FOREWORDWelcome to the first edition of what, we hope, will become a part of your lives each and every quarter in the year. “What is it?”, you ask, and “Why should we hang upon its every word?” you add. Salient and shrewd questions that mark you down as a reader of remarkable discernment. The cheque’s in the post.

So, your questions. “Just Look At His Face” is born from many things, not least a disenchantment with the way in which the football industry, notably Sky and the Premier League, are so keen to build a narrative that says that nobody had ever thought of kicking a ball around before Paul Gascoigne burst into tears in 1990.

The lack of reverence for the game’s history is reaching critical mass, a tipping point. Things that once were thought sacrosanct – your name, your colours, your badge, your stadium’s name – are now just marketing elements to be changed at whim according to the needs of economics or the slightly deranged beliefs of those in power.

Football itself too often treats its history, its traditions, those that built it as nothing more than mere inconvenience. To its eternal shame, the Football Association, supposedly the guardian of the game’s soul, continues to miss the opportunity given to it by the infinite inventory of the internet to capture the memories of those who captured the imagination, set the heart racing, gave wing to dreams – the footballers.

The Football Association should provide the perfect repository for an archive of interviews of the great, the

good, the humble, the forgotten, all those foot soldiers who constructed the environment in which football could become a multibillion pound environment ripe for feathering the nest of administrators that care nothing for the game’s spirit. It chooses not to do so.

So it is into that void that we step, a football publication that is unashamed in its celebration of the past, giving voice to those who built the game before it’s too late and their invaluable fund of stories is lost to the ages. Come and join us. The water’s lovely.

INTRODUCTIONWelcome then to edition one of this repository for the living history of the wondrous game of association football.

Our ethos is a pretty simple one – we will be out there at the coalface of history, hacking away at interviews with the great and the good of the game’s past while they’re there to be got.

Since football was invented in 1992 – hello Rupert Murdoch! – that pastime that involved kicking a ball that existed hitherto has been rather forgotten. Well, sod that.

Amid a modern media of controlled access, protected positions and corporate concerns, our interviewees have the freedom of speech that comes with distance. Look at how Clive Thomas, Craig Brown, Ray Wilson or Jan Tomaszewski speak in this issue and imagine something similar dripping from the mouths of their current day contemporaries. Tough isn’t it?

“Just Look At His Face” is a line stolen from a Barry Davies commentary when Francis Lee, then at Derby County, whacked the ball into the Manchester City net. The commentary begins with, “Interesting…very interesting!” That is our motto, our aim, our raison d’etre as we excavate stories long buried but which are all the more illuminating once brought to the surface.

The team behind this is a totally self-contained power trio, a bit like Cream were, though we’re not telling you which one is Ginger Baker. Chris Lepkowski of the Birmingham Mail, Sam Slater and Bill Thomas are behind this gloriously unfashionable enterprise that hopes to make the past the future. Between us,

we will be foisting takes of yesteryear upon you on a quarterly basis for a long, long time to come, so you better get used to it.

For edition one, published in June 2014 as it is, where else could we start but with the World Cup? Across the following pages, we’ve covered tournaments from 1950 to 2006 from perspectives across the spectrum, from Poland to the United States, from goalscorers to referees.

We live in strange times children, times where, pretty soon, they’ll be abolishing insight and intelligence. In the meantime, let us make hay. As Hunter Thompson instructed, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”

Major, a new ribbon for the typewriter if you’ll be so good…

6 • • 7

CREDITSEditorial, words and design:

Bill Thomas, Chris Lepkowski, Sam Slater

Photography:

Our main black and white cover photo for Edition 01, is a great shot from ‘phirschler’ or pdh96 on Flickr, using Creative Commons licence CC BY-ND 2.0https://www.flickr.com/photos/phirschler/8195706674/

We also used a photograph by Roman Boed, also from Flickr, using Creative Commons licence CC BY 2.0https://www.flickr.com/photos/romanboed/13660666645

Our closing photograph on page 149 is by Laurie Rampling.

Online:

Visit www.justlookathisface.com for updates, and free previews of future quarterly editions. On Twitter - twitter.com/ohlookathisfaceOn Facebook - facebook.com/lookathisface

6 • • 7

© 2014 - Just Look At His Face. All rights are reserved. Reproduction in any manner, in whole or in part, is strictly forbidden without the prior written consent of the publishers. No responsibility for incorrect information can be accepted. While every effort has been made to ensure accuracy of statements in Just Look At His Face, we cannot accept responsibility for any errors or ommissions or for matters arising from clerical or electronic/printing errors. Published by Just Look At His Face.

8 • • 9

JUST LOOK AT HIS FACEEDITION 01

JUNE 2014

2• FOREWORD

4• INTRODUCTION

6• CREDITS

10• CLIFF JONES - WALES

24• JAN TOMASZEWSKI - POLAND

34• DO YA THINK I’M IN TUNE?

42• CRAIG BROWN - SCOTLAND

56• JAN MOLBY - DENMARK

70• GERRY ARMSTRONG - N.IRELAND

84• THE ROAD TO ‘66 - ENGLAND

116• CLIVE THOMAS - FIFA REFEREE

128• THE BRIGHT SIDE OF THE MOON

134• CLAUDIO REYNA - USA

148• THREE MEN AND A CUP

8 • • 9

10 • • 11

1958

CLIFF JONES - WALES- BILL THOMAS

Ryan Giggs, Neville Southall, Ian Rush, Mark Hughes, Gareth Bale. All giants of the game with plenty in common, including one particular sadness. Not one of them ever graced the World Cup, though at least Bale does have the opportunity to try and put that right in the coming decade.

To do that, he would have to end what, these days, we are forced to call “sixty years of hurt”, because by the time the next World Cup rolls around in Russia in 2018, it will have been that long since the Welsh fielded a side in the finals, Sweden ’58 representing their one and only visit to the tournament thus far.

Such a time lag means that the Class of ’58 is a very special one indeed, probably the greatest side that Wales has ever fielded when you consider it included the likes of John Charles, Ivor Allchurch and flying winger Cliff Jones, later to win fame as part of Tottenham Hotspur’s legendary double winning team, but then a young man who was dragging scouts from all over the country to watch him play at Swansea’s Vetch Field.

When you talk to him about that golden period in Welsh history, it’s clear that it wasn’t just their ability that saw them through to success. As a group, they had a pride in that Welsh shirt that we more readily tend to associate with those muscular giants who used to bestride the Arms Park in Cardiff.

10 • • 11

“I loved playing for Wales, especially at Ninian Park. One of my greatest memories in the game came a few years earlier, 1955, when I played my second international, only 20 years of age, against England. Matthews, Finney, Lofthouse, Wright were on the other side, great players, but we beat them 2-1 and I got the winning goal. If people ask me to pick out a single memory from my career, it’s always that one.

“I got carried off shoulder high by hundreds of Welsh supporters who invaded the pitch afterwards because we hadn’t beaten England for years before that. So Ninian Park was always special to me and it created such an atmosphere when it was full and the Welsh supporters were making so much noise, it was a great place to play.

“I was still serving my apprenticeship when I first played, I was a sheet metal worker in the Prince of Wales Dry Dock. My father, Ivor, he’d been a footballer, played for Swansea and for West Bromwich Albion, he’d won the Triple Crown with Wales as well. He told me that when he packed in football, he had no other skill than football and he finished up working in the local steelworks, a crap job as he called it. He said, “Son, you’re not going to end up like that, learn yourself a trade.”

“So after being carried off by hundreds of supporters at Ninian Park after beating England on the Saturday, I clocked on at the Prince of Wales Dry Dock on the Monday morning at half past seven! I was met by my foreman, Dai, a master coppersmith, a good bloke, and he said, “Well done on Saturday Cliff. There’s your tools, you’ve got proper work to do now son!” I don’t suppose Gareth Bale did that after the Champions League final!

“In many ways, it was very good for me, it shaped me, it made me realise how fortunate I was to play football for a living – hey, football’s not work! You have to keep yourself fit, work on

12 • • 13

your technique and so on, but that’s not much to ask is it? As a result, I knew what working life was about, where I don’t think that’s the case nowadays. That’s no fault of the players, it’s just how times have changed, but for me, it was a valuable lesson.

“It was also helpful that I came from a football family because as well as my dad, my uncle Bryn played for Wales and for Arsenal. He was transferred there from Wolves in 1938 for a record free, £14,500, a massive amount. It was even debated in Parliament, just how a club could pay that much money for a footballer! Sadly it never worked out for him, because the war started soon after that and he ended up seeing a different kind of action. By the time it was all finished, he’d lost six years of his career and he could never pick it up again.”

Happily, once that war was over, football resumed to give us a different kind of international conflict, “war minus the shooting” as George Orwell termed it. That said, the Welsh got plenty of opportunity to come across people with guns when their qualifying group for the 1958 World Cup was drawn.

“Going up to 1958, that was the first time that the World Cup qualifiers hadn’t been the Home Internationals, so we felt as if that might give us a bit of a chance seeing as England tended to dominate those. But we ended up against Czechoslovakia and East Germany and that was a journey into the unknown in every way.”

Only the winners of these three team groups qualified – these were the days before the Soviet Union split apart, meaning far fewer nations to compete in Europe – so the pressure was on from the outset. Wales opened the group by entertaining Czechoslovakia at Ninian Park on Mayday 1957, getting off to the best possible start by winning 1-0 through a Roy Vernon goal. And then it got difficult with back to back away games.

12 • • 13

“I know we had about a week and a half out there behind the Iron Curtain in May 1957, because we played the two away games one after the other, a week apart, East Germany and then Czechoslovakia.

“It was an experience just being there. You had to be very careful where you went. We were told we had to go around in threes and fours, not on your own and to be very careful what you said and did.

“To see the way the people there lived was an eye opener to be honest. It made you realise just how fortunate we were to be living in a country like Wales where you had your freedom. More than fifty years on now, I don’t really remember particular details about the places, I just have this overriding memory of it all being very grey. That was our first hand view of seeing what communism was like, and it put us right off it!

“It was very hard to play in those places at that time. East Germany had a good side and there was a big crowd there in Leipzig. I remember them being powerful, a strong, physical side and in the end, I don’t think they dared lose!”

Whether it was the fear of any repercussions that drove them on or not, after going a goal down when Mel Charles scored in the sixth minute, the East Germans fought back with two second half goals to win the game.

From there, it was on to Czechoslovakia where, after almost a week in the country, quartered in a city centre hotel and sporting a travelling party that included more officials than players, the time away from home in unusual surroundings took its toll. The home team won 2-0, leaving Wales on the brink of elimination. Though they thumped East Germany 4-1 on home soil courtesy of a Des Palmer hat-trick, when

14 • • 15

Czechoslovakia won the final game of the group in Leipzig by the same score, Wales were out. Or were they?

Post-war politics was still finding its feet, most notably around the creation of Israel, and these issues crept into sport. A string of nations including Indonesia, Turkey and Sudan all refused to play Israel which would have meant their automatic qualification for the competition without playing a game. FIFA ruled that this could not be allowed and so Israel were required to show their mettle via a play-off against a European side. Lots were drawn from all the group runners up and Belgium came out first, but they declined the chance to play. Wales came out next and there were no such qualms on the part of their association. They had their second chance.

“There was a political situation at the time with teams refusing to play against Israel. There was a draw amongst the teams who’d come second in their groups and in the end, we won the draw and had a play-off with Israel. We were very confident going into the games because we’d played well in the group, we had a good side at the time, and we thought we’d earned that bit of luck in getting picked out for the play-off!

“I was still with Swansea Town in the Second Division at the time – Swansea City now of course - and there was a lot of talk of me leaving there to play for a club in the First Division as it was then. After we’d won 2-0 out in Israel, we played the second leg at Ninian Park. It was a bit of a foregone conclusion I suppose and they reckoned that there were more managers there to watch me than there were normal spectators in the crowd! We won comfortably, beat them 2-0, I got one of the goals and within a few weeks of all that, I ended up being transferred down to Tottenham.”

That second game was played on 5th February 1958, a fateful

14 • • 15

day for the man who was in charge of the Welsh team.

“Jimmy Murphy was our manager and he combined that job with being Matt Busby’s assistant at Manchester United. That meant he missed the occasional game at United when fixtures clashed. The night we played Israel, United were in the European Cup, in Belgrade, so he missed that one.

“If he had gone, he would have been on that plane that flew out of Munich the following day. That Israel game probably saved Jimmy’s life. It was the back of the plane where the majority of the lads who died or were seriously injured were and Jimmy being the character he was, he would have been amongst the boys and most probably in that area. Fate plays such a part in people’s lives.

“Jimmy was a marvellous character. He’d been one of Monty’s “Desert Rats” in Africa in the war and Jimmy was like that afterwards. “Fix bayonets and get at ‘em lads!” He was great to work with and we all loved him. He was a terrific motivator, you wanted to play for him. His team talks were a joy to listen to, we’d hang on to his every word.

“To be honest, I think by the time the World Cup came around, Jimmy was exhausted. He’d lost friends in the crash and then he’d basically carried United for three or four months while Matt was in hospital. He did an incredible job for that club. But Jim was a real Welsh terrier, he wouldn’t be beaten, he’d get hold of things and shake them up and I really enjoyed having that chance to work with him.

“We had some very good players in that team, it was a special side for Wales which I suppose history has proved because we haven’t qualified for the World Cup since. Of course, John Charles was the star, he was an immense footballer, such a

16 • • 17

fine player that he’d been transferred out to Italy which was a massive thing back then.

“I suppose he did in Italian football what Gareth Bale is doing in Spanish football now. He went out to Juventus and he was a massive star there. They called him Il Gigante Buono there, the gentle giant. Not that long ago, there was a survey of Italian sportswriters to decide who was the greatest overseas player there’d ever been in Italian football and John came out on top. When you think that so many of the greatest players in history have played in Italy, including the likes of Maradona, that tells you everything about him.

“John probably doesn’t get the mentions these days that he ought to because he was a marvellous footballer. John could play centre-half or centre-forward, and he was just as good in either position, a natural. People would ask me what his best position was and I couldn’t tell them. All I could say was that he was the best centre-half and the best centre-forward I ever played with.

“When he was a young boy at Leeds, only 18, he was playing centre-half, but they were struggling to get goals. So the manager, Major Buckley, he came to him and said he wanted to try him at centre-forward and John said he’d have a go. He knocked in a hat-trick and they beat Hull 5-2.

“The Monday morning, one of the directors called John over at Elland Road and this director had a chain of petrol stations in the area. He said to John, “That was brilliant on Saturday, good job John. I tell you what you can do, go to one of my petrol stations and fill your car up with petrol on me”. So John said, “That’s very kind of you, but I haven’t got a car!”

“As well as John, we had a lot of other very good players,

16 • • 17

notably Ivor Allchurch, the golden boy of Welsh football. He was very talented. He loved Swansea and possibly he stayed there too long as far as his career and reputation went because he was 28 or 29 before he moved and went up to Newcastle. But even then, he made such an impression that if you talk to older supporters up in Newcastle, they’ll still talk about Ivor and what a great player he was. Ivor was so good that he’d be in any all-time Welsh side, Swansea side or Newcastle side. He was a marvellous player to play with and a great lad as well.

“There was depth to that team though. Mel Charles, Terry Medwin, Jack Kelsey who was a very good goalkeeper, two terrific full-backs in Stuart Williams and Mel Hopkins, Dave Bowen the captain. We had lots of good players and we were a bit underrated in many ways.”

Modern World Cup preparation is a lengthy affair. It was rather less so in 1958 according to Jones.

“I don’t think our preparations would compare with how they do things these days! We met up in a hotel in Hyde Park somewhere, we did a bit of training in the park for a couple of days, had a practice match, then off to Sweden for the World Cup, that was it!

“We stayed just outside Stockholm in Saltsjobaden and we got very friendly with the locals who seemed to adopt us as their team. It was all very relaxed, very enjoyable, nothing like the intensive way they build up now. We played against a local side, just to get a competitive edge. You can train as much as you like but games are different, whatever the opposition, so that was good for match fitness because the season back home had been over for about a month I suppose.

“I think the fact that it was so relaxed helped us, because we

18 • • 19

performed very well in Sweden. But we were equipped to do well because we had a good team. There’s no real secret to it, then or now – if you have good players, you have a chance!

“Saying that, we were very worried that John wasn’t going to make it to the World Cup because I think the Italian season had been extended because Italy hadn’t qualified and John was at Juventus and there was a question over whether he would be released to play and whether the authorities would let him play even if he was. Luckily, that all got sorted out at the last minute and when he did arrive, all the hierarchy from the Welsh committee, they stood up and clapped him as he came into the hotel!”

Wales opened their campaign with consecutive 1-1 draws, against Hungary and Mexico, the big guns of John Charles and Ivor Allchurch getting the goals. Then came Sweden and a real dilemma. Did Wales play safe and get the draw that would secure at least a play-off, or risk all by going for the win that would bring automatic qualification?

“We had Sweden in our group, the hosts, and it was interesting to play the home nation. They’d already qualified by then by beating Mexico and Hungary and it wasn’t a particularly good game to be honest, it finished up 0-0 – that says it all, doesn’t it?

“We were very strong defensively, Jack Kelsey was a good goalkeeper, our full-backs Stuart Williams and Mel Hopkins were very dependable, so we had a good base. Jimmy liked playing with wingers, Terry Medwin and myself, but he made sure that we did defensive work as well, which was a bit unusual at that time. If the opposition had the ball, he wanted us to track back and get into a position whereby you could cut out the crossfield passes and help out your defenders.

18 • • 19

“So in that game, the two teams cancelled each other out and it meant we’d drawn all three of our games. But it was a positive result and that’s what it’s all about when you’re in small groups like that, if you lose a game, it’s a struggle to come through.”

Later that evening, Hungary beat Mexico to finish on three points with Wales, forcing a play-off. They were not a side that anyone wanted to face twice, though not for the same reasons as in 1954.

“Playing the Hungarians was a big disappointment. Four years before, they’d had that wonderful team with Puskas and all the rest, playing incredible football. But in 1958, they were just a completely different outfit, very, very physical. It wasn’t what we thought of as the Hungarian way of playing football, that was for sure, but we were used to a physical game back home so in that sense, we were able to cope.

“But it was a little bit sad to see them resorting to that kind of football when you think how they’d changed the face of the game in the early ‘50s. To see them revert to what was basically just a bit of thuggery, that wasn’t pleasant.

“In the play-off game, Hungary were leading at half time and then Ivor Allchurch came up and scored a wonderful goal, one of the goals of the tournament. The ball came across him on the left edge of the penalty area and he caught it beautifully on the volley and it flew across the face of goal and into the far corner. A marvellous goal it was, then Terry Medwin got the winner for us with not long to go.

“It was a brutal game and they had obviously decided to mark John Charles out of things because he’d been having such a good World Cup at centre-forward. When I say he was a

20 • • 21

marked man, I do mean marked. They kicked lumps out of him, he got chopped left, right and centre. But John was the gentle giant and he never retaliated, he got his revenge by being too good for them, but that day, they put him right out of the game.

“He was so badly injured, he ended up missing our quarter-final game and for a country as small as Wales, you can’t afford to lose your best players. But when you have a footballer like John Charles, no country could afford to lose him because he was one of the truly great players that football has ever produced. It would be like England losing Bobby Charlton in 1966. That was how big a loss it was.”

