain’ of Brazil’s 1970 World Cup team.
The Brazil team that lifted the 1970 World Cup has been regarded by many aficionados as perhaps the greatest collection of footballing talent assembled under national colours at a major tournament. Not only was there an abundance of star players, each capable of turning a match in favour of the Seleção with a moment of magic, but they also combined to produce outstanding team performances, sometimes subsuming individual glory for the greater good of the whole; not in any collectivist manner, but with a joy and exuberance that reasserted an affection for jogo benito. It was the sort of team that allowed all who hold a passionate affection for the ‘beautiful game’ to believe again.
Of course, there were stars. Péle is the name that always come to the fore as the first among equals when considering that particular heady vintage of Brazil’s footballing talent. Then there was Rivelinho; he of the cannonball shooting. Tostão led the line with elegance, but an almost brutal grace. This tournament also saw the arrival of Jairzinho’s burgeoning talent, and then there was the imperious captain of the ship, Carlos Alberto, who netted the signature fourth goal in the final against Italy, to usher his crew over the line to glory and eternal fame. Continue reading →
With these gloves, you can walk through mirrors.
On 20th August 2006, in a match against Cruzeiro, São Paulo goalkeeper Rogério Ceni saved a penalty. A feat worthy of mention in the context of most games of course, but perhaps not much beyond that. A few minutes later however, Ceni was called forward from his sentinel position between the sticks to take on a free-kick at the other end of the park. He scored. Now it all begins to sound a little unusual. Add on top of it that, later in the game, Ceni also took and concerted a penalty to draw his team level with their opponents and it all gets a bit special. Now, consider that the penalty was Ceni’s 64th goal for his club, surpassing by two, the exploits of legendary Paraguayan goalkeeper, José Luis Chilavert and you realise there’s more than a bit of a story relating to the career and exploits of Rogério Ceni – goalkeeper and goal-scorer. Continue reading →
Coritiba Foot Ball Club.
Now here’s a question for all you football trivia buffs out there. Which club holds the world record for the most consecutive games won? Chelsea achieved 13 last year in winning the Premier League title, but still fell one short of Arsenal’s Premier League record of 14, but neither were anywhere near the world record total. What about Real Madrid? No. Barca? No again. Not even Bayern Munch? No afraid not. As verified by the Guinness Book of Records, the record run of wins, totalling 24, dates from February to May in 2011, and belongs to a club that you may never have even heard of.
The answer to the conundrum is the Brazilian club Coritiba Foot Ball Club. To be fair however, even to fans of the Coxa – literally translated as ‘Thigh’ – that success probably pales in significance when compared to the 1985 season, when the club won their first and, so far only, Brazilian national title. They then carried the club’s colours in the Copa Libertadores da America the following year, becoming the first club from the state of Paraná to achieve such acclaim. As the oldest club in the state, founded in 1909, that statistic is probably appropriate, but it was a long journey for the club both from its founding to 1985 and then in the run to the title as well. Continue reading →
Killing me softly – Juninho and the Middlesbrough Wonder Years.
The latter half of the 1980s was a time of great turmoil for Middlesbrough Football Club. As the 1985-86 season was drawing to a conclusion, financial matters had become so stretched that a loan of £30,000 from the Professional Footballers’ Association was the only way that the club could cover the wages for April. Unsurprisingly, the denouement of that season saw relegation, and Middlesbrough were sent down to the third tier of English football. But worse was to follow.
During the summer, with no games, and reduced revenue, the club was forced to call in the liquidators. Shortly afterwards, with padlocks adorning the rusting gates of the tired and dilapidated Ayresome Park, Middlesbrough Football Club was officially wound up. The Thatcher years had seen a decimation of industry in the region, with traditional jobs sacrificed on the altar of monetarist dogma and intransigence. Many regions suffered. The north-east suffered more than most, and the fate of the Middlesbrough’s football club seemed to be a microcosm for the travails of the 174,000 or so habitants living on south bank of the Tees. Continue reading →
“I, Big Phil, will go down in history as the Brazil coach who lost to Honduras. It’s horrible.”
So said, Luiz Felipe Scolari, as he contemplated how a defeat, so unexpected, so demoralising, so contrary to the established order of things, would surely blight his career and reputation for evermore.
Pitted against the Hondurans in the quarter-final of the Copa America of 2001, Brazil would already have been planning their semi-final strategy ahead of the game. After all, Brazil were, in most people’s eyes, the stand-out squad at the tournament. In contrast, Honduras had only been invited to join the other teams in Colombia at the last minute – in fact the last seconds of the last minute – following Argentina’s late withdrawal. Consequently, they had precious little preparation time and their squad was shorn of a number of key players still engaged in domestic matters. Last minute guests to the party, they were under-prepared, under-manned and – as it turned out to Brazil’s cost – underestimated. Just how late the Hondurans’ invite to the party popped through their letterbox can be illustrated by a brief resume of the events prior to the tournament. Continue reading →
Gary Thacker 