Part of the problem was timing. After the play-off in Solna, Wales’ fourth game in ten days, just 48 hours later they were lining up in Gothenburg, 250 miles away, for the World Cup quarter-final. Against Brazil.

“I suppose there’s some consolation in that we got knocked out by the eventual winners,” says Jones ruefully. “They had this young lad playing for them, I think it was his first game in the World Cup, he was only 17. I tell you something, you didn’t need to be a football expert to see that this boy was going to be one of the greatest players ever.

“The first time he picked the ball up, he sold three or four dummies and had a smack at goal and Jack Kelsey tipped it over. We just looked at each other and were thinking, “Who is this kid?” Because nobody knew, it was Garrincha who we’d all been prepared for, he’d had all the limelight before the tournament and been the big star. But this lad Pele was another step up. Still, in my opinion, he’s the greatest player that’s ever played the game.

20 • • 21

“Garrincha was pretty impressive too mind you but we were prepared for him. Mel Hopkins was set up to mark him, and Mel was a very underrated full-back. He just played Garrincha off the park, he really did. Garrincha was a bit like Stan Matthews in that he would come up to a player, drop the shoulder, go outside him and accelerate away. But Mel would show him that way, he pushed him that way, because Mel then knew that he could come inside and because Mel had great pace, he fancied himself even against Garrincha. He would just shovel Garrincha down the outside and Mel would spread himself against the cross or use his long legs to just hook the ball away from him. He was magnificent that day and he just played Garrincha right out of the game and that’s why they struggled to find a way through us.

“But they were fortunate, they had other players who could create danger and in the end, this boy Pele did the business and won them the game. It was a scrappy goal, but it was his quality that did it. He got the ball on the penalty spot with his back to goal, hooked it behind him, turned and shot in one movement. It got a little deflection on the way and that took it past Jack in goal and just inside the post.

“But we missed John, no question about it. In came Colin Webster to replace him, and Colin was a very good player, no doubt about that, but he wasn’t John Charles. And I say to this day that if John had played, we might have beaten Brazil. I had a particularly good game on the one wing and Terry Medwin was flying on the other, we both got a lot of joy against the full-backs. They were a bit slow and I could take mine on, no bother, inside or outside, Terry the same. We were causing big problems, getting good crosses in and if John had been playing that day, he was so good in the air he might have been on the end of one or two of them. It could have been a different result.

22 • • 23

“I tell people that and they say, “Get stuffed Cliff!” but it might have been! When you play the game, you have an instinct for it and I just sense that if John had played, we might have had a chance. It wouldn’t have finished 1-0, that’s for sure. I’m convinced we could have got through – the older I get, the more convinced I become!

“It was very disappointing to lose that game having gone to the quarter-finals and done so well against Brazil. You felt like it could have been something sensational but it wasn’t to be.”

These days, the nation would be hanging on every moment of such a glorious campaign, but in 1958? Not so much…

“We packed up and flew home after the Brazil game and after we got to London, I got on the train back to Swansea from Paddington, along with Ivor Allchurch, Terry Medwin and Mel Charles. As we got off the train, we bumped into one of Mel’s mates at the station.

““Hello Mel, just come back off holiday have you?”

““What do you mean, come back off bloody holiday? We’ve just come back from the quarter-final of the World Cup!”

“That was a bit how it was then, people didn’t all have televisions, there wasn’t much coverage even if they did, so it was all lower key. I suppose if we’d been playing rugby, it might have been different! We’ve always had to accept in Wales that rugby is the national game, even though more people play football than rugby here. There’s always 70,000 in the Millennium Stadium when Wales play now, and that’s great. But we had our moments as a football team at Ninian Park especially, we used to pack 65,000 people in for some games and it was a great atmosphere. Hopefully we can bring those

22 • • 23

kinds of crowds back again to the football.

“The great pity is that all these years on, nearly 60 years now, Wales haven’t made it through again. But you remain hopeful for four years time. There are some good young players in Wales now like Aaron Ramsey, Bale, hopefully others to come through. But like us with John Charles, we need those two to be fit and available for every game because they can make a difference in any game against any opposition.”

Despite a stellar career that was littered with silverware, when Cliff looks back, that couple of weeks out in Sweden still figures at the forefront of his mind, testimony to the enduring power of the World Cup, however some might like to devalue international football these days.

“I had a marvellous career with Tottenham after the World Cup, we won the double, we won the FA Cup again after that, the Cup Winners’ Cup as well, but going to that World Cup ranks right up there with any of those things.

“For me, my biggest honour was always putting on that Welsh jersey, that never changed. You can’t have anything better than playing for your country and I always relished that. My dad had done it before me and he was always impressing on me just what a big honour it was and how you should behave the right way and do your nation proud.

“It makes me sad that nowadays, that seems to have been pushed to one side because of all the money that’s involved in club football. But for me, playing for your country was the greatest thing you could ever achieve. To do that in the biggest competition in the world, that matches anything that happened to me at White Hart Lane in what were the real glory years for Tottenham.”

24 • • 25

1974

JAN TOMASZEWSKI - POLAND- CHRIS LEPKOWSKI

Q. Jan Tomaszewski, holder of 63 Polish caps, tell us all about the game you’re remembered for. Wembley Stadium, London, November 1973?

A. Yes. You’re right to go back there because that’s where it started for us. I have many memories of the World Cup in West Germany. But to answer any questions about 1974, I have to go back to Wembley. 1974 wouldn’t have been possible without 1973. That was the source of our success. We were the ugly ducklings when we arrived in England. We were written off against this great English team. These ugly ducklings were expected to be sent home to watch the World Cup on TV. Instead, we became beautiful swans. This was England’s big chance to not only beat us and qualify, but also challenge for the trophy in Munich. We got lucky. It was a draw but we ‘beat’ them. There was a feeling back then that anyone who emerged from ‘hell’ at Wembley with a win - and we considered it a ‘win’ - had nothing to fear beyond that. Had Wales got first place in that group by beating England then I think they would also have been destined for a medal in West Germany - that’s what beating England meant back then. We were given a psychological boost that nobody else could possibly give us.

Q. What were your thoughts ahead of that game?

A. [Laughs] Ones of nerves! Three weeks before, we had beaten

24 • • 25

Wales in our qualifier on the same day England beat Austria 7-0 in a friendly. We were on a par with Austria so in the build up to Wembley, I prayed and prayed. “Please God, let this not be 7-0.” The Great Lord heard me.

Q. Brian Clough described you as a ‘clown’ in the build up. How did you assess your performance?

A. I didn’t play well...

Q. [Interrupts] You really think that?

A. Yes. Let me explain... I have disagreed with people who felt I performed well, but I didn’t. I made so many mistakes - basic errors. Jan Tomaszewski did not play in goal...in goal that day were five people: myself and four defenders. What I mean by that is that we were so well coded by our coach Kazimierz Gorski that we played as a defensive unit. In around the second minute, I caught a very easy ball. Then I saw Allan Clarke three metres away, I dropped the ball, and he kicked me in the hand. After the match, my hand was in plaster for three weeks.

On the pitch it was chaos. You couldn’t hear anything. We couldn’t shout or pass on instructions. We had to play by instinct, an instinct that only friends have. When I came out to take aerial balls in front of Clarke or Peters, then my friends had to keep the goal safe. I lost a lot of those one-on-ones - they had to help me out. And then I had to help them when they made mistakes.

We were the five musketeers: if one player made a mistake, there were four others to help him. And that’s how we played that night. We passed an exam that day and we were to become a team who conceded very few goals. Kazimierz

26 • • 27

Gorski told us before the game, “You can play football for 20 years and play 1,000 times for the national team and nobody will remember you. But tonight, in one game, you have the chance to put your names in the history books.” He was right.

Q. What are your recollections of that period immediately after Wembley?

A. We went straight to Ireland because we had a friendly arranged. We knew there was huge euphoria in Poland and after that game in Ireland, we returned to London for a few more days. They delayed our return to ensure that we didn’t interrupt a political conference in Poland. They felt we would be a distraction, so it was about a week after Wembley before we finally got back to Poland. We were greeted like royalty when we did. Mind you, the Irish treated us well too - they seemed very happy we had beaten their neighbours. It was an honour for us. We were the team that stopped England from going to the World Cup. Can you imagine how that felt?

Q. What do you remember about the build-up to West Germany?

A. As a country, we were written off. We were matched up with Italy, Argentina and Haiti. This is what was supposed to happen: Italy would win the group, Argentina would finish second and we would be fighting over third spot with Haiti. That’s what people thought of us. They underestimated us. They forgot this was 1974, not 1970, or 1966, or a different era. They spoke of games they’d played against us in different times or talked of periods of their respective dominance. But football had moved on. We had moved on.

26 • • 27

Q. You won the group convincingly. How?

A. Argentina came out with their fingers on their lips, thinking they could silence us. Ridiculous. They looked lazy and nonchalant. We were there to be tickled, to be played with. But we were focused. They were going to pass the ball around us and beat us. We won 3-2. Argentina had problems throughout that game and control never fell out of our hands. And it was at this point we realised we could get far. [Laughs] Afterwards, we were the ones smiling and chuckling. So maybe they did tickle us after all?

Q. How important was that victory in the first match?

A. It wasn’t just the win which gave us a jolt of confidence. We knew that Italy were playing Argentina in the second sequence of games before we played Haiti. And we also knew that if Argentina and Italy drew then we would qualify by merely beating Haiti. That was considered impossible to people before the World Cup. Now we had belief.

Q. Argentina and Italy drew 1-1. Surely you would have no problems with Haiti?

A. It’s easy to say that now. But it wasn’t as clear. We were terrified before that game against Haiti. It was the only time we were expected to win and we knew we had to win [Haiti had lost 3-1 to Italy in their opening game]. But we came through it. We scored five in the first half and the second half was a formality [Poland won 7-1]. After that game we knew we had qualified, irrespective of our game against Italy.

28 • • 29

Q. Presumably you rested players in that final group game ahead of the second round?

A. [Laughs again]. No, no, no. This was another example of Kazimierz Gorski’s abilities as a coach. He didn’t make changes, he kept the same team - he told us to go out there and show the world how to play football. So we did. We won that game and from that moment, our psychological state went up even further because we had won a game [2-1] which we didn’t need to win. Not only that, but we beat Italy, who were favourites for our group and also the World Cup. It was a brilliant game of football. Both sides attacked. But we sent them to the airport. We went into the next round. England, Argentina and now Italy. We could have taken on anyone and beaten them.

Q. Away from your group, what do you recall about the West Germany vs East Germany game?

A. That was a significant football match at the time. It was a symbolic game from a political stance. East Germany won [1-0] but I didn’t read much into that. West Germany saw the bigger picture. They knew when to turn it on. One nation [East Germany] considered it a political assignment - their opponents used it to prepare for the next round because it was the final game of their group. You could almost equate it to the political philosophies and the range of those ideals. East Germany took the one-hit victory. It looked good for them on that day. They won the battle. But West Germany won the war. They also won the World Cup. So who does it look better for? West Germany, of course.

Q. The second round consisted of two groups of four with the top side going through to the final and the runners-up playing a third-placed play-off.

28 • • 29

A. Yes and we got past Sweden and Yugoslavia. There was no question we wouldn’t. Our confidence continued. The way the groups panned out meant that we effectively played West Germany in that final group game knowing we were in the ‘final four’. We would either be in the final or playing for the bronze medal.

Q. What of the conspiracies that West Germany made a wet Waldstadion pitch even more sodden by watering it?

A. No, that isn’t true. Both sides had to play on the same pitch. That said, it wasn’t a game of football, it was a game of water polo. But we couldn’t complain. After that game, I learned a new phrase: Gloria Victis. It means honour to the defeated. We did lose [Gerd Muller scored in a 1-0] but everyone praised us. Some of the German players came to us afterwards and told us they were genuinely fearful of us. “What would have happened had it been dry?” they asked. We will never know. I felt a great honour at what we’d achieved. As the defeated nation, we felt a sense of pride.

Q. How important was that third-place play-off - a game so often derided these days?

A. Is it? I don’t think I agree with that. We were playing the champions. Brazil. The mighty Brazil. Many of the players from that wonderful 1970 side were still playing. We had to win. And we wanted to win to show we had achieved something. We wanted to end of a good note. I can’t understand why anyone wouldn’t want to do the same. We were playing the most illustrious side in the world and we beat them 1-0. Our journey had started at Wembley. And it ended with that game in Munich. We had medals to show for it. Why would people not want to win this match?

30 • • 31

Q. Poland scored 15 goals in 1974 and you had the two top scorers in Lato [seven] and Szarmach [five]. Yet people always talk about Holland and their Total Football philosophy, not Poland. Does that annoy you?

A. [Long pause] Well...I don’t know. Annoy me? No. Probably not. But actually you might be right. I believe we were as good as them, if not better in some respects. Had we ended up in the other group with them, Brazil and East Germany, I actually think we would have had a stronger chance of reaching the final. West Germany were the best team as we found, but we had already beaten Argentina and went on to beat Brazil. We would have stood a better chance against the Netherlands than West Germany. They played good football, but so did we. Perhaps time hasn’t been kind to us because people always talk about Holland. I remain proud of our achievement. Gloria Victis.

Q. You don’t sound convinced about the greatness of that Dutch side.

A. That would be wrong to say. They had the best player in the world - or, in my view, one of the two best players in the world. The best was Beckenbauer, but so was Cruyff. He was their magician. He was their leader and a brilliant technical player. He was so much better than the rest of his side but he dictated their play. But we had Kazimierz Deyna who was our great - the difference is that he was unknown. He was our conductor, we played to his tune.

But I will say this - for me it was the best ‘final four’ of a World Cup that we’ve ever had. Brazil, Holland, us and West Germany. All four were wonderful sides. But ask me who I feared most and I’ll tell you West Germany, not Holland. We could have beaten the Netherlands. And what a game that would have

30 • • 31

been.

Q. Poland’s best striker Wlodzimierz Lubanski suffered an injury in a 2-0 victory over England in Chorzow in 1973. He missed the World Cup. Did that ruin your chances of success a year later?

A. No, that would be unfair on those who replaced him. Yes it was a horrible injury [Lubanski suffered a serious cruciate injury following a challenge by Roy McFarland] and Wlodzimierz was probably never the same force again. But Mr Gorski called up Jan Domarski. He scored in that game at Wembley. And then Andrzej Szarmach came in and scored five goals in West Germany - he was the vice top scorer after Grzegorz Lato who scored seven. So our weakness wasn’t losing Lubanski, our strength and gain was having a coach in Gorski who could find more than adequate replacements.

Q. You speak highly of Kazimierz Gorski. Tell us more about him.

A. [Audible sigh] Where do I start? He was the Papal of Polish football. That’s what he meant to us. He was a down-to-earth, humble man, who gave us world recognition. But, most of all, he was a phenomenal tactician. He knew exactly what to expect from opponents and how to adjust our style of play to suit certain games. We could play football but he knew when to change our philosophy.

The best example was at Wembley. He knew we couldn’t go there and play “friendly” football. He prepared us to press as a team, to force mistakes, to cover each other. We played as 11 footballers in every sense of the word. As I explained earlier, I didn’t play as a goalkeeper, I played as one of five defenders that day. We had units throughout the side and England

32 • • 33

couldn’t find a way in.

He was like a father to us. During the World Cup, he knew that we needed to get the stress out of our systems so we sat until two or three in the morning, drinking beer in the sauna. Imagine that now? We’d be in the newspapers accused of being drunk, acting inappropriately. He knew how to look after us. There was too much to take in from the tournament. Above all else, Kazimierz Gorski opened our eyes to new ways of playing football. He revitalised Polish football and gave us an identity. We owe him a lot.

Q. Speaking about managers, I just want to come back to what you thought of Brian Clough’s comments referring to you as a ‘clown’? When did you find out?

A. [Laughs] I knew he’d called me a clown before the game. That was fine by me. They wanted to break us psychologically, the press were expecting us to lose. We were happy with that. I had no issues with Brian Clough about his comments.

Q. Would he have been the ideal man to succeed Alf Ramsey or do...?

A. [Interrupts] No. I don’t think that would have been a good idea. Alf Ramsey was a man you could probably compare to Alex Ferguson. Ramsey was a man nobody could adequately replace and for that reason, his successor would have struggled. Ramsey wasn’t just England manager, he was an English football institution. Clough was a great, great manager but I’m not convinced that was the right time for him. I’m glad for him that he didn’t get it because he was replacing Ramsey.

Q. Will the ‘Biało-Czerwoni’ ever become a footballing force capable of emulating the 1974 and ‘82 third-placed finishes?

32 • • 33

A. Yes, absolutely, I have no doubt. I wasn’t happy about the situation at the Euros in 2012. We had German and French players wearing our shirts. They were with us because they’re not good enough for their own countries. But things are changing. Since Zbigniew Boniek became president of the Polish football federation, we now have people running football who speak in human language. Under Boniek’s leadership we will become a top 10 football nation again within four or five years.

Q. Top 10? Seriously?

A. Yes. Come back and speak to me in 2019....[laughs]

34 • • 35

DO YA THINK I'M IN TUNE?- CHRIS LEPKOWSKI

It’s hard to know who to blame for this madness.

It would be easy to point the finger at the England 1970 squad. All bow-ties, dinner jackets, smiles, no hint of awkwardness. We will return to them later.

Instead let’s pull on a pair of boxing gloves and aim our clenched set of fives straight at Rod Stewart.

You have to hand it to Stewart. When he’s not asking us - one would hope rhetorically – “do you think I’m sexy?” or singing about “hot legs” – presumably about an afternoon spent on the Kop - he manages to combine sporting and musical hell.

Football and songs are an uneasy fusion at the best of times. Worse when someone of the musical pedigree of Stewart has put their name to it. And it was Stewart who added no small amount of fever to Scotland’s 1978 World Cup. Andy Cameron went down the straightforward “Tartan Army” line with the official song - a simple ditty, which could almost be chanted on the terraces: “We’re on the march wi’ Ally’s Army”, that kind of thing. Tub-thumping, foot-tapping, rousing nonsense. The single sold over 360,000 copies and reached number six in the charts.

But that wasn’t enough for Rod Stewart. He had to think

34 • • 35

outside the box.

He came up with “Ole Ola”. The chorus of it being: “Ole ola, Ole ola...We’re gonna bring that World Cup back from over there.” [repeat] Yes, he managed to rhyme “ola” with “over there”. Yet Stewart was also a visionary. Check out the following verse: “Oh, Brazil, this time I don’t think so [spot on, they finished third]....Holland without Cruyff just ain’t the same [again, great observation. The losing finalists were good, but not as good as in ‘74]....Germany will, we feel, be a challenge [knocked out at the second round stage, but still...],...The Italians can still play the game [fourth place to Brazil].”

Only then he goes and ruins it: “But there’s really only one team in it. We’ll be singing as we’ll get off of the plane....”

He was half right. The Scotland fans were singing as their team got off the plane. But not for the same reasons. These days you need the power of Youtube or a really unfortunate gamble on Pick Of The Pops to hear either Scotland chart entry.

And it got worse.

John Gordon Sinclair - the spotty one, from Gregory’s Girl - provided a more melancholy anthem four years later. As the Scotland players swayed uneasily behind him, the moment of televisual joy provided Tottenham’s Steve Archibald with his own personal milestone as the first footballer to appear on “Top Of The Pops” with two different groups, Spurs and Chas’n’Dave’s pounding “Tottenham Tottenham” cementing this claim to fame.

Anyway, that’s enough about Scotland. And, no, we’re not going to mention Del Amitri’s “Don’t Come Home Too Soon” from 1998. Yes, you’ve guessed it. They were back before Justin

36 • • 37

Currie had sung the final note - defeats to Brazil and Morocco saw to that. The song wasn’t great either.

England, 1982: the year of the pullover. A collection of England players don sweaters and walk into a recording studio like a rabble of C&A modelling outcasts. Taking it seriously is Kevin Keegan, already versed in pop music, who clings onto his left headphone as if his life depends on it. He clearly fancied himself as the Bono of the group. King Kev’s left foot taps along.

Viv Anderson, hand in left pocket of beige cords, looks uneasy and reads the words from a sheet. In the hope we won’t notice he’s there, he avoids any eye contact with the TV camera. His left foot doesn’t budge. Nice try Viv.

Cyrille Regis, sharing a mike with a headband-free Steve Foster and proboscis-large Phil Thompson, isn’t to know it yet, but this recording is the nearest he gets to a World Cup. Regis’ hamstring is to fail during the final few weeks of the season. In any case “Ron’s 22” are feeling the roar of the “red, white and blue”. Noel Edmonds, presumably passing by, does his best to banter with those around him. No deal.

But ‘82 was nowhere near as painful as “We’ve Got The Whole World At Our Feet” in 1986, or the mediocre “We’re Going All The Way” of Euro ‘88, which involved England players going through the motions on weight-free gym equipment and handling footballs with great unease during a particularly uncomfortable episode of the Wogan show. As any man does with a mad dog, Terry, to his credit, simply moved away, onto his next guest, without making any fuss. Let’s just ignore the noise and hope it goes away.

The turn of the ‘90s was a time of change. New Order were to

36 • • 37

provide the swing in culture that World Cup songs needed. No longer did we expect our finest 22 or 23 to huddle around a few microphones, while dressed in sweaters. “World In Motion” took football songs onto a new level.

The invite was sent out to all of Bobby Robson’s squad. Presumably scarred by the Euro ‘88 horror show, few responded. Returning the call were John Barnes, Paul Gascoigne, Peter Beardsley, Steve McMahon and Des Walker. Joining them was comedian and song co-writer Keith Allen - or “that bloke who looks a bit like Steve Bull” as my mate from school suggested when he first saw the video. The song features a specially recorded sample of 1966 World Cup commentator Kenneth Wolstenholme’s famous “They think it’s all over” line, with “We want goals” and “A beauty scored by Bobby Charlton” lifted from the ‘66 official FIFA film, “Goal!”

The crowning moment is John Barnes rapping towards the end of the song - with the Jamaica-born winger earning his slot with what could only have been a have-to-be-there-to-believe-it “rap-off” with McMahon, Walker and Beardsley.

But “World In Motion” – “E For England” was vetoed by FA killjoys due to the potential link with the drug ecstasy - was no normal World Cup song. There was no chant element to it. There was no orchestra. There were no bored footballers stood around gurning at the nearest camera. This lyrical and musical arrangement sounded fresh, the few players who turned up were having fun and it was the kind of song that fans could buy into. “World In Motion”, taking up its rightful place at the top of the UK singles charts, was to become a soundtrack of summer 1990.

Barnes’ rap included such lines as, “You’ve got to hold and give but do it at the right time...You can be slow or fast but you must

38 • • 39

get to the line...They’ll always hit you and hurt you, defend and attack...There’s only one way to beat them, get round the back...Catch me if you can cos I’m the England man.”

“This ain’t no football song.”

And they weren’t wrong.

Yet back in 1970, there were no raps, no tracksuited footballers doing keepy-uppys and plenty of pomp. “Back Home” was the daddy of all World Cup songs.

England, as World Cup holders, weren’t messing around as they prepared for Mexico ‘70. Among Alf Ramsey’s gruelling preparations was the recording of Back Home and an accompanying, nothing to do with football B-side called “Cinnamon Stick”.

Written by Bill Martin and Phil Coulter, released as a single in late April, the song spent three weeks at number one. It was to be the go-to reference for all future World Cup songs. England players, decked out in dinner suits, bowties and, in Nobby Stiles’ case, a full set of teeth, belted out the song with pride, with gusto. “Back Home” was to be used as the theme tune for BBC’s mid-1990s comedy TV show “Fantasy Football League”, whose hosts would ultimately give us “Three Lions”.

But 1970 and ‘90 remain exceptions. The back catalogue of World Cup songs is a compendium of dirge and noise.

Footballing horror songs aren’t just a British disease. Music throughout the years has seen some uneasy fusions - David Bowie and Bing Crosby, Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballe and even Rupert the Bear, a frog chorus and Paul McCartney.

38 • • 39

Yet there has been worse, not least Germany’s first foray into the World Cup as a newly unified nation. What better way to celebrate their participation, as holders, in the 1994 World Cup than climbing into a musical bed with 1970s disco divas the Village People?

It was a camp football-disco mix, which wasn’t so much “YMCA”, as just “Why?” Germany were sent home in disgrace after losing to Bulgaria in the quarter-finals. And, frankly, it was the least they deserved.

It still has nothing on their 1986 effort, “Mexico Mi Amor”, featuring Franz Beckenbauer rocking his head side-to-side and dangerously close to a ceiling fan, with added tomfoolery from Harald Schumacher pretending to play the trumpet - oh, how Patrick Battiston would have laughed.

The nonsense extends to other regions of Europe too. Mexico ‘86 might have been about the Danish Dynamite, but it didn’t prevent that nation’s finest squeezing themselves into bad tracksuits and tunelessly bawling into microphones while popstrel Dodo Gad, lead singer of Danish popsters Dodo and the Dodos, sings “Mother Denmark loves all Danish boys who can bang ... the ball.” Preben Elkjaer, meanwhile, can be seen sniggering in the background. Enough Preben, enough. We’d rather not think of Sepp Piontek’s team in this manner. But they haven’t half challenged us with this one. And yet we’re told that, 28 years on, this song remains popular in Copenhagen.

Four years later, Sweden got what they deserved for the horror show that was “Ciao Ciao Italia”, written by comedy pranksters Galenskaparna och After Shave. Half of it was in Italian, half in Swedish. While England celebrated “World in Motion”, Europop’s nadir had surely spiked over in Scandinavia.

40 • • 41

Yet, having started with Scotland, it would be remiss of us not to end with the Tartan Army. “Back Home” collaborators Martin and Coulter ditched their dinner jackets for kilts with magnificent, foot-stomping, tartan-waving Bay City Rollers-style results.

“Yabba dabba doo, we support the boys in blue, and it’s easy, easy!...Yabba dabba doo, we are gonna follow you, and it’s easy, easy!...Yabba dabba day, we’ll be with you all the way, singing eeeeeeeasy!....Ringa dinga ding, there goes Willie on the wing and it’s easy, easy!....”

We think you get the drift.

40 • • 41

42 • • 43

1998

CRAIG BROWN - SCOTLAND- BILL THOMAS

“Be careful what you wish for” is an adage that football fans with an inky fetish would do well to have tattooed on their forearm for while the thought of change always seems to hold so much promise of a brave new world, the reality can very often turn sour.

Take the case of the Scottish nation. Once upon a time, they were regular diners at the groaning table of major international tournaments, barely ever failing to RSVP when the biannual beanfeasts came around. But in the 21st century? The Tartan Army take their summer holidays at home these days thank you.

Over the course of 16 long years, Scotland’s supporters have had time to reflect upon a golden age that took them all the way from 1974 to 1998 an era that came to its conclusion in a World Cup that the Scots had the privilege to open – not that you’d be wise putting it that way to their then manager Craig Brown.

“The opening ceremony is a menace, it really is. There are so many things going on before your game, obviously the stadium, the pitch, is being used for the ceremony, so you can’t get into your work, players can’t warm up properly.

“They had an indoor area which was ok, but it isn’t the same as

42 • • 43

getting out on the pitch, getting a feel for it, for the stadium, for the atmosphere, and you’re just waiting for it all to be over so you can get on and do your job, so it does contribute to a few additional nerves I’d say.

“I’m certainly not blaming that because both sides go through it, but we lost a goal early on, which was unlike us, just four minutes in, and it came from a corner which was very unlike us too. It wasn’t a clean header, but it went in and to find yourself a goal down to Brazil, the holders, after four minutes is the last thing you want.

“Nobody can say for definite, and I’m not looking for excuses, but if we’d had a proper warm up, it might have helped. We took a good deal of pride in our warm up, we prepared thoroughly, physically and mentally and we were always switched on right from the start of games.”

We’ll return to that game with Brazil later, but simply to make it to France ’98, Scotland were required to traverse a new qualification landscape that had gradually taken shape through the 1990s after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

“We were in a qualification group that included Austria and Sweden, along with the east European nations of Latvia, Estonia and Belarus who were all something of an unknown quantity in international terms at that stage following the break up of the Soviet Union.

“When I began in international football, the Soviet Union had a population of something like 250 million people and so clearly they were always viewed as a football powerhouse. But around 1993, that became 15 federations with five of them playing in Asia, the rest in Europe. I think Russia still had a population of around 150 million, with the other 100 million split across the

44 • • 45

other nations, which still left some major countries, certainly by our standards – I think Latvia is around twice the size of Scotland for example.

“Now, because they were new nations, they prioritised sport as a method of finding an identity in the world and making people aware of their existence, so they put huge resources into the game of football in particular. For more established countries like ourselves, that posed a problem not just on the field but away from it, because the uninitiated supporters and a sizeable section of the press would talk about, “It’s only Latvia, it’s only Estonia”. They would treat them very lightly because they were new names on the world football scene, countries with no tradition under their own steam. But the fact of the matter was that there were far better than folk imagined, in every sense.

“Fortunately, the players were very well clued up on it and they approached each game in the right frame of mind, there was no complacency or anything of that nature. Ultimately, it was a very strong campaign for us, we conceded only three goals in ten games, lost just once and ultimately we qualified automatically as the best runners up across the nine UEFA groups, ahead of the likes of Italy, Belgium and Russia who all had to go into the play-offs. We’d had a similar qualification for Euro ’96, conceding just three, so to let in only six goals across two qualifying campaigns, then just two more in Euro ‘96 itself, for a country like Scotland, that was a laudable achievement.

“We were in a good frame of mind when qualification started because although we didn’t make it through the group stage, we missed out only on goals scored to the Netherlands who we had drawn with. We beat Switzerland – who had qualified under Roy Hodgson before he left them – and lost to England, though we were a little unfortunate in that one. We had

44 • • 45

enjoyed a period of consistent selection and I always felt that consistent results come from consistent selection. We had kept a similar team together over two or three years, everyone was well drilled, knew their job and knew their value.’ While Scotland’s football team was in good nick going into qualifying, the same could not be said of the national stadium, Hampden Park. The giant footballing bowl had long since reached the end of its natural life and following the catalogue of stadium disasters that disfigured the 1980s, the decision to rebuild it had finally been taken. For World Cup qualification, it was out of commission.

“The anomaly for that qualification was that we had no national stadium and therefore we had to take games around the country to different stadia in different cities, though we obviously also played at Ibrox and at Celtic Park. In some respects, that was helpful because we created very strong atmospheres, most notably at Celtic Park because it’s a much tighter stadium than the old Hampden, and I felt that intimidated nations such as Latvia.

“We played Estonia at Rugby Park and then Belarus at Pittodrie and I do like the idea of taking the national team out to the nation. With less attractive countries such as those as visitors, there was always a question of whether we could get supporters to come and fill a place like Ibrox, but by going to Kilmarnock and Aberdeen, it pretty much guaranteed that we would have full houses and again, that intimidated those two countries I felt.

“Of course, you would always rather play at the national stadium – and fill it! – but in the circumstances we faced at the time, I felt we made good decisions as to who we played where. Latvia was the final fixture and we chose to take that to Celtic Park because of the atmosphere and the place was duly

46 • • 47

packed that night which helped us enormously.

“Looking back, the key game was the 1-0 home win over Sweden when Jim Leighton gave a superb performance for us. Jim is a Scotland legend of course, he played 91 games for his country and posted 45 clean sheets which is some record by any standards. He’s not playing in goal for Italy or Germany, he did that with Scotland and so that is a quite remarkable statistic.

“Gary McAllister missed that game against Sweden, which was a heavy blow for us because Gary was a very influential member of the team. He was suspended for that game, as a result of what had happened in Estonia when the game was not played – that had been the game he was scheduled to miss and so the suspension carried over.”

What happened in Estonia? After training in the Kadrioru Stadium in Tallinn the night before the game, Scotland found the floodlights to be inadequate and lodged a protest with FIFA. As a result, the kick-off time was brought forward from 6.45pm to 3pm local time which displeased the local association no end not least because of a potential loss in television money – it always comes back to that doesn’t it? On the day, Scotland turned up for the 3pm kick-off, John Collins rolled the ball forward off the centre spot and the referee then immediately abandoned the game. Why? Estonia hadn’t shown.

“We felt bitterly aggrieved over what had happened in Estonia,” recalls Brown. “The match delegate in Estonia told us that we should turn up, kick off and if Estonia were not there, we would get the points. We did everything we were told and yet we were asked to replay the game. In my opinion, that was a mistake from FIFA. They should have been stronger and made

46 • • 47

it clear that Estonia failed to fulfil a fixture and needed to face the consequences of that.

“Estonia wanted the game to be replayed, which it should never have been, but ultimately they got their way, albeit at a neutral venue. All of those eastern bloc countries tend to vote together and so when issues come to a vote – or even threaten to – there are nine former Soviet nations all voting as one. It means they are quite powerful because they all stick together. I think that may have been in the minds of the authorities later on.

“Going back to the game itself, it was disappointing for us and for the supporters, though I must say, from all of the reports that we heard, the Tartan Army loved going to Tallinn because there were plenty of attractions there shall we say! Drink was only one of them! Of course though, it was very costly for them to get there and in that sense, it was money wasted because they didn’t get to see the team play. They maintained their good humour and in the stadium, they sang, “There’s only one team in Tallinn!”

“Then, when we were ordered to replay it, that game was played on neutral ground in Monaco, which as everyone knows, is not a cheap place to visit. The unfairness of that whole situation still rankles with me because I genuinely believe that if you have a match delegate, then he is in charge of proceedings and he should be given the jurisdiction to carry out that responsibility. He set the time for kick-off given the problems with the floodlights there and once he does that, you have an obligation to conform to that.

“In choosing to replay the game, the authority of match delegates everywhere was undermined. We had already been required to stay there an extra 24 hours because of what had

48 • • 49

gone on, which was very unpopular with the players’ clubs because they had games that weekend, and then we had to fit another game into the calendar, so it was very disappointing all round. I have to say I was surprised because in general, I have great respect for FIFA, but on that occasion, their decision making was poor.

“Purely looking at the football rather than the rights and wrongs of it, when we were due to play in Estonia, we had won 2-0 in Latvia the previous weekend and we were very confident of winning that game too. There was the usual break in international games after November and when we played them in Monaco in February, you are starting again to a certain extent. I’ll not deny that we should have done better in Monaco, the 0-0 draw was disappointing. It was a big, wide open pitch, we had big Duncan Ferguson playing up front, but still we didn’t manage to get a goal. That could have been costly to us in terms of the qualification.

“That blank was rare for us because we scored a number of goals in the group and Kevin Gallacher in particular was in excellent form for us. At the time, he was doing very well in England in the Premier League and he was full of confidence. The best thing that happened to Kevin was the change in the offside law which made it that if you were in line, you were now onside. Any through ball, Kevin had such electric pace that if he was level with the defender when it was played, he was always getting there first! I think he got 20 goals that season for Blackburn Rovers and he carried that on into Scotland’s games.”

Ultimately, the Estonian shenanigans counted for nothing as Scotland reeled off three straight wins to complete the group and finish as UEFA’s best runners up, earning automatic qualification for the World Cup. So far, so good. But this is

48 • • 49

Scotland we’re talking of. Nothing is ever straightforward.

“Having qualified, our hopes were dealt a sizeable blow when Gary McAllister got injured playing for Coventry City and had to miss the tournament. Gary was the main man in our team at the time and so to lose him disrupted us greatly. In fact, in every tournament we went to during my time on the staff with Scotland, we were missing a key player. We went to Mexico without Kenny Dalglish, in 1990 we were without Davie Cooper and John Robertson and then in 1998, it was Gary that was missing. A small country like Scotland, we cannot cope without our main players and on each occasion, we failed to get out of the group stage. That’s not wholly attributable to injuries of course, but it must be a significant factor.

“Then the draw for the World Cup itself meant that we were grouped with the holders, Brazil – it always seems to be Brazil for Scotland at World Cups! It turned out that we were going to open the World Cup itself by playing Brazil in Paris, and you can’t have a more attractive fixture to play than that.

“As part of our preparations I went to see Brazil on a number of occasions, I watched many DVDs. I think we were ready for them and I felt we played well on the day. Bobby Robson was a big help to me in fact because their main man was Ronaldo and Bobby had coached him in Holland, at PSV. I met Bobby and asked him how to stop Ronaldo, did we man mark him, double up on him, what was the best approach?

“Craig, if he is on form, you’ll never stop him! He’s the best striker I’ve ever worked with. I’ve had Lineker, Romario, but Ronaldo is stronger, fitter, better than them. You’ll not stop him by marking him or anything like that. All you can do, what you must do, is cut off the supply.

50 • • 51

“So I went away and analysed the set up of the Brazilian team, their distribution, and I found that most of the passes to him came, amazingly enough, from the right-back, Cafu. So rather than mark Ronaldo, we marked Cafu!

“I said to Christian Dailly who was on the left side for us, “If Cafu crosses the halfway line, you get right up against him. Even when he hasn’t, get right up against him so that he doesn’t get time on that ball to pick out Ronaldo”. He used to play a lovely ball right into Ronaldo’s feet, but by using Dailly in that way, we managed to eliminate a lot of the supply and in our game, Ronaldo didn’t really do a great deal so Bobby’s advice was absolutely spot on. Having said that, the own goal that we conceded came from Cafu’s cross, but you’re talking about some of the greatest players in the world here.

“As I’ve said, the real problem we gave ourselves was conceding after four minutes and there is no question that the opening ceremony disrupted us. We did get to walk on the pitch briefly before the game and what we did do, which surprised everyone, was turn up in the kilt! That certainly went down well with our fans and even the Brazilian supporters admired the national costume too. I’d brought that idea from Germany, from Bayern Munich, because I’d been to a lecture by their youth coach, Bernhard Kern, and he said that when the youth team travelled away, they did so in the Bavarian costume to remind them of their identity. I felt that was a good idea and it set a tone for us.”

Brown’s efforts to try and engender a positive mood and approach was particularly important given the prevailing mood amongst the Scottish media, one that had existed ever since the draw for the competition had pitted them against Brazil for that first game.

50 • • 51

“In Scotland, in the media especially, there’s an anti-hero syndrome, you’re not allowed to be good at anything! There’s a blood group in Scotland which is unique to the world, it’s called “B Negative”. That mood pervades all sports. There was a guy from Scotland who won the Open a few years ago, back in 1999, Paul Lawrie, a big Aberdeen supporter. But if you read the media here, he never won it you know. Van de Velde lost the Open. That is the mentality among the media here unfortunately.

“Ahead of the World Cup and the Brazil game in particular, the expectations were of us losing and words like “humiliation” were used, the media talking of it being an embarrassment and all that kind of thing. In a perverse way, it was actually helpful to me because it helped to motivate the players. They knew they could give a good account of themselves and if you looked at the record we’d had over the previous four years, even on the very few occasions where we had lost games, we’d only done so narrowly.

“I kept reminding the players that we’d been written off already so they were determined to do a good job on the day. Then the little details, like wearing the kilt, that created its own atmosphere, it got the fans going and from there, I felt we played very well that day, despite losing the early goal, and there was a recognition around the competition that we had given a good account of ourselves.

“While the media have the B Negative mentality, the Scottish fans are terrific, their attitude, the numbers they travel in and so on. They are so supportive and you really couldn’t wish for anything more from them. Generally, the Tartan Army are an optimistic bunch, they don’t share that pessimism and the misgivings that you find in the press, although there’s no denying that over the piece, the media do influence the

52 • • 53

supporters quite a bit, and that is inevitable.

“We had Rod Stewart following us with the Tartan Army I remember, he was at all our games in France. We travelled to Bordeaux to play Norway and he spent some time with us before that game and he is a really devoted Scotland supporter. The boys enjoyed his company and having him around was a lift for them.

“Going out to play Norway in the next game, we were confident because after having played so well against the Brazilians, the holders and the favourites for the competition, and with Morocco to follow, we felt that we had an opportunity to do enough to qualify for the knockout stages.

“The Norwegian game, we created a number of very good opportunities, but unfortunately, we couldn’t take them and then we were knocked back right at the start of the second half when they took the lead. I felt we kept going well, Craig Burley got us an equaliser and we came away with a draw which was not a disaster by any means.”

It meant that after two games, Brazil had already qualified with six points, Norway, who still had to play them, had two and Scotland and Morocco were on one point each, Scotland’s goal difference better than their coming African opponents. Depending on Norway’s result against Brazil, even a draw might be enough for Scotland, while victory would mean Norway would need to defeat the world champions to progress at Scotland’s expense. Suddenly, the Scottish media had gone from trepidation to expectation. For those who recall the hubris of ’78, that was dangerous territory…

“Again there’s another misconception among supporters, not just in Scotland but in England too – “oh, it’s just Morocco”.

52 • • 53

Had it been Nigeria perhaps there’d have been more respect for the opposition, but they were dismissed back in Scotland. Thirty years before, that might have been justified, but not then. They were the African champions, they have a population of 35 million people, they are very keen on their football. I’d been over to Casablanca to see them and it was very apparent the quality that they had. To be the African champions, that is no small achievement, but the footballing public back home weren’t given adequate warning that this was a difficult game in prospect.

“It’s very much the nature of tournament football and the four team group situation that when you come to that final game, if things are tight, you do sometimes find yourself in a position where you have to chase games and sometimes, that can lead to a pretty poor result. I’m not denying that we didn’t play well against Morocco, we should have played better and we accepted the responsibility for an indifferent display.

“They caught us out a couple of times and it was 2-0 to them early in the second half when we got Craig Burley sent off, admittedly for a rash tackle. To be a man short in a game we needed to at least draw, I then had to go chasing the game. I changed the team and went to try and grab something back. I brought on Tosh McKinlay for Jackie McNamara to try and get us forward and play in a more attacking full-back role but unfortunately, we couldn’t get back into it and we lost the game 3-0.

“The goals were softly conceded and it was disappointing to go out on that basis as a team that, in the preceding years, had given very little away. I had 70 games with Scotland and only on three occasions did we lose three goals so to do it in those circumstances, it was a heartbreaking situation.”

54 • • 55

It was to be Brown’s last taste of tournament football with Scotland – and, to date, Scotland’s too. Understandably, for all the disappointments, France ’98 is a memory that will live with him forever.

“The 1998 campaign was my fifth major tournament on the staff with Scotland. It started in Mexico in 1986 when Alex Ferguson was in charge after the very sad death of Jock Stein at the very end of the qualification period. I was there as part of the coaching set up. In 1990 when we played in Italy, I was the assistant manager to Andy Roxburgh, I had the same role in the European Championships in 1992 and then managed Scotland in the Euros in England in 1996. So going out to France, I had plenty of experience of international football. But being in charge and at a World Cup, that was something again.

“When you’re not the manager, when you don’t have the ultimate responsibility, you’re really cocky about it! I remember playing Uruguay in 1986 and Alex Ferguson asking the staff what we thought. When you’re not in the firing line, it’s easy to say, “Why are we going four at the back against one?” That one was a wonderful player called Francescoli but you can be full of, “Let’s take a defender off!”

“Alex didn’t do that and we ended up with a 0-0 result which was a disgrace given how they played, they were so brutal, so negative, but they did the job they wanted to do. In the end, that result cost us progression but later, when you’re making the calls, you can understand what was going through Alex’s mind!

“Over a 12 year period, we did five major tournaments and I was privileged enough to be at them all in some capacity with the team. Since then we haven’t been to a single tournament. I think Scottish supporters would give their right arm to go to

54 • • 55

just one competition now!

“At the time, people always want more, they think you should be doing better and perhaps in these islands, that’s something we all do a bit too much of. I felt that by 2000, people were fed up with me and that it was time for a fresh start. There was a feeling that people wanted the team to be more gung ho and more of the “Braveheart” thing but international football isn’t like that any more, if it ever was. It’s a very studied, almost scientific process at that level and you do have to be very vigilant and very careful if you want consistent success, especially from a smaller country.

“We almost made it six tournaments in 14 years too. We got to the play-offs for Euro 2000 and lost out to England, I was so embarrassed that we hadn’t qualified that I resigned straight away, I felt it was time for me to go. Whether the SFA would have kept me on in any case, I don’t know, but after failing to qualify for that competition after eight years as manager with a 100% qualification record, I felt quite ashamed. If I’d known what was going to happen in the years after that, maybe I wouldn’t have felt quite so bad about it!”

Careful what you wish for indeed...

56 • • 57

1986

JAN MOLBY - DENMARK- CHRIS LEPKOWSKI

Jan Molby gasps for breath. He is dazed, wheezing, struggling. As he leans over, hands on his hips, his chest is being compressed by a lack of oxygen. He continues to wrestle and grapple for any air he can get.

This is Bogota, Colombia. May 1986.

The 22-year-old Dane has just helped Liverpool to a League and FA Cup double in England. His physical, asthmatic-induced struggles have little to do with any frivolity stemming from Anfield celebrations. Far from it. Molby has merely sprinted across a football pitch during a routine training session. And with it he has experienced his first taste of ‘altitude’ training.

And he isn’t the only one struggling.

Yet just a few weeks later, Denmark will emerge from Mexico 1986 as the most exciting side of the tournament. Diego Maradona, undoubtedly the player of the tournament, will liken them to a ‘bullet train’. Pele describes them as the best team in Group E - a round-robin of four dubbed as the ‘Group of Death’ as it also included the reigning Copa America champions Uruguay, European powerhouse West Germany and Scotland. Alex Ferguson and Ossie Ardiles call the Danes as the best team in Europe.

56 • • 57

Why so? We’ll return to this later.

Some 28 years on, Jan Molby is about to go on stage in a Wolverhampton pub to talk about his career. I hear few Scouse accents, but the Cleveland Arms is awash with Liverpool shirts. It’s a predominantly male audience: fathers with sons, groups of lads, long-distance Liverpool fans, all desperate to hear Molby’s stories about his 12-year spell on Merseyside. And yet he could probably dedicate a whole night to simply speaking about Danish Dynamite, as the Denmark national team was called.

The seeds for Mexico 1986 were sown seven years earlier.

The late 1970s were a significant era in Danish football. In 1977, Borussia Moenchengladbach’s Danish midfielder Allan Simonsen was named as the European Footballer of The Year. A year later, the Danish league was made professional. Yet the national team was playing catch-up. They had never qualified for a World Cup.

In 1979, Sepp Piontek was appointed as Denmark’s boss. Piontek was born in Breslau, West Germany in 1940. It was a part of Silesia that was to be absorbed into Poland following the re-routing of borders after the War and is now known as Wroclaw. At the time of his appointment as Denmark coach, Piontek, then only 39, had already managed German clubs Werder Bremen, Fortuna Dusseldorf and St Pauli, also holding down a brief role as coach of the Haiti national team.

Piontek, known as a strict disciplinarian, found the Danish national side wasn’t what he was expecting. “I can’t do anything with this team...I only saw them six times, three days a year. There were limits to what I could achieve. How could I get them to work as a team?”

58 • • 59

Morten Olsen, Denmark captain in 1986, observed, “Piontek came with a lot of German discipline but also knew he had Danish players – they also need some of their own responsibility and he found a good balance between discipline and freedom.”

Five years before Mexico, Denmark’s football side was taking shape.

Molby was a month away from turning 18 when he realised that Denmark’s fortunes were changing. Then a youngster for his local side Kolding, Molby was sat at home watching the Danes take on future World Cup champions Italy. It was June 3, 1981.

“I remember it like yesterday,” said Molby. “I was watching us in the qualifiers for the 1982 World Cup and we beat Italy 3-1. I was sat at home, I was 17 years old and just sat open-mouthed.

“We were brilliant. The football was fantastic. It was focused around attacking football.

“I thought, “We’re going places...and I want to be part of that.” Six months later, I made my debut at 18. And that period between 1984 and ‘86 turned out to be amazing. It was an incredible transformation.

“Up until 1978, the Danish league was amateur. We had a lot of good players in Germany and Belgium but Sepp Piontek changed our mentality when he was appointed in 1979. We had to change and become international footballers. We were never qualifying for tournaments, it was like a bit of fun. Nobody took us seriously.

“Sepp landed in Denmark at the right time. Regardless of who

58 • • 59

the boss was, we would have achieved something because the players were that good. But he instilled discipline, got us playing international football properly.

“And his impact on players was tremendous. You couldn’t have made the Morten Olsen thing up. He was a right-winger, a defensive-midfielder and then a sweeper, and that enabled him to play for another seven years. That was down to Piontek. The players respected him immensely.”

In 1984, Denmark qualified for their first major tournament since the European Championship 20 years earlier. They were to reach the Euro ‘84 semi-finals, losing to Spain on penalties following a 1-1 draw.

Disappointment aside, a momentum was building. In their qualification group for Mexico 1986, Denmark finished top of Group Six, ahead of the Soviet Union, Switzerland, Republic of Ireland and Norway. It was hardly a group of minnows.

“Mexico was one of the absolute highlights of my career,” continued Molby.

“Playing in Denmark’s first-ever World Cup was something special. The country went absolutely crazy for us and the way we played football. Two years earlier, we qualified for the Euros and managed to get to the semi-finals only to lose on penalties. I don’t know what it is, but it doesn’t quite have the same feel to it as the World Cup.

“It felt like we were growing into a special team - one that was ready to peak - in 1986. This was going to be our World Cup.

“In our last two group games before 1986, we beat Norway 5-1 and Ireland 4-1 away. We were a good team and we knew it.”

60 • • 61

It wasn’t just the ease of Denmark’s qualification which caught the eye. More, it was the style of play.

Piontek took the Dutch model of Total Football and gave it his own twist. They sped up the play. Where the Dutch wore hippy love beads, long hair and bright orange shirts, Danish players wore their hair longer at the back, shorter on top. Their shirts were a mish-mash of red and white - the ‘carnival suit’, as it was known, was a chaotic half-red, half-white / red pinstripe. It was the design of kit manufacturer Hummel, also giving fans of Southampton a useful clue as to how their shirts would look for the 1987 campaign.

Offensively, Denmark had Michael Laudrup and Preben Elkjaer. The former, then with Juventus, was to enjoy spells with Barcelona and Real Madrid. He was, according to some, the ‘Nordic Maradona’. Elkjaer, meanwhile, was voted the European Footballer of the Year runner-up in 1985, aiding Hellas Verona to their Serie A league title year in the same year. He scored such a stunning hat-trick against Northern Ireland in 1979 that their manager, Danny Blanchflower, was to describe him as, “One of the most outstanding talents I’ve ever seen.”

Molby said, “Laudrup was a great, great player. He was a young, exciting player. Preb was an interesting one. Not a lot of people knew about him in England I guess but he had two consecutive years where he’d been close to winning European Player of the Year and was shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Platini and the big guns in Europe. He was a super player. He was very selfish as a striker.

“He’d get the ball and a lot of things would end with him - he’d shoot, score, dribble, take someone on. He was aggressive and had a great goalscoring record. He was one of the best at the

60 • • 61

time. Because he played at Verona after Lokeren in Belgium, he fell a bit under the radar - we had players at Ajax, Anderlecht, Manchester United, Bayern Munich and Liverpool - but take nothing away, he was a super player.”

And what of Piontek’s philosophy? The Daily Express described Denmark as playing “high-wire football - without the safety net”. The foundations of Denmark’s success owed a lot to the Dutch model.

“We had a big Ajax influence,” said Molby. “There was myself, Jesper Olsen, Soren Lerby, Frank Arnesen who had all played in Amsterdam. It was a total football thing.

“People ask me what was the system? Well it wasn’t really an obvious system. We had a sweeper in Morten Olsen, then we had two man-markers - Ivan Nielsen and Soren Busk - and then the rest just played wherever. It was interactive football. It was fluid, exciting and so difficult for sides to mark against.

“As footballers we loved it. Those of us who played further up the field felt liberated. A lot of it was down to instinct between the players themselves.

“And we also had good footballers. Frank Arnesen was one of the most underrated footballers I’ve seen. He was a super, super player. We had Elkjaer and Laudrup. Simonsen, who had been European Footballer of the year in 1977, was also in our squad, though he didn’t play much. We had good players. We knew our strengths. There was a deep Ajax influence and we had a few players at Anderlecht, which was similar - they are the Ajax of Belgium. We understood each other, we were used to playing attractive football.”

Denmark prepared for their first-ever World Cup with a 28-

62 • • 63

day training camp. They spent a fortnight in Denmark, before 10 days in Colombia to acclimatise to altitude.

There were few perks in Denmark or Colombia. Piontek was demanding and meticulous. He would call three-hour tactical meetings. Players were pushed to breaking point, with altitude training in oxygen masks as part of a daily programme that began at 8am and ended late at night.

The journey to Colombia wasn’t the easiest either, not least as it took a little under 24 hours. An uneasy return flight to Mexico, with the plane weaving in and out of mountain areas, did little for the players’ heart-rates.

The training in Bogota was hard-going. Players struggled with the conditions. The Colombian capital is 2.5km above sea level. Alcohol was banned. As defender Ivan Nielsen said, “Sepp was trying to win the World Cup. We just wanted a beer.”

Warm up games were played against local sides and Paraguay - bizarrely staged on a field, against a backdrop of parked cars, with no more than a piece of string separating fans from the pitch. Arnesen, Denmark’s only Spanish speaker, was sent off for protesting to a referee following hefty challenges on Jesper Olsen and Laudrup. Jens Bertelsen came into the side against Atletico Junior in Barranquilla - hampering Molby’s chances of regular World Cup football.

A sense of unease in Colombia lingered. Security was tight. The Danes were even described as “immensely attractive kidnapping victims”, an observation made by the Bogota Hilton’s head of security not long after a representative from Hummel had been mugged outside the hotel. Matters weren’t helped by a fatal car crash outside the team hotel with one of the victims, a woman, lying dead for several hours before

62 • • 63

being recovered. It was all a bit different to Copenhagen. More than half of the 22 players were to suffer from either food or water poisoning. Players were instructed to brush their teeth with mineral water and ordered to shower with heads bowed and mouths closed to avoid swallowing any tap water.

Molby wasn’t impressed.

“We got the preparations wrong - totally wrong,” he says, shaking his head as he reflects on events 28 years ago.

“We were away for too long. We were in Denmark for two weeks - though I was only there for a week as I had the FA Cup Final with Liverpool to prepare for - then we went to Colombia for 10 days and then we got to Mexico four days before the tournament started. That is 28 days - way too long. There were so many things you had to get done but that was too long. We peaked in the groups but I feel we didn’t need to get anywhere near our peak to get out of that group, even though it was considered the hardest group of all.

“As for the altitude, I’ve never experienced anything like it in my life. We landed in Colombia and it was all old school. You spend all day on a plane and then you land and go straight to the training ground for a session because you don’t want to miss a thing, never mind jetlag or tiredness.

“We got changed on the coach and it was a light 28-minute running session, yet I simply couldn’t breathe. I always struggled anyway as I was asthmatic but I have never experienced anything like it - I thought there is no way I can play football at this altitude. I ran from one end of the pitch to the other and I couldn’t breathe at all. It was horrible.

“We were super-fit athletes and couldn’t breathe. How the

64 • • 65

hell are you supposed to get through this? But we did. It’s a big thing. You have no sparkle or edge. But we got fully prepared. The biggest thing was the Spain game. It was played in mid-afternoon, 40c and that killed us.”

Denmark opened their Group E account on June 4, 1986, with a 1-0 victory against Scotland, thanks to Preben Elkjaer’s goal on 57 minutes. West Germany and Uruguay shared a 1-1 draw earlier that day. Germany took control of the group by coming from behind to beat Scotland 2-1 in their next game. And then came Denmark’s clash with Uruguay, Copa America holders.

Elkjaer scored on 11 minutes, before Soren Lerby made it 2-0 half an hour later. An Enzo Francescoli penalty brought the South Americans back into the game. Not for long. Laudrup made it 3-1, before Elkjaer completed his hat-trick with two more before Jesper Olsen made it 6-1. Denmark 6, Uruguay 1. The Danes were back in control of their destiny. And for once it wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

Denmark’s final game was against West Germany. A draw or win and Piontek’s side would face Spain in the second round. Lose and they would take on Morocco, deemed an easier opponent. Any potential inclination to throw the game was rubbished: Denmark had never beaten West Germany. And Piontek, who never felt loved in his homeland, was desperate to win. This was more than Denmark versus West Germany. There was a personal element to Piontek’s approach.

The Danes beat West Germany 2-0. Yet, unbeknown to them, their fine moment was costly. Jesper Olsen netted a 43rd minute penalty before John Eriksen scored the second. But two minutes from time, playmaker Arnesen was sent-off for lashing out at Lothar Matthaus.

64 • • 65

Arnesen maybe should not have played. His wife had been taken ill with a nasty virus. That was bad enough. Reports of that game suggest he wasn’t at his best. He was then booked for dissent in the first half when he should have been given a penalty. He was also on the receiving end of a poor challenge by Ditmar Jakobs. Piontek missed a trick in not taking him off.

Molby, reflecting on that game of June 13, 1986, admits Piontek should have taken off Arnesen. But asked whether Denmark would have settled on finishing second in the group, knowing they’d get an easier second-round game, his answer is short and sweet. Supporters, media might dwell over permutations. But “what ifs” clearly do not enter a footballer’s psyche.

“No chance! Yes, we would have played, and probably beaten, Morocco. But this was West Germany. The manager might have had background reasons but we didn’t have a problem with going at them. We’d never beaten Germany in a competitive game before. It was never mentioned in earnest, but maybe in passing: “What shall we do against the West Germans?...Well let’s beat them.”

“We wanted to beat them. I was fully in the camp that I wanted us to beat the Germans, even though it might make it tougher for us later. You don’t think any other way as footballers. Fans maybe do, the media...but as footballers you want to win your next game. We were well aware of the permutations. We knew Spain and we never managed to get the better of them but we felt we’d beat them too. The way we played, we could take them all.”

On the issue of Arnesen, Molby added, “That was maybe our only mistake. He should have been taken off earlier in that game. He had been booked, he got brought down when he was clean through so he wasn’t happy about that, and his wife had

66 • • 67

been taken ill, which was a big thing. At 2-0 there was no need for Arnesen to finish that match.”

Denmark missed Arnesen against Spain - a game they were to lose 5-1 - though it wasn’t obvious straight away. Jesper Olsen opened the scoring with a penalty just after the half hour, before passing the ball across his own box, allowing Emilio Butragueno to equalise just before the break. Butragueno was to score three more, with Andoni Goikoetxea also netting.

It the 5-1 scoreline wasn’t a shock, the identity of the defeated team certainly was. Given how they’d played in their group, a 5-1 win for Denmark wouldn’t have been out of the question. Nobody saw defeat coming, let alone a battering.

At 2-1 down, Piontek brought on forward John Eriksen for defender Henrik Andersen. It was too much, too soon. There were more than 30 minutes left. And while Denmark were used to such changes, the substitution simply didn’t work.

Molby feels the game simply didn’t go Denmark’s way. “It wasn’t an off-day - I would disagree with anyone who suggests it was. The first half was embarrassing - we absolutely battered them. With the last kick of the half they equalised to make it 1-1.

“We came in at half-time, “What do we do?” Typical Denmark, we don’t go out and sit back, we go back out at them and go to win it. So we go 2-1 down and I’m just about to come on. We’re about to take a centre-half off, but there are still 40-odd minutes left. And before I could come on we went 3-1 down. We took a centre-half off and went two at the back and we just lacked ...I don’t know, but it didn’t work out for us.

“When we were 2-1 down, we should have known that we had

66 • • 67

35 minutes left and we’d been the better team. Don’t panic, do what we do best. And we did make changes. But for once they didn’t work out for us.”

Molby played in all four games - starting once, against West Germany, and coming on as a substitute in the three other matches.

Looking back now, he adds, “It was wonderful. I’d won the League with Liverpool. That was wonderful. With Denmark, I had squad number seven. I was down to play. And I believe I lost my place because of my stats. The tests I did in Colombia showed my figures didn’t quite stack up. I think Sepp thought I wouldn’t be ready, so others played instead of me, and once you start winning, you’re not going to change it.

“When Frank was suspended I think I should have started against Spain. I think I’d have made a difference. Spain was unexplainable. Twenty eight years later I can’t describe why it didn’t happen for us.

“1986 was my first proper year at Liverpool. I had more responsibility. I took corners, free-kicks, penalties for Liverpool. I never quite nailed down that role for Denmark. The manager felt others were ahead of me. I was 22, I was ready, confident and I thought we’d win the tournament.

“We had some internal problems in our group. Some of the players weren’t used to the intensity, some were homesick. I was part of the group who thought. “We can do this - let’s win this”. And then we got beaten by Spain. Hammered. Had we beaten Spain, we’d have won the World Cup. We’d have played Belgium next [beyond that would have been a semi-final clash with Argentina] and we would have fancied that, but we always struggled against Spain.

68 • • 69

“People saw us lose 5-1 and thought we were a long, long way from winning the World Cup, but not within our camp and those who knew us. We really thought we’d win the tournament. But many thought we were the real deal. I would agree with that.

“Diego Maradona was the best player in the world and the best player of that World Cup, but we were the best team of the tournament, irrespective of being knocked out so early. Argentina won that World Cup, but had we played Argentina we’d have beaten them. No danger.

“We had players to cause them problems. We embarrassed Uruguay. We didn’t stop in our tracks and think, “Wow, we’ve beaten Uruguay 6-1”. When the game came together, we thought “This is what we’re capable of.” We felt invincible.

“We had the most fantastic four or five years. We were tightly knit, we got on well. We had different characters but there was a nice atmosphere and we had a manager who trusted us and let us get on with it.”

Denmark were to finally taste success as a nation in 1992, when they claimed the European Championships - despite being a late replacement for Yugoslavia, who were forced to withdraw due to war.

FIFA’s technical report after Mexico 1986 said, “Denmark played the most spectacular football during the tournament. Their readiness to risk something, linked to a full physical commitment, provided the Danish game with an exceptional dynamism.”

Molby concludes, “We were a better side than the one which won Euro ‘92. We both played to our strengths. But if you ask

68 • • 69

most Danes, they’ll say the 1986 side would be their favourite sporting team out of Denmark ever. And I would agree with that.”

70 • • 71

1982

GERRY ARMSTRONG - N.IRELAND- CHRIS LEPKOWSKI

April 1982. A small island in the South Atlantic Ocean is the focal point of conflict. A few weeks earlier, few had heard of the Falkland Islands. Now their very existence is dominating our news bulletins and the agendas of so many. Naval taskforces are steaming ahead. British and Argentinean troops are posturing, sparring, brawling, fighting.

Back in London, Margaret Thatcher’s Government draw up plans to consider withdrawing England, Scotland and Northern Ireland from the World Cup. Environment secretary Michael Heseltine concludes in a report that, while the prospect of a British side meeting Argentina would be ‘distasteful’, a boycott would be incorrect. Sanity prevails. The conflict is to last 74 days and ends with Argentine surrender on June 14, 1982. A day earlier, Belgium defeat Argentina 1-0 in the opening game of the 12th World Cup, played in Spain.

Spring 2014. Gerry Armstrong is packing his belongings in Holywood – “Rory McIlroy territory”, as the former Northern Ireland international calls it. He’s returning to Spain. Where he feels at home.

Had Thatcher, Heseltine and co opted to remove the home nations from Spain, Armstrong would have no packing to do. Mallorca would be, for Armstrong at least, merely a Balaeric Island, perhaps no more than a holiday destination. Only it

70 • • 71

isn’t. Armstrong is packing to return ‘home’ to a country he embraced some 30 years ago.

Spain 1982 was a World Cup of opportunity for the British nations. For England it was simply the opportunity to be there on merit, having missed out on qualifying for a Mundial since 1962 (they were hosts in ‘66, holders in ‘70...let’s not mention ‘74 or ‘78).

For Scotland it was the opportunity to forget all about Ally MacLeod, failed drugs tests and Rod Stewart’s promise that “We’re gonna bring that World Cup back from over there.”

For Northern Ireland it was the opportunity to merely qualify and, preferably, not finish last.

Armstrong is clearly relieved to be absolved of packing duties when we catch up with him. You get the feeling he’s knee deep in boxes, suitcases and probably wondering what should, or shouldn’t, end up in the skip. Memories of a World Cup 32 years ago will be travelling with him.

Spain 1982 was HIS World Cup. Yes, Bryan Robson scored after 27 seconds and still has the gold watch to show for it. Yes, David Narey scored a Brazilian goal for the Scots against Brazil. But this was a different tale. One of the unexpected. Northern Ireland qualified for their second World Cup - the first was in 1958 - after finishing as runners-up to Scotland in Group Six of the European qualification groups. They finished above the fancied Portuguese, Sweden and Israel. At Windsor Park they remained undefeated in a run that was to continue right through until February 1985.

Gerard Joseph Armstrong was to win 63 caps for Northern Ireland. He scored 13 times. Three of those came in Spain.

72 • • 73

Armstrong, then a 27-year-old forward with Watford, was mindful that Northern Ireland might not have even been there in the first place had political manoeuvring denied them a trip to Spain. As it happens, not one of the home nations were drawn against Cesar Luis Menotti’s Argentina.

“Yeah, I was aware of the potential issues arising - I think we all were”, said Armstrong.

“It hit the press around March or April time. There was clearly going to be a problem if any of the British teams had been drawn against Argentina. Common sense prevailed I guess, which was good for us, as none of us wanted to be put in a situation where we’d need to make a decision over whether to compete. We’d worked hard for it. We had only once qualified, back in 1958, and we’d worked hard to get to Spain. I’d say we were probably a bit anxious about it but thankfully it turned out well and nobody put pressure on us.

“Personally I wouldn’t have been happy had any pressure been put on us to withdraw. I always feel sports and politics should never be mixed. There is a lot sport can do for politics but it’s a one-way street. It doesn’t work the other way. That said, we weren’t expected to come out of the group so I can’t imagine anyone was too concerned about us anyway...”

Northern Ireland, coached by Billy Bingham, were the third seeds in Group Five, joined by hosts Spain, Yugoslavia and Honduras.

The forecast wasn’t kind. Third place was to be expected. A push for second might be on the cards but, in truth, ‘Norn Iron’ were expected to arm-wrestle with the Central American nation for the honour of not finishing last.

72 • • 73

The critics, observers, pundits and the barstool preachers hadn’t reckoned on several factors, the first of which was Billy Bingham. The 51-year-old who took his 22-man squad to Spain in 1982 was a survivor of Northern Ireland’s only previous World Cup, some 24 years earlier. He had been appointed as Northern Ireland boss for a second time in 1980. This particular union was to last 13 years. Armstrong explained Bingham’s philosophies.

“He knew our strengths and weaknesses”, said Armstrong. “For instance, he felt that John McClelland had more to offer than John O’Neill at centre-half, which not everyone saw. John McClelland went onto have a great World Cup so that was an inspired decision.

“But he also knew how to get the best out of players and he knew how to pick players at the right time. He was a great motivator. Billy gave us belief, he made us understand football. He gave us a stubborness, which gave us belief, and that gave us our extra dimension. That team lasted six years and Billy was a big reason for that.

“We had a strong back four, with a world class goalkeeper in Pat Jennings. But Billy also had a brainwave: he brought in big Norman Whiteside to play up front. We had no naturally left-footed players so it was a decision which made sense, even though Norman was 17 and had had a few minutes of playing experience. To the outside world it probably looked mad. To us it made sense.

“I was moved to play a deeper role on the right - Billy knew I was an athlete and could run and run and run. It worked. We complemented each other.

“I look at the Atletico Madrid side at the minute and they

74 • • 75

remind me a lot of our Northern Ireland side. We had players who worked for each other, without necessarily being the best team. Look at the Atletico players - they do the same, but they’re better technically. Diego Simeone knows how to get the best out of players who might not be the best, just like Billy Bingham did.

“The midfielders, the forwards: we defended from the front and we had a good spirit in the side. We beat Portugal 1-0 during the qualifiers. We beat Sweden. We hadn’t lost in Belfast for some two years and that’s a run that continued up until qualifying for the 1986 World Cup - it was near enough a six-year run. We had immense belief. And those 1982 qualifiers were the start of something special.

“We had Martin O’Neill, our captain, who had won the European Cup with Nottingham Forest. We had Sammy McIlroy and Jimmy Nicholl, who won the FA Cup with Manchester United. We had players who had quality, a belief, but also a drive. And they were winners. Chris Nicholl was another one - he was a big figure for us too. John McClelland and Mal Donaghy were quality defenders. We had a Rolls-Royce engine and we had Norman Whiteside, who very few knew about.”

Ah, Norman Whiteside, or Big Norm as he became known by pretty much every TV pundit. If Bingham was one factor, the Manchester United youngster was another. Born in Belfast to Norman and Aileen Whiteside, Norman junior grew up on Shankill Road - he was later nicknamed the “Shankill Skinhead” by Manchester United supporters.

Before Spain ‘82, he had made just one start and one substitute appearance for United before being handed his passport and the No.16 shirt by Bingham. He had yet to play for Northern

74 • • 75

Ireland when the squad was selected. His debut came in the 0-0 draw against Yugoslavia on June 16. He was 17 years and 41 days old or, to put it another way, the youngest-ever player to appear in World Cup Finals.

Despite his age, Big Norm was a physical presence even then. Six foot three inches tall and with a desirable left-foot, Whiteside was spotted by veteran Ulster scout Bob Bishop, who previously found George Best. The period between 1982 and 1986 was to be the golden period for a footballer whose career barely lasted beyond his 28th birthday. He was to score goals in Manchester United’s FA Cup and League Cup finals of 1983. He scored the only goal - one of the greatest FA Cup Final goals ever - two years later against Everton. He was a player who thrived on the big stage. Seventeen years old or not, Spain was an ideal platform to showcase his ability.

Armstrong was impressed by the player who checked into the pre-World Cup training sessions.

“Blimey, big Norman didn’t look 17 - he was like a full-grown man. He was bloody frightening for defenders”, recalls Armstrong.

“He was strong on the ball, had a great left-foot and was a great professional, with a good attitude. Norm gave us extra quality because we didn’t have anyone like that, especially with a left-foot like that. He gave us a wee bit extra, that nobody else did.

“When I first saw him I thought, “Who’s this kid here?” He stuck one in past Pat Jennings into the top left-hand corner from about 20 yards and I thought, “This lad is going to be alright”. He was special. And you could tell that. It was brilliant management by Billy Bingham. It’s just a shame his career was ruined by injury. He had a major knee op in around 1986 when

76 • • 77

he was still about 21. I’m not sure he was the same after that.”

While Whiteside led Norn Iron’s line from the front, at the back was a goalkeeper 20 years his senior. Newry-born Pat Jennings had already been named as the Football Writers’ Association player of the year (1973) and the PFA equivalent three years later. By summer 1982, he was a few months away from playing his 1,000th football game and had even stared in his very own TV commercial, promoting oil filters for cars. Yet he had just turned 37 at the start of the tournament.

Armstrong remembers a former Tottenham colleague and Arsenal rival who was key to that 1982 World Cup, despite being a major doubt in the first place.

“Pat almost didn’t make it due to a groin strain - but thank God he did”, added Armstrong.

“He was the best goalkeeper in the world for so many years. I’d say that in the late 1970s, there was no better goalkeeper. He was that good. But he wasn’t conventional. He used every part of his body to save the ball - an inspirational goalkeeper, a wonderful man.

“He actually finished his international career in 1986 - we both finished our international careers in the same game [a 3-0 defeat to Brazil, in Mexico ‘86] - when many people thought he wouldn’t get through to 1982. It’s difficult to know where to start with Pat. He anticipated everything, he was quick too, and a great spring and he used to reach out and keep the ball out. And he was bloody quick. People don’t realise this, but we used to have sprints at Tottenham and he’d be in the top three each time. And as a goalkeeper he was brilliant. No disrespect to the other goalkeepers we had [Jim Platt of Middlesbrough and Linfield’s George Dunlop were the reserves] but they

76 • • 77

weren’t in the same category as Pat Jennings. Very few were.”Northern Ireland’s first game was the 0-0 against Yugoslavia. “A good result, against a good side.” Significantly, Spain had drawn with Honduras the previous day. Spain then took control of Group Five with a victory against Yugoslavia, before Bingham’s side drew 1-1 with Honduras. Armstrong was the scorer.

Armstrong continued, “Everyone was expecting Yugoslavia to come through in that group because they were a very good side in qualifying [they topped a group which included Italy and Denmark]. Spain were among the favourites and that took the pressure off us. We drew that first game 0-0 and our confidence grew. We knew we could do something. We finished that game well.

“Our plan was always to beat Honduras. I scored against them, then I hit the post and then in the second-half they had a really good spell of around 10-15 minutes. They got one back - a draw meant we would have to beat Spain. Was that a good thing? Psychologically you would think not. But the pressure was off us. Nobody expected us to go through but we knew we could do it and actually we felt that having the pressure off us again would help.

“Martin O’Neill spoke to us by the pool the day before and said, “They’ll come at us - we need to hold them, and take any chances...we will win 1-0 if we do that”. He didn’t account for Mal Donaghy getting sent off so we played the last half hour with only 10 men. But, you know what? Martin was spot on. “Spain were a decent side but they were under so much pressure and this was a different Spain to the one we see these days. You also have to bear in mind that in three of the four previous World Cups the host nations had won the tournament so that brought extra baggage for them. The

78 • • 79

pressure was totally on them. We had nothing to worry about - people expected us to go home.”

The game against Spain, played in Valencia, has long since been inducted - officially or otherwise - into the IFA’s hall of fame. Type “Gerry Armstrong” into Youtube and, sure enough, there it is. Grainy, with a hideous border, a small box of action which requires ‘full screen’ coverage. John Motson provides the soundtrack: “Gerry Armstrong, what a worker he is...striding away, with Hamilton to his right, Norman Whiteside upon the far side of the area... still it’s Billy Hamilton, he’s got past Tendillo...and off the line and ...oh Northern Ireland have scored through Gerry Armstrong.” Type “Gerry Armstrong Goal” into a Google Image search and the first photo you come across is from that game. Next to Armstrong is Sammy McIlroy. Behind him, Whiteside has his arms stretched high. Spain’s No.3, Rafael Gordillo, is the beaten defender. No rehearsed choreography - simply raw iconography at it’s very best. It remains one of the images of 1982 - up there with Dino Zoff lifting the trophy after Marco Tardelli’s impassioned goal celebration, Harald Schumacher forcibly removing Patrick Battiston in the West Germany - France semi-final and Falcao scoring for Brazil, before revealing a full-set of bulging veins along each of his outstretched arms.

That goal is the reason Armstrong is packing for Mallorca - that was the club who signed him, on the back of that goal, a few months later. That goal is the reason Armstrong still speaks with emotion and pride. Northern Ireland were to play two more games during that World Cup. But THAT 90 minutes against Spain was their World Cup moment - that goal, on 47 minutes, scored in front of 49,562 fans, was Armstrong’s moment. For England’s Geoff Hurst, Scotland’s Archie

78 • • 79

Gemmill, you could now add Gerry Armstrong, of Northern Ireland.

“We knew we’d qualified because the subs ran on the pitch - just in case we weren’t sure. It was absolute chaos”, he recalls.

“We knew we’d done well but it wasn’t until the next day that it sank in. The funny thing was that the IFA had to make new arrangements. They hadn’t accounted for us winning that game and qualifying for the next round so they had to cancel our flight home for starters.

“As for me, I had to wait what seemed like ages to properly celebrate. I lost about 11lbs in weight simply through dehydration and I had to do the dope test after the game, along with Sammy McIlory, but because the game had taken so much out of me it took me about an hour to produce a urine test, so I was late getting back. I got off the coach and there was [TV broadcaster] Jimmy Hill waiting with a tray of champagne - which was a nice touch.

“We were in the party mood and then Billy Bingham came into the lobby with the most horrendous look on his face. I thought something bad had happened. He said we were going to Madrid the next day but we didn’t have a hotel. And then the IFA had been forced to cancel the flights. It wasn’t going to ruin our night.

“We just continued with our party. At around 4am I climbed onto the balcony with Pat Jennings and I looked down to see journalist Malcolm Brodie [who reported on 14 World Cups] was still working away on his typewriter. There was so much for him to write. We had more than 300 telegrams - from politicians, priests, reverends, people from Canada, Australia, America.

80 • • 81

“That’s when it hit me. Those were troubled times in Northern Ireland. But it gave the country a lift where nobody else could. The politicians couldn’t do it but we, as sportsmen, did it. We had an open top bus through Belfast - tens of thousands of people. People of all kind of backgrounds were treating us like heroes. That was so special.”

Before any civic receptions back in Belfast, Northern Ireland had to fight for a place in the semi-finals. The second round format of Spain ‘82 comprised four mini-leagues of three teams, with the winners of each one going through into a semi-final. Armstrong and friends were drawn against an Austria side whose qualification came courtesy of the horribly contrived 1-0 defeat to West Germany, which became known as Nichtangriffspakt von Gijon (Non-aggression pact of Gijon]. The 1-0 scoreline suited both sides at the expense of Algeria, who had played their final first round game the previous day. Horst Hrubesch’s 10th minute goal was followed by 80 minutes of passive play where neither side made any attempts to score, ensuring the Africans would return home with a deep feeling of injustice. Never again would final group games in the World Cup be played at staggered times.

Making up Group D were the highly-fancied France. Armstrong believes his own nation were close to a semi-final place.

France beat Austria in the opening game, before Northern Ireland claimed a 2-2 draw with Austria. Bingham’s side could make the final four if they beat France.

“We were unlucky against Austria. We went 1-0 up and should have gone 2-0 up, only for them to equalise. Their energy sapped our strength. It was played in 40 degrees heat in Madrid. We drew that game 2-2 eventually. By the time we

80 • • 81

played France three days later, we were a spent force.

“Yet we were so close [to making the semi-finals]. Martin O’Neill scored a perfectly good goal against France after about 20 minutes. Had that goal been allowed, I know what would have happened - we would have closed the doors, which we had done before. The referee was in a bad position but it was the linesman who didn’t give it. He gave it offside. Martin played a one-two with me, I didn’t control it but I played it back to Martin and he was a good two yards onside. That goal should have been given. We’d have won that game, despite the obvious French quality. Who knows what would have happened.”

France were to lose to West Germany in the final four, who were themselves beaten by Italy [conquerors of Poland in the other semi-final] in the World Cup final.

A sense of injustice lingers within Armstrong regarding the disallowed France goal. Yet surely West Germany would have won a semi-final?

“Ha, don’t bet on it”, interjects Armstrong. “A few months after that World Cup, we played the first game of the European Championship qualifiers. Everyone said we wouldn’t beat West Germany in a semi, yet we did beat them twice afterwards. We won at Windsor Park and then we went and beat them in Hamburg 1-0. Nobody has beaten them home and away in qualifiers since then.

“People also forget that 1984 were the last Home Championships. We won that as well. People who believe in psychology could learn a lot about us and what we did. We did so well that teams did not want to play us. We had character about us that meant this group of players, who weren’t the best

82 • • 83

in the world, could beat anyone.

“Spain was a big moment. We coped with the pressure. We were a bunch of lads who got to the World Cup and we blew the host nation away.”

For Armstrong, life was never the same again. The year 1982 continues to shape his life, as he prepares to start a new life in Mallorca.

“It changed my life. I was the top British goalscorer. And we were close to the semi-finals. Watford just got promoted and we finished runners-up in the First Divison the following year when everyone expected us to get relegated. I can source it back to that World Cup. Spanish clubs were keen to sign me. Zaragoza, Sevilla were interested but I ended up at Mallorca about a year later. That goal was part of it, but the result and performance was what did it.

“We’re packing to move back there because it’s a wonderful place. It’s a love affair I’ve had with that region since 1982. Yes, obvious as it sounds, it was down to what happened in that World Cup.”

While this was Gerry Armstrong’s story, it might have been the George Best tale.

Then aged 36-years-old, Best was considered for a call-up. His last cap came in 1977 yet he was considered five years later. In a World Cup dominated by Brazil’s beautiful play - Falcao, Zico and Socrates were the backbone of a side described as the greatest entertainers of any Mundial - it seems unfortunate that the Manchester United legend missed out on the party.

Armstrong wonders: what if?

82 • • 83

“He could have given us a different dimension - coming on for half an hour or so. Who knows how that would have worked out”, added Armstrong. “He was the best player I’ve ever played with - I would love to have seen him in the World Cup. But none of us realised how close he was to playing for us in 1982.

“Billy Bingham told us sometime afterwards he was close to picking him but he felt it would have taken away from the team. It would have made us a “story”, but Billy Bingham didn’t want that - he thought it would bring more media. And more media means more pressure. But, who knows how things might have turned out...”

Armstrong, meanwhile, continues to pack his belongings. Italy were to win the World Cup on grass. Northern Ireland were to win the World Cup in so many other ways.

84 • • 85

1950-1962

THE ROAD TO '66 - ENGLAND- BILL THOMAS

When Bobby Moore held aloft the Jules Rimet trophy in 1966, it meant that England had become the champions of the world at the fifth attempt. There were those at the time who felt that was a bit tardy given that we were the nation who had given the game to the world, although given that we’ve since gone through a further 11 tournaments without ever getting a sniff of wining it again, in hindsight we must perhaps feel ourselves lucky that we got our hands on it all, in no small part thanks to the fact that we hosted the competition, a decision that FIFA looks unlikely to repeat any time in the current century.

That England was awarded those finals at all was a pretty magnanimous gesture by the governing body given that they, along with the authorities in the home nations had all failed to show for the first three pre-war competitions for various reasons. This was recognition that the world game, then at least, needed England, FIFA bending over backwards to ensure that they would be in Brazil in 1950 after signalling they would be willing to compete at last. Qualification was based on the Home Internationals, the top two teams going forward to the World Cup, thereby giving the UK pretty hefty representation. As it was, Scotland then turned its back on the opportunity, refusing to travel if they only finished runners up, which they duly did.

84 • • 85

Nowadays before a tournament, it is the sudden injury to a key player that gives managers sleepless night – England’s nemesis, the metatarsal, has wreaked havoc with many a plan over the years – but in 1950, it was the self imposed footballing issues of the maximum wage and freedom of contract that caused chaos. No footballer in England was allowed to earn more than £12 a week – cut to £10 in the summer – whoever he was and wherever he was playing. In addition, under the player registration rules of the time, players only had 12 month contracts but, at the end of that year, his club could simply choose to keep his registration and prevent him from moving to any other club without their permission. Even the great Tom Finney, courted by the giant clubs of Italian football in 1952, was told by the Preston board, “you’ll play for us or you’ll play for nobody.”

There was a get out clause though and ironically, it was in South America. Colombian clubs were not bound by FIFA’s jurisdiction and so you did not need your registration to play there, while the clubs were offering far greater money than a dozen quid a week, the only downside being that as you were no longer playing within a FIFA affiliated country, you could not play international football. England’s centre-half Neil Franklin took the bait and, at a stroke, the chances of Walter Winterbottom and Billy Wright bringing the World Cup back in their hand luggage were decimated.

“Franklin was the best centre-half I ever played with”, said Tom Finney. “It was a body blow, gave the selectors a real problem in replacing him. And not just that year, but for several to come, and that was why Billy Wright eventually had to slot in there about four years later.”

No single man makes a team, still less when you could call upon Finney, Wright and Stanley Matthews. But English

86 • • 87

football was out of step with the ways of much of the rest of the world, still paying little attention to the defensive side of the game while other nations became cagier. Such a policy absolutely demanded that England employ a strong, talented centre-back and with Franklin snatched away at the 11th hour, English plans descended into disarray. It was a shame because England had looked a more than handy post-war unit, winning 10-0 in Lisbon in 1947, 4-0 in Turin a year later.

By the time of a brief European tour in May 1950, that supremacy against the Portuguese had been whittled down to 5-3, not exactly a scientific measure of course, but an early indication of just how much weaker England were defensively without Franklin. After that brief get-together – they won 4-1 in Belgium too, a slightly flattering scoreline on the balance of play– the squad disbanded for four weeks to rest and recuperate from the taxing English season. A team that had played just seven games in 1949/50 – three Home Internationals and a 2-0 defeat to Ireland at Goodison among them - and which had the luxury of just two full training weeks together, one ahead of the Scotland game and the other on that tour, apparently needed no further time to get to know one another ahead of the World Cup.

They met up for four days prior to flying to Brazil, but as manager Walter Winterbottom explained, “We had to arrange a practice game against an amateur side because all the clubs insisted their players had a month’s rest. We couldn’t use a proper ground either, because the pitches were being relaid or reseeded! And the players wouldn’t take hard training at that stage of the year, they were programmed by their clubs to think they were tired. Those were the obstacles we were up against.”

The average flight time from London to Rio these days is just

86 • • 87

shy of 12 hours. When England began their flight out on June 19, they had 31 hours ahead of them on a trip that took in Paris, Lisbon, Dakar and Recife. It was June 21 when they landed, four days before they were due to take on Chile in their first game in the Maracana. “It was laughable really,” recalled Tom Finney. “Now they’d be there for a fortnight to acclimatise. We found it very hard to play in temperatures of 90 degrees having come from a mild English summer, among mad keen supporters, a completely different environment to what we were used to. The altitude was a problem and we even had oxygen masks at half time, which was completely foreign to us!

“Arsenal and Southampton had gone out there since the war on club tours and came back with reports on how skilful, fit and strong these players were, but we didn’t know much more than that. We saw the opening game with Brazil and saw incredible skills, I was in awe of what we’d seen. It gave us an indication of just how good they were, when prior to that, the general feeling had been that Europe reigned supreme, and that England would do really well.”

The preparations for Brazil revealed a catalogue of errors, from setting up camp in a normal tourist hotel overlooking Copacabana beach with all the noise and distractions that brought with it to struggling with the local food, many of the players surviving largely on a banana diet, plenty going down with “Rio stomach”. Even the beach was off limits because advice said exposure to the sun would tire the players. They even managed to turn going for a stroll into a disaster, Stan Mortensen falling down a hole in the road where local workers had uprooted a tree but failed to fill in the gap. And having asked for special lightweight boots to meet the conditions, Winterbottom recalled that, “When they arrived, they were like heavy gardening boots, made from a sort of wellington material!”

88 • • 89

Given all that had gone on, actually getting down to play against Chile on June 25 in the Maracana in front of 29,703 supporters must have been some kind of relief, as was the quality of the opposition, the Chileans probably the weakest of the South American nations, Laurie Hughes making his international debut as Winterbottom strove to replace Franklin. England laboured to a 2-0 victory but it was a solid enough, morale boosting start according to Finney. “After we won that game, we felt we had a great chance. We hadn’t played that well, but we won easily enough and were in the competition. We had the USA to come at lower altitude, so we were pretty confident.”

With the USA team little more than a jumble of migrants of no real pedigree, England looked set fair to progress, but named an unchanged XI to underline they weren’t taking the game lightly. Even 64 years on, nobody needs reminding of the way the game turned out, the result still perhaps the biggest single shock in international football.

“We didn’t take it easy”, insisted Finney, “but it was just one of those games where you can’t score, a freak result, in the sense that we could have played them another ten times and won every one. Possibly with 2-3-5, our forwards weren’t as clinical as we needed to be, because in England there were always chances coming along. We did the same against Spain, though Jackie Milburn had a goal ruled out for offside, even though he shot past their full-back standing on the line! But it was a catastrophe, losing 1-0 to the USA. We were a laughing stock, the press were very critical, you just couldn’t take it in, you just wanted to get home and forget all about it. But I’m still always asked to explain it!”

History tends not to remind us that this was probably the best US team until the 1990s, that they had led Spain 1-0 in the first

88 • • 89

group game until the final nine minutes when the Spanish bagged three goals. Even so, the defeat was a marker of England’s status in the world game as Finney was wise enough to admit. “The whole tournament brought us down to earth and made us realise we had to think a bit more about this game, that other sides had studied it and were more advanced than we were, not just in the systems but in individual play, because there were some outstanding technical players. We had a lot to learn. Nowhere near the thought went into defending in this country as went into attacking. We stood still while others progressed, we kept thinking we were the best but we weren’t.”

With only one team qualifying for the next stage, victory over Spain in the final fixture would force a play-off with them to see who advanced, but after Milburn’s effort was disallowed in the 14th minute, the writing was on the wall. Beleaguered England were going home.

By 1954, the Scots had lost their sniffy attitude to World Cup qualification and, with the group stretching over two seasons of Home Internationals, they were happy to accompany England to the competition in Switzerland as runners up. More importantly, by then England had lost any notions of their supremacy within Europe, even on home soil, following the drubbing meted out to them by the Hungarians at Wembley Stadium on 25 November 1953. That 6-3 defeat, like the US disaster, echoes down the ages that defeat coming, ironically not long after the Football Association had actually made some strides in opening us up to the world game by sending England off on tour in South America in the summer of 1953, playing Argentina, Chile and Uruguay followed by a stop off in New York to take on the USA on the way home.

As Tom Finney noted, “It was only really on the summer tours

90 • • 91

that we got together. We had a pretty gruelling tour in 1953. It was hard, but to play these teams stood us in good stead, just to see what they were doing.”

Ivor Broadis was on that trip and adds, “It was a mixed trip to South America, absolutely exhausting! We watched an FA XI play Buenos Aires on the Wednesday and Walter left out most of the first choice players because we had the full game coming on the Sunday. That was the first time I’d seen a deep lying centre forward. We were sitting round the touchline and he was deep with two inside men playing forward of him and he was picking up everything, destroying us in the first half. It was a complete surprise to find a different system to play against and for our defenders, the centre-half had nobody to mark, or he was trying to mark two, it was chaotic. We lost 3-1.

“On the Sunday we played the full side, and Arthur Ellis was the referee. On the way to the ground it started to rain, sheeting down. The ground had been bone hard, but by the time we were ready and on the pitch, there were pools of standing water everywhere, and it was still coming down. We had our kick-in, the Argentines never appeared and by the time they came on, we were like drowned rats. Before long it was like a lake. Somebody clattered me after 15 minutes or so, so I clattered him back and their players swarmed around me. Nat always used to tell me that I ran out of the way, that I was on the outside looking in on this great melee! About five minutes after that, Arthur called the game off because the conditions were just impossible.”

Having performed so poorly in 1950, the English team needed to make a proper impression on South America this time so the 2-1 win over Chile in Santiago was an important result. After the game, England had a week off before playing in Montevideo, during which time several players contracted

90 • • 91

dysentery, the party struggling on to the game against the world champions, Uruguay, in Montevideo. England produced their best performance of the tour and met with the cynical side of the continent’s football as the Uruguayans resorted to some brutal tactics that, according to contemporary reports, turned even their own supporters against them before they escaped with a 2-1 win.

After the best part of three gruelling weeks in South America, the flight to New York did at least lift spirits according to Broadis. “We landed in Trinidad on the way and it was on Coronation morning, the Union Jacks were out, so that made you feel good about representing England.”

When they got to New York, the game took place at Yankee Stadium, the baseball diamond still marked on the pitch. For some of the players, this was rather more than a friendly as Tom Finney explained. “It was nice to go there and win 6-3 to get some revenge, very pleasing to put one over on them.” Again, England had improved as a unit over the course of almost a month together, making it obvious to all but the most blinkered observer that preparation was crucial. Sadly the most blinkered observers happened to be running the FA.

And then there was Hungary. Unsurprisingly, Walter Winterbotom was nervous going into the game. “Billy Wright and I met Harry Johnston, our centre-half, before the game and told him we had a problem with Hidegkuti. It was customary for the centre-half to follow the centre-forward, but Hidegkuti was playing a different game, I’d seen him lying deep against Sweden, I knew what he would do. So Harry asked me what the Swedes had done, and they’d just left him free and picked him up when he came through. Harry said he’d like to do that, to stay home rather than be pulled all over the field.

92 • • 93

“And Hidegkuti wasn’t the main destroyer at all, Bozsik was much more influential. But we were so old-fashioned in this country. In England, number five marked number nine. So if you put your left-back in the number nine shirt, your centre-half would have to play outside right! That kind of rigid thinking had no place in the modern game.”

It didn’t take long for Winterbottom’s worst fears to be realised - Hidegkuti put the visitors ahead with a fierce drive after 45 seconds. England pulled level, but by half-time the Hungarians had stamped their mastery on the game and led 4-1, Puskas scoring an extraordinary goal after leaving England skipper Wright sprawling on the turf, utterly beaten, an image that remains seared on the game’s collective memory.

The 1950 World Cup should have made it clear that the English were now footballing also-rans but distance and the lack of coverage allowed the home front to ignore the fact. But the rampaging Hungarians had left us in no doubt on our own patch - English football was not good enough, was Luddite in attitude and was falling further and further behind. Radical rethinking was required, and that would take years rather than the months that were left before the next World Cup.

There were three games left to repair shattered confidence. In April, the traditional Scotland game took place at Hampden, a game that most of the players enjoyed above all others.

Ivor Broadis, back in the team for the first time since the previous June, remembers, “They were always keenly fought, it was war! I played two games at Hampden and the press up there destroyed the England team in the week before. None of us could play! In 1954, we went to stay at Troon and on the Friday we trained at Ayr’s ground. We’d done the hard work in the week, so Friday was a more relaxing day, a few laps,

92 • • 93

few sprints, a bit of humour. I remember the Swedes had just started wearing their shorts a bit shorter, where we still had the long shorts and the high stockings. When we went out training, we were talking about it, so I rolled the sides of my shorts up and stuck my arse out, just clowning around. At breakfast the Saturday morning, Hugh Taylor in the Daily Record ran through the England team individually. He got to me and he said “I saw him training yesterday and I’ve never seen anyone who looked less like an athlete!” We won 4-2 and I buttonholed him afterwards and asked him whether Willie Redpath, their left-half who marked me, agreed with his opinion!”

England had two games in May 1954 to warm up for the World Cup. A slender 1-0 defeat to Yugoslavia in Belgrade was followed by the acid test – a visit to Budapest to take on Hungary.

“It was a shock to the system when Hungary beat us at Wembley but it was an even bigger shock when we went out there and lost 7-1 in Budapest!” recalled Tom Finney. “What exposed us was the deep lying centre-forward. Nobody picked Hidegkuti up and they caused havoc. It was a lesson to watch them, as I had done at Wembley, just an education in the game. It was something entirely different and I still believe they were the best national side we ever played against. They were so good because they’d been together for years, they were majors in the Army so they were together there, they played as a team in the Olympics, they knew each other’s game.”

For England to lose 7-1 on the brink of the World Cup was a disaster, Broadis adding, “They were an incredible side, you couldn’t see anyone stopping them winning the World Cup. It was very interesting in that World Cup, their preparation in Switzerland. They’d play school teams, win 28-0, clock up record numbers of goals. Whether it was a confidence

94 • • 95

measure or not I don’t know, but it was a very different thing to how we prepared.”

England prepared by not playing again until their opening group fixture against Belgium, 25 days later. When they did, it was an XI that had never played together before, Broadis reflecting on his first chance to play inside-forward to Stanley Matthews. “He was different to Finney. Inside to Finney, there was an amount of inter-passing that went on. With Stan, you gave him the ball to feet, he did his own thing, and you got into position for the end of it! But you’ve got to enjoy playing with either of them. The better the player you play with, the easier the game is. The harder games were in the League where you’d make three or four runs and get the ball once, where with Finney you got it nearly every time.”

England were 3-1 up with 16 minutes left but the Belgians hit back to take the game into extra-time, the game ending 4-4, a further blow to morale after the battering in Budapest. Centre-half Syd Owen was also out through injury, Billy Wright having to move into the centre-half role, Finney noting, “He was an outstanding footballer. After Neil Franklin went, they tried so many players there that didn’t fit the bill, so they had to use Billy, and he just slotted in without any trouble.”

Wright immediately shored things up and he and his team cruised to a 2-0 win over the hosts. In the bizarre nature of the tournament, England weren’t required to play a third game, against Italy, and topped their group, earning a quarter-final tie with the holders, Uruguay.

“We approached it with confidence,” said Finney. “I felt we played extremely well, had a couple of defensive mistakes which we shouldn’t have made, and certainly shouldn’t have lost 4-2. We were every bit as good on the day.” But the

94 • • 95

Hungarians had taken a huge chunk out of English self belief, leaving a brittle side that didn’t need too much persuading to lose a game they were always chasing after Borges gave Uruguay a fifth minute lead.

Many critics argued that England had learnt nothing between 1950 and 1954, but the game changed dramatically thereafter, largely due to the emergence of a breathtaking young side in Manchester, the Busby Babes. Building on the work done by Tottenham Hotspur and West Bromwich Albion earlier in the decade, Matt Busby’s youthful outfit presented a new conception of the game in English terms, quick, free flowing, technically adept, tactically shrewd. More than that, thanks to Busby’s vision, they were competing in the European Cup too, much against the wishes of the domestic authorities who had denied Chelsea that opportunity at the first time of asking, going out and getting experience against the very best the continent had to offer.

That side had talent, temperament, technique and youth on its side. Before long, it was furnishing England with some spectacular talent in Roger Byrne, Tommy Taylor, Bobby Charlton and the monumental Duncan Edwards. Suddenly, England were becoming a force beating Brazil 4-2 and Yugoslavia 3-0 at Wembley and West Germany 3-1 in Berlin in 1956, cruising through World Cup qualification at the expense of Denmark and Ireland and crowning 1957 by hammering France 4-0 at Wembley in November. A powerful looking England was coming together, one that could approach the next World Cup in Sweden with something approaching confidence. And then came the snow and the ice on a Munich airport runway, the devastation that spirited away the Busby Babes.

Alongside such personal catastrophes, sporting contests are

96 • • 97

trivial, but as England manager Walter Winterbottom said, “Munich took away the spine of the England team.” The players that continued to play had also lost close personal friends and were understandably affected by the loss.

Bryan Douglas remembered, “I’d had three or four games with the United boys who perished. Tommy Taylor was my roommate for the game against France a month or two before the crash, when we had a great result. I couldn’t take it in when I heard that they’d died. Duncan was a great guy. His potential was never really realised but he was the big star. He was a big guy, a mountain, a leader. I often wonder if we hadn’t lost him, would Bobby Moore have got so many caps? Bobby was a wonderful player, but Duncan would have made him wait.” Three key players, Edwards, Byrne and Taylor were lost. With them went England’s realistic hopes of World Cup success. But to quote the crass cliché, life goes on and Winterbottom had to piece together a new team ahead of what is still the only World Cup to feature all four home nations. In the first post-Munich international, the Scots were thumped 4-0 at Hampden Park then, after the season was finished, Portugal were entertained at Wembley, prior to two games behind the Iron Curtain in Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, a strange choice given that the USSR were also in England’s World Cup group with Austria and Brazil.

The Yugoslavia game meant a flight to Belgrade, a painful irony for Bobby Charlton, as Maurice Norman recalls. “This was Bobby Charlton’s first flight since Munich, and we were playing on the ground where United had had their last match before the crash. At Zurich, we were held up for three hours by engine trouble and were transferred to another plane. Bobby was reasonably calm, but very quiet.”

Norman found the trip fascinating. “Before we flew out, the

96 • • 97

Russian ambassador met us at a reception in London and told us, “You are the best ambassadors. The result of the match is not important. The main thing is to improve the relationship between the two countries.” Walter Winterbottom told him, “The result does matter. We want to win as a successful preliminary to the World Cup in which we meet you in the First Round”. On arrival in Belgrade, four hours late, we were told, “Be careful what you say and do” and there were police and soldiers all over the streets.”

England’s gave one of their most disappointing performances since the war. Norman watched from the sidelines and says, “It was a sticky, humid afternoon, the pitch was bumpy, but as Walter Winterbottom simply said, we were outclassed. We weren’t considered quick enough in thought, anticipation or positioning. We’d been valued at a total of £500,000 on the transfer market, so we were very disillusioned. They were rugged, geared to play for 180 minutes, flat out. One of their players, Crikovic, at 14 had been fighting with partisans in the forests!” In an echo of the hammering in Budapest that preceded the 1954 competition, England were defeated 5-0.

Moscow was hardly the first place you’d turn to in 1958 if you were looking for something to boost your morale, but as Maurice Norman points out, “They were very hospitable and the programme was so crowded with receptions and the like. We visited the Kremlin, Red Square, Lenin’s Tomb in the morning, then had a training session in the afternoon, then on to see Prince Igor at the Bolshoi in the evening. We had to go around in pairs, followed everywhere by the “secret service”, people clamoured for anything from us, shoes, clothes, money, razor blades!

“Walter had a row over the training ground we were allocated. He wanted to train at the 50,000 capacity Red Star Stadium

98 • • 99

instead of the Youth Stadium, a bumpy meadowland, where the pitch consisted of clover interspersed with tufts of grass six inches high. In the evening, it was pitch dark as floodlights weren’t available, the only light came from a street lamp 200 yards away. Johnny Haynes fell heavily on the dewy rough pitch so we did a few simple running exercises instead of ball work. Tom Finney, who was 36 then, trained alone on a track because he was worried the pitch might cause a muscle injury. Tiredness, new foods, a sudden drop in temperature was all taking a toll and Billy Wright and Bill Slater went down with stomach trouble, so I thought I’d get a chance, but they were eventually fit!”

Tom Finney, a veteran international by now, was still excited by the opportunity of seeing the world: “It was interesting to go there because very few Europeans had at that time. We saw a bit of the country, they made a thing of showing us round the universities they’d built, and it was a big propaganda thing for them, because they wanted us to think everything they did was the best in the world.”

The game in Moscow was the final friendly before the real business began. Bryan Douglas remembered, “You’d get an inkling of what the team would be by the way the practice games were arranged and Brian Clough played at centre-forward. Like always, Brian had an opinion and I think he upset a few people, but he was left out of the game in Moscow and Derek Kevan played instead. There were rumours he’d had words with Winterbottom, and when the final squad for Sweden was selected, Brian wasn’t in it”.

Norman bears that out, though he adds that the switch in personnel might well have been a simple tactical adjustment: “Derek Kevan was subdued because of heavy criticism for his performance against Portugal, but he was smiling again when

98 • • 99

Walter announced the team and said our tactics had changed. Every forward had been turned into a potential goalscorer. Haynes had to modify his deep lying game to support this new policy.

“Walter had one or two secret plans up his sleeve, one of which was to encourage Kevan to develop his simple but effective strategy of bursting through the middle. When the game was played, the pitch was well below international standards, both penalty areas were waterlogged, though we were pleased the ground was softer and it was cooler. The Lenin Stadium was a fantastic place, held 100,000 people and there were swimming pools, a cycle track, basketball and tennis courts. We were unlucky, their equaliser looked like hand ball, but Derek Kevan had scored and at least we came home in good spirits.”

After the games, there was a brief break before the squad reconvened at the end of May according to Norman. “We met in Roehampton at the end of May for training at the Bank of England Sports Ground. Tom Finney got injured which was a worry. Walter had a gift for organisation, he was a quiet intellectual man, great thinker, always planning for the future, insisted on planning things in depth. He was quite relaxed, if anything he was too nice, sometimes we could have been pushed harder. There was no great need for him to be a disciplinarian then because players seemed to toe the line. During his time, practices were changing dramatically, but he was still frustrated by the club before country situation.

“We were away about a week and then flew out to Gothenburg on June 5 and played the USSR three days later in our first group match. In Gothenburg, the hotel was almost millionaire class. The facilities were good, and we were so near the Arctic Circle that we had the phenomena of the midnight sun, so

100 • • 101

there were 22 hours of daylight in midsummer. The press surrounded us, but as friends, not the way it seems to be today. They were part of the set up and travelled from place to place.”

The England side was certainly pretty useful, containing the likes of Finney, Haynes, Robson, Douglas, Wright, Kevan and Howe and they were clued up on their opponents having played them in Moscow a month before. That didn’t help much and ten minutes into he second half, England found themselves 2-0 behind. Kevan’s header dragged them back into the game in the 66th minute and with five minutes left, they were awarded a spot kick, Finney stepping up to take it.

“I was 36 in 1958, I’d had a good run in the England side, I knew it would be my last World Cup. To face Lev Yashin was a bit of pressure because he was known for studying how players took penalties. It was a great relief to see it hit the back of the net. That was virtually the last thing I did in Sweden, after that I was out with an injured knee for the rest of the tournament”.

England also had a Bobby Robson goal disallowed for a supposed infringement on Yashin, Robson recalling, “The ball was played into Yashin and he and Derek Kevan went for it, there was a half clearance that came to me and I put the ball in. The referee, Zsolt, was a Hungarian and that was at the time when they were being suppressed, threatened by the Russians, so there was controversy about his appointment. Whether that had anything to do with him disallowing a perfectly good goal, I don’t know!”

Brazil, another team yet to win the Jules Rimet trophy, were next on the agenda. Bobby Robson was again in the forward line and confessed to one great regret: “Pele didn’t play in that game which I was very sorry about because it would have been nice to be able to say that I’d played in the same game as him!

100 • • 101

But he didn’t come through until later in the tournament. We drew 0-0 against Vava, Zito all those guys, so they could play, it was a great experience and I found it a very difficult game. I think of all the games I ever played, that was the hardest I ever had, didn’t touch the ball too many times because they kept it so well. It’s a pity there wasn’t so much TV exposure then because it wasn’t until the 1970 side that the Brazilians got portrayed around the world, but that team in 1958 was a very, very good side. Even then, we could have had a penalty when Derek Kevan was brought down in the box, so we did okay”.

Victory for England over Austria would have seen them through to the next phase and with Austria not having managed a goal in their two games, it didn’t seem too taxing a proposition. But according to Tom Finney, the whole tournament seemed jinxed. “Things did run against us in 1958, there was the Munich disaster, I got injured, we had goals disallowed, Austria who hadn’t scored in three games suddenly scored two brilliant goals from long range against us. We just felt we were unfortunate because we did very well against Brazil to draw 0-0, the only team in the tournament to stop them scoring, and we played well in other games, but you go through spells when everything goes wrong and all you can do is keep going”.

Ultimately, England were happy to get a 2-2 draw, twice coming from behind through Haynes and Kevan, though Bobby Robson had another seemingly legitimate goal chalked off. With Brazil beating the USSR, it meant England had to meet the Soviets for the third time in a month to decide who would advance to the last eight. Changes were made, Bryan Douglas conceding that, “I was tiring and I missed the play-off game and Peter Brabrook came in. He hit the post and he played particularly well and even had a goal disallowed.” But England were beaten 1-0 by Ilyin’s 68th minute goal and the

102 • • 103

unimpressive World Cup record was prolonged.

At least they seemed to be learning now and 1958 had not been the unmitigated disaster that we’d seen in the two preceding tournaments, while there would always be that “what if?” element had Munich not happened. But in the aftermath of that competition, England’s reputation swiftly diminished over the next couple of years as they were defeated by Brazil, Peru, Mexico, Sweden, Spain and Hungary before, suddenly in the autumn of 1960, a new team came into focus, one that simply could not stop scoring goals. Ok, beating Luxembourg 9-0 was not that noteworthy, but in April 1961, Scotland were despatched 9-3 and then, a month later, Mexico leaked eight goals at Wembley. A goalscoring tyro by the name of Jimmy Greaves had emerged to transform England’s fortunes as they swept past Luxembourg and Portugal to qualify for the ’62 World Cup in Chile.

But as the competition neared, it began to look as if England had peaked too early. Preparatory wins over Peru and Switzerland assuaged some concerns, but the fluidity of the previous year had deserted Winterbottom’s outfit, leaving the manager and his new captain, Johnny Haynes, trying to put things right. Left-back Ray Wilson wonders if perhaps Winterbottom had been overtaken by changes within the game: “Walter was the old regime. He knew the game but to run a side at that level, I think you need to have been an international.”

There were few questions about Haynes’ ability as a footballer, but the first £100 a week player continued to be beset by questions as to his temperament and his suitability as a leader. Wilson says, “I can understand some people describing Johnny as selfish but in many respects, you have to be to reach the level that he did. He was a massive player. Probably if he’d

102 • • 103

been at his peak in Alf’s time, Alf would have controlled that. A lot of people thought Johnny was running the show and he may have been, but that might not have been a bad idea, some liaison between him and Walter was fine. I’m not being critical because he was a great player and a good skipper, but possibly he had too much influence. John had a short fuse, but if he’d been Alf’s captain rather than Walter’s, if might have worked a lot better.”

Bryan Douglas noted that, “Johnny was a different captain to Billy Wright. I thought he was a great guy, great player, but he was aggressive. Not as a player, not as a tackler, but with his own players. If you weren’t doing your job, he’d let you know about it. I didn’t mind that, some of the players may have done. But I found him an excellent captain and he led by example. He did want the ball all the time, but there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s the guys that hide that I’m against. John was a terrific passer with both feet. He didn’t beat people, but he could find the open spaces and he could distribute the ball left, right and centre. He didn’t suffer fools and he was a bit aggressive with his tongue but I didn’t mind, I just admired his ability, I was always happy to play with John.”

And if England were to do well in 1962, they certainly needed the likes of Haynes at his very best. Dislodging Brazil from the summit in their own part of the world was a stiff assignment, but the squad approached it with some justifiable confidence. And again, preparation had moved on as Maurice Norman could testify: “I was still on £20 per week at Spurs. For the World Cup in Chile, the match fee had risen to £60. It was said that had we won the competition, we’d have received a “very substantial sum”, probably around £1,000 each. The build up was more professional, the World Cup was viewed far more seriously, and it was the first one where TV was really used. We copied many countries by going to a camp away

104 • • 105

from the outside world and the media. Before we left, Harold Shepherdson packed over 2,000 pills to combat stomach disorders, we took boiled sweets, eight lbs of tea, sauces, all sorts of things.

“Walter said “If the team does well in Peru, it will remain the same for the first match against Hungary in Chile”. Walter had been out to watch Austria play Bulgaria and announced the team and again, I was understudy to Peter Swan. Later that day, I went to the Hospital for Tropical Diseases at St Pancras with Jimmy Greaves and Bobby Moore getting yellow fever jabs. On returning to Roehampton to prepare for the flight to Lima, I found the squad was to fly in two planes, the first team in one, the reserves in another. I was on the first team plane because Peter Swan had tonsilitis, a temperature of 102, but was still travelling.

“The flight to Peru was a long one, we touched down in several countries, had 30 minutes in Lisbon to stretch our legs and walk off the meal we had on the journey - smoked salmon, caviar and crab washed down with champagne cocktails. Back on the plane the night was short as we neared the equator, Dakar was hot even in the middle of the night. We had some sleep on the plane as we crossed the ocean, which took 4 hours 30 minutes. We had breakfast - scrambled egg - then touched down in Buenos Aires. The last leg was two and a half hours, we had to pass over the Andes, and arrived in Lima Airport in time for more breakfast! The atmosphere is very different to a club tour, the team were established internationals, and you knew if you were picked, you only had your place for that game. I was very aware of that! When we arrived, we had a telegram from Prince Philip, “With best of luck to the England team”.”

Tales of altitude training, heat acclimatisation and the like

104 • • 105

are staples of today’s footballspeak. Ray Wilson’s not so sure about it all: “We played Peru on the way out and we were there about a week before the first game, but the business of acclimatisation seemed a lot of codswallop to me, it never seemed a problem. I think if nobody had brought it up, people wouldn’t worry about it.”

For other members of the side, such as Maurice Norman, the visit to Lima would be one never to be forgotten, allowing him to pick up his first cap after four years in and around the England squad: “For me it was now or never on that trip. I was playing well, had just played in a cup winning side that also got to the semis of the European Cup. I didn’t know if I would be playing until we had trained in Lima the day before the game, but Bobby Moore and I got our first caps. I received telegrams from Tottenham’s directors, Bill Nicholson, some press men, friends, relations. Bill said, “At last, you have waited long enough”, which was good of him as I knew it would make life even more difficult for him as we already had eight players on international duty. It was the culmination of all I’d striven for. It was here at last and it was a continual revelation for me to think I was a footballer, doing the one and only thing that came naturally to me and the only thing I really wanted to do.

“Being able to see the world, famous places, famous people, the good and the bad, the best hotels, playing in great stadia and getting paid for it, it was a dream come true, the dream I’d had all my life. I felt all my patience, determination and discipline had been worth it. There is nothing better than playing for your country. The 50,000 seater stadium had been the site of savage bullfights the previous Sunday and only a wire fence separated us from some tempestuous fans. The Peruvian players earned about £60 a month and were mostly taxi drivers!

106 • • 107

“We won 4-0, our first win in South America since 1953, and it was nice revenge for the five survivors of the team who lost 4-1 there in 1959. Jimmy Greaves scored three in fourteen minutes in a half-empty stadium. We wore a new all-red strip and we meant to win. There were deafening firecrackers to greet the Peruvians but we were on top throughout, they were fast but with little forward movement. Even I went up into our forward line and created a chance for Hitchens, which was kicked off the line. I was used to Blanchflower and Mackay at Spurs but having Bobby Moore and Ron Flowers instead didn’t pose any problems, you must adapt quickly.”

The win in Peru boosted English confidence, but their hopes were dealt a nasty blow a couple of days later when Bobby Robson got injured: “1962 was a great disappointment for me because I was in the team when we set out, and Walter took young Bobby Moore, who was 21 then, as cover. We played in a friendly in Peru and won 4-0, I didn’t play and Walter gave Bobby a run out, to save me for the World Cup. We had a practice game and I fractured my ankle, got a crack in it, which was a three week job, and Bobby Moore played instead of me. And that was Bobby in forever, 106 caps! We played Brazil in a knockout game and I was fit for that, but not match fit, so Bobby stayed in. I was despondent about that, so upset, because I felt I’d been playing so well.”

Ray Wilson remembers how antiquated the tournament was then: “It’s staggering how things have moved on. When we were in Chile, we stayed in a village up in the mountains! Our group was Hungary, Argentina, us and Bulgaria, so that was three of the top eight in the world at the time and I don’t think the gates were any more than 8 or 9,000. It was like playing in a village, a little stand on one side and a hut on the other and that was it! We travelled in by coach and train from the mountains. It wasn’t until later on when we got to Santiago

106 • • 107

that things were more normal, but can you imagine a World Cup like that today?! I hope I’m not being unkind, but I can’t imagine a country like Chile getting the World Cup now.”

Maurice Norman recalls that, “The party moved to a training camp at the American Braden Copper Company Camp in Coya, which some players weren’t happy with. Personally I felt it was ideal, a perfect setting for training, perched high up among the snow capped mountains of the Andes. It was an oasis covered with tall cacti and cut off from the world, a paradise 20 miles from Rancagua. We lived in three adjoining miners houses, two to a bedroom. On one side of the camp was a hydro-electric plant, on the other a South American cowboy, sitting sleepily on his horse wearing a broad brimmed hat and a poncho.

“We had a specialist cook brought in, we ate mainly roast beef, chicken and rice. George Robledo, the Chilean who had played with Newcastle in the 1950s, said we had the best camp and the best climatic conditions - high up in the mountains, it wasn’t too hot, with plenty of rain. But the problem came in the evenings for some. There were no TVs, pubs, cinemas, although there was a nine-hole golf course, swimming pool and beautiful gardens. We were met by the local band who played “God Save The Queen”, very out of time!”

Ray Wilson was not so impressed: “I’ll never forget when we got on the train to go into the mountains and it was the train they used to go out to the old copper mines. Every time we turned a corner, George Eastham sat back saying “Bloody hell, not another!” We thought we’d never get there, it was in the wilderness, the foothills of the Andes! Thinking back, I never thought about people like George or Roger who went all that way and never got a kick, and I feel somewhat ashamed about that, that I didn’t realise how the people on the edges of the

108 • • 109

team felt, thinking “Am I playing?”, not being able to sleep the night before it got picked. I never even thought it was going to happen to me, which really does sound awful! But it has to be horrendous to be part of the squad but not part of the team, though I didn’t have much appreciation of that at the time. To go there and not play in 1962 must have been terrible because the place was awful, there was nothing to do. The highlight was to go the cinema at night to watch a French film with Spanish subtitles! So if you were just training and not looking forward to playing it must have been terrible. And there was nothing financial about it. If you were a reserve - there were only two reserves - you got £30 but if you didn’t play, you got nothing! The only financial thing they got was £2 a day expenses. They must have had an awful month, because even if you were playing it was agony!”

The World Cup was now ready to begin in earnest, and England had as good a chance of doing well as they’d ever had. As Norman notes, “Walter was said to be pleased with the defence after Peru, and said in the press that if I did what I did for Spurs, I was in for the World Cup. Then Peter fell ill again and was hospitalised. There were some facilities at the camp, but we didn’t have a doctor with the team.”

The opener was against the Hungarians, long England’s bete noire, having won the previous three fixtures, rattling in fifteen goals in the process. England’s strength was clearly in the front line, with footballers of the quality of Greaves, Bobby Charlton, Gerry Hitchens and Bryan Douglas. Behind them, it was Johnny Haynes who was required to make the bullets, augmented by young Bobby Moore. That was initially England’s problem. Moore was not yet the great figure he became, though Norman points out, “At the beginning, he was underestimated, he had strong positional sense and was dependable and determined with youth on his side. He read the game well and as he

108 • • 109

developed, he became calmer and showed many good skills, especially in distribution.” But the loss of Bobby Robson was a serious blow. He and Haynes worked superbly together and were the fulcrum of the team and the Moore / Haynes tandem was less effective.

The first game was played in Rancagua, requiring a 75 mile journey from the camp at Coya. Bryan Douglas recalls, “Accrington Stanley went out of the League playing in front of bigger crowds than we got for those games!” Maurice Norman remembers that “the ground held 25,000 but the crowd was about 7,000 as the ordinary people couldn’t afford tickets. The Hungarians played well, displayed superior tactics and ball skills. The ground was slippery which caused mistakes. For me, it was probably an even more intense game than the 1961 Cup Final, when Spurs won the Double, because a defeat would mean we had virtually no chance of progressing, as Argentina had already beaten Bulgaria in their first game.”

Ray Wilson felt England were unlucky to lose the game 2-1, but it was telling that England’s only goal came from a Ron Flowers penalty. Though Hungary were the better side, it was an unfortunate mistake that cost the game when, in the pouring rain, Flowers slipped and allowed Albert through.

They weren’t given time to dwell on the defeat, the crucial match with Argentina coming just two days later. It was a game that England had to win, but the selectors weren’t pushed into panic changes, the only difference being the replacement of Hitchens with Peacock. Argentina had begun to perfect the cynical savagery that was to dog their football throughout the decade and managed to put two of the Bulgarians out of the tournament, so England knew a physical game was in store. But the likes of Wilson, Norman and Flowers were hardly shrinking violets and they could put themselves about as well

110 • • 111

as the next man.

Maurice Norman felt the Argentines would be a real threat: “They were probably the biggest side I ever faced, all above six feet, with very fiery temperaments. We arrived only 40 minutes before kick-off because of a delay in travelling to Rancagua. We’d been allocated a one-track railway train, but due to a motionless goods train, we were delayed! It was hot, humid, the hottest day since we’d arrived. We were much the better team, so we got back into the World Cup.”

Ray Wilson reckons that, “The one thing in our favour was the game did draw a crowd, about 10,000 people! And the Chileans made it feel like we were at home because they were massive rivals, they absolutely hated the Argentineans. We played them off the park.” This was indeed one of England’s best World Cup performances to that point. They took charge of the game from the outset, with Flowers scoring after 17 minutes, his second successive spot-kick. Bobby Charlton, playing wide on the left, scored with a trademark shot from distance just before the break and Greaves secured things just after the hour with a typical piece of poaching in the six yard box. Argentina got a late consolation, but England had won with ease and underlined their credentials as genuine challengers.

By the time England were set to play their final group game, against Bulgaria, they knew exactly what they had to do. Hungary had thrashed the Bulgarians 6-1, then simply shut out Argentina in a 0-0 draw. England could not top the group, but avoiding defeat would see them qualify at the expense of Argentina.

For Ray Wilson, it was a nerve-wracking experience: “I can honestly say players weren’t equipped to play for draws, it

110 • • 111

wasn’t in our culture. Nobody had really played seriously in Europe except Manchester United. At Everton a few years later on, we’d go away into Germany or Spain or wherever and play like we did at Goodison and get arseholed every time, come back two or three down and then have to pull it back. So the idea of keeping it tight away from home hadn’t come in. Bulgaria were the bottom team and weren’t a very good side. I don’t know whether Walter or Johnny Haynes decided it, but we decided a 0-0 would see us through. I remember Bobby Charlton shouting “What the hell’s going on, get the bloody ball up here!” If we’d gone at them like we had in the first two, we’d probably have made it much more simple for ourselves, but that was a frightening game, the worst of the lot for me, one of the worst I played in. Because they didn’t want to come over halfway either, we were in our half, they were in theirs and it was like playing tennis. I can’t remember anyone having a shot and it must have been the most boring game of all time!”

England were now condemned to face the World Cup holders, Brazil, in the quarter-final. Had England managed to top the group, they’d have been able to stay in Rancagua and play against a strong, but not unbeatable Czechoslovakian side. England could take a little comfort from the fact that Pele was injured and would be missing from the Brazilian line-up, but that was about as good as it got against a team that still contained Didi, Vava, Amarildo, Zagallo and Garrincha, of whom Jimmy Armfield says, “He seemed to have a limp, slightly hunched, but very quick over five yards, like Matthews in that respect. Once he went, that was it!”

England also had to trek across country, not a great distance, but an awkward trip nonetheless, but at least it gave them a chance to see something of the country. Ray Wilson recalls, “You did get extremes of poverty and wealth, very little in the middle. Certainly in the village we stayed, they were lovely folk

112 • • 113

but I couldn’t describe them as anything other than peasants.”

Maurice Norman was equally struck by the economic conditions in Chile: “It was hot and dusty, the majority lived in poverty, their houses huts and shacks, yet the landowners lived in the lap of luxury. The Brazil game was at Vina del Mar, on the coast, with swank hotels, top restaurants, casinos, night clubs, dance halls, swimming pools. The people were friendly but deep in poverty, the vast majority lived in tiny houses, huts or holes in the walls, these poor native people in their shanty towns, hovels where people spent a lifetime in terrible conditions. Then a few yards down the road, the rich were living in luxury. It had a profound effect on me.”

It’s surprisingly rare for England’s footballers to be so touched by any nation, simply because they don’t often get to see it. As Ray Wilson points out, “People say to me “You must have been everywhere Ray!” and I say “I have, but I’ve been nowhere!” You get on a plane, go to the hotel, train, you might get the odd bus trip round the city because you’re there to play and you can’t go walking round for two or three hours, so you’re pretty restricted. On tour, or in a competition like the World Cup, the thing you’ve to beat is boredom. You’re relatively fit so you’re not training much, so there’s nothing to do, it’s a matter of killing time. You can’t go nightclubbing - not then anyway, we couldn’t afford it!

“I don’t know how much that’s changed, there’s always been the odd player who liked a drink more than anybody else, but most were pretty level headed, they were decent drinkers but they did it at the right time. That’s the important thing with most things in life. Good pros have to mix socially and have to work hard and I did that. I certainly wouldn’t dream of going out two or three nights before a game, but after the game, especially if we’d had a good result or if we knew full

112 • • 113

well that we’d got that night free, I’d stay out with anybody, I’d probably still be sat in the nightclub when the sweeper-upper came round! I can’t deny we used to enjoy ourselves, that’s for sure. We probably were closer to the press than they are today. They’d stay in the same hotels, travel with us, but I can’t remember a problem, I can’t remember anyone going out the night before the game. As long as you did things at the right time, you didn’t have any trouble”.

Prior to the Brazil game, Maurice Norman remembers, “The Sansalito Stadium was covered in sea mist from the Pacific before the game. Walter told the press, “We know this is our final, we are full of fight, we know this is our greatest game. No more funny business, there must be complete preparation and absolute execution. I want to emphasise we are not suffering in any way from fatigue”. In fact, we were suffering, tired at the end of a long season, battered and bruised from the other matches. Our confidence was reasonably high, we thought we had a chance. We wanted to keep it tight against great players like Didi, Vava, Garrincha, Amarildo. The ball was lighter and the ground hard, they were specialists in bending it round the wall in free kicks. The Santos brothers, though in their mid-30s, were as fine a pair of full-backs as I ever saw. The star was the bow-legged Manuel Garrincha, the “Little Bird”, who scored after half an hour.”

Ray Wilson remembers that goal vividly: “I was man-marking Garrincha and they took a corner, Zagallo took it from the left, I was on the line and Garrincha ran right along the back, into the six yard box, nobody marking him at all and he headed it in. And we had a long discussion about it after, and I said it had to be changed. What’s the point having a defender on the line and the guy he’s supposed to be marking left free? We had Hitchens and Charlton stood on the halfway line not picking anybody up. Now they’d be back doing some defending.”

114 • • 115

England hit back within seven minutes, Hitchens pouncing on a rebound and at the break, there was cause for some quiet optimism. Bryan Douglas remembers that, “We were doing quite well. I had a bit of joy against Djalma Santos, Bobby Charlton was having a good time on the other wing and it was 1-1. Garrincha had scored for them, he was a bit like Matthews, helluva player, but at half-time we felt confident. But they got a free-kick and it hit Ron Springett in the chest and ballooned up and Vava got to the rebound and scored. Then Garrincha hit one from thirty yards and it flew in. Ron was a good ‘keeper when they came at him in the penalty area but from distance he had a bit of difficulty I think”.

By the hour mark, Brazil were 3-1 up and out of reach. Maurice Norman recalls that it was, “A very different atmosphere, 18,000 people, they had strong support in red and blue uniforms, they kept up an incessant beat with single drums, steel bands whose instruments included frying pans, biscuit tins and coffee drums. The game was held up when a dog came on the pitch, until it was finally coaxed off by Greavesie. I remember vividly Garrincha beating Ray Wilson on halfway, then coming at the penalty area like lightning. My heart was in my mouth as I went to tackle him, I beat him, but he was a wonderful player. But we lost and were out. No excuses, we were very dejected, we really felt we had the chances to win. We all know how great Brazilians are, but it’s not until you see their skill for yourself that you see how unbelievable they are. They were supposed to be playing 4-2-4, but they often had seven in defence when needed and the same in attack when they could, they were so fluid.”

Fluidity of a very English kind would be on the agenda in four years time and the world would finally have to take note. Come in Mr Ramsey, your time is now...

114 • • 115

116 • • 117

1978

CLIVE THOMAS - FIFA REFEREE- CHRIS LEPKOWSKI

So, Clive Thomas, Football League referee. You officiated in the 1974 and 1978 World Cups. You also took charge of the 1976 European Championship semi-final between Czechoslovakia and the Netherlands, along with major domestic semi-finals and finals. Oh, and you were High Sheriff of Mid Glamorgan for 2005. But we’re here to speak about 1978.

A. So you’re not going to ask me about the 1974 World Cup or my big games in England?

Q. Not quite. But we do know you officiated in two World Cups. How do you get chosen to referee in one World Cup, let alone two?

A. It’s all down to FIFA’s refereeing committee. They look at the games in which you officiate in your own country and in European games. You’re assessed on those games and that’s how you’re chosen, based on those assessments.

Q. So it’s fairly transparent?

A. Well, actually, I didn’t know this before. FIFA send an official to check you out, made assessments and judgments on whether you’d be suitable. But in my case it was a bit different because my body were the Welsh FA. I wasn’t aware of this at

116 • • 117

the time, but I found out later that they’d contacted FIFA and recommended two referees for the 1974 World Cup. I wasn’t one of them.

In any case, I was carrying on unaware of this but I was aware that in the English Football League I was getting top marks from my assessors. In January of 1974 I was pulled aside by English football’s referee supremo, a guy by the name of Ken Aston [who had refereed the famous “Battle of Santiago” in the World Cup of 1962 and who introduced red and yellow cards]. I had just refereed Manchester United against West Ham and he said, “You had a hell of a good game today.” I said “Thank you very much” and no more. He then said, “I’m sure somebody will be contacting you.” Two days later I opened up the Daily Express to see a story saying I’d been chosen for the World Cup.

Q. What was your reaction?

A Ken Aston called me to congratulate me and told me. “We’ve been watching you for six months.” I was appointed and neither of my two colleagues in Wales were as lucky as I was.

Q. Who were the two Welsh referees who failed to make the cut in 1974? Any recriminations?

A. John Gow and Lorrie Jones - those were the two put forward. What hurt me though was I found out later, about a month or two or so afterwards, that the Welsh FA wrote a very strong letter to FIFA and wanted to know why their recommendations had not been appointed. FIFA wrote back and said, “What’s it got to do with you?” That makes me laugh to this day.

118 • • 119

Q. So, Clive Thomas, World Cup referee: how did that feel?

A. I felt like I was on the map. You can be the best coach, the best player or the best referee in any country. But to be known on a global stage, you’ve got to be in the World Cup. That’s where I was finally. I was lucky. But I felt I deserved it.

Q. Was it the same process in 1978?

A. That was different. Sometime in 1977, I got a call from a film company based in London. Their managing director said he wanted to make a film involving me. I naturally asked, “For what?” He said they wanted to bring a film out before the following year’s World Cup. They basically chose two referees to show the comparison between them. They wanted me and a Brazilian. They wanted to see where I trained and where he trained. So they wanted a guy who runs up and down Copacabana beach and a guy who runs up along the seaside at Porthcawl - I suspect it might have been quite interesting, for some people. There was a big difference between our backgrounds and so that’s what they did.

But then it occurred to me, why me? I asked whether they had permission and they said FIFA had agreed we should be chosen. So I already knew then that I was likely to go to the World Cup in 1978. The other referee was the brilliant Brazilian Arnaldo Cézar Coelho. We were good friends by the time we arrived in Argentina.

Q. What did you know about Argentina?

A. In Argentina we were prepared for major problems, which thankfully never came. It was during the difficulties of the military junta, effectively a government controlled by police and the military. It was a dictatorship. People were being

118 • • 119

taken away from their families, there was unrest and it was oppressive. People were concerned that a World Cup should be held there in the first place and the security reflected that.

We were just hoping - and it turned out okay - that we would be left alone. Nobody could get near us. We had high security at our hotel in Buenos Aries. It had one entrance only because all other exits were blocked off. Every time you got in the lift a policeman would join you. You moved, and people would move with you, just to be sure you’d be okay. Security was top priority.

Mind you, in West Germany four years earlier, it was no different. Our Frankfurt hotel was in the centre of a forest and we were going out to matches by helicopter but that was mainly due to what happened in the Olympics two years previously with the Munich Massacre. Argentina was very much more demanding in that respect.

Q. Was Argentina your first game outside of Europe?

A. [Laughs] No, I went to Iran in 77. Now that was an experience. I refereed the local derby between Iran and Kuwait in a World Cup qualifying game - the winners would go to Argentina. I did that game in front of 135,000. No pressure there. I was never nervous though. I’ve been in control of myself and I had to be because I had two linesmen who knew I had to be seen to be in control. That was the same throughout my career. But the thing with this match in Iran is that the game wasn’t televised there. There were about 30,000 people outside trying to get in and then a few minutes before the game, the Shah of Iran made the decision to show the game, much like our Prime Minister suddenly deciding to screen a football match. What a strange experience that was.

120 • • 121

Q. Did you have English linesmen in 1978?

A. For the one game I did, I had a Polish linesman, Alojzy Jarguz, and an Iranian linesman, Jafar Namdar. Communication was a problem as the Pole couldn’t speak English at all, but really officiating is standard throughout. You just hope the linesmen are as strict as you are. I never found it a problem. Back then it was different. Referees would also run the line. I was a linesman in 1974, but also took charge of two games.

Q. How did you prepare for Argentina?

A. I had a problem in that respect. I was due to fly out on to South America on the Wednesday and a very close friend lost his wife around that time. I was with them at the hospital when she died and it became clear that a Wednesday flight wouldn’t happen. So I got in touch with the Welsh FA when she died and said, “Look, I can’t fly out from Heathrow tomorrow.” They replied, “You must.” I said I wouldn’t and told them to send a telex to inform FIFA. I made it clear that I wouldn’t go if they demanded I travel on that Wednesday, but I didn’t hear anything.

I flew out to Buenos Aires on the Saturday and because I arrived late, there was no one to meet me so I had to make my own way to the hotel. I arrived at the hotel, was told to put my tracksuit on and told I would be doing a fitness test! I had just travelled for 21 hours. I flew to Paris, from there I met with David Coleman, the BBC commentator, and we flew to Argentina where I was basically told to drop everything and do a fitness test! I could never get on well with FIFA officials: I referee a game and, how can I put it, I never keep in contact with people outside of that...

In any case, I did my fitness test and passed. But I know for a

120 • • 121

fact that quite a few out of the 30 referees failed their test. No one was sent home. And most of them had games as referees, some as linesmen. What does that tell you about the selection process? Imagine that now...

Q. How close were you to getting the World Cup Final in 1974?

A. I did the Poland versus Argentina game. It was the first time a British official had been in charge of Argentina since Alf Ramsey called the Argentinians “animals.” So why is Clive Thomas, a young referee in his first World Cup game, doing Argentina? That’s what they all asked!

My second game was Brazil versus East Germany and the Brazilians were very pleased with my performance. I knew I’d done well. After that second game [Wolverhampton referee] Jack Taylor - who was now on his third World Cup, having also done 1966 and ‘70 - told me that I would get the World Cup Final because I had the highest marks ever. Jack had very good contacts at FIFA so I believed what he telling me in terms of the marks.

But in my opinion, Jack quite rightly got the World Cup Final in the end and had a brilliant game. It was his third World Cup and he’d only had one game in 1974. I was linesman for that game and I’m sure, if he was alive now, Jack would say it wasn’t his best game. But FIFA wanted someone who could control West Germany and Holland. He could control that game, and he had a wonderful game.

Q. How did you get allocated games for the World Cup?

A. It was down to the World Cup referees’ committee. They watch the games you referee then they put it to the council who pick the games. However, there are circumstances where

122 • • 123

some members like certain referees. Certain members of the establishment have their favourites. I’m glad to say that I can look every committee member right in their eyes. Not many can do that to me.

Q. Care to elaborate?

A. This happened when Joao Havelange was president of FIFA. He was from Brazil. The last thing you wanted was to referee Brazil. They had contacts within FIFA - and I say that very mildly - so referees wanted to avoid Brazil. In the 1974 World Cup before Havelange came in, I did Brazil against East Germany. Everyone was happy. And then in ‘78 we were all in a hotel and the announcements were made as to who would get which game.

The first one announced was Brazil versus Sweden: “Referee Thomas, Gales” [Gales is the Spanish word for Wales]. We were all sat there with headphones on listening to the translation of what was being said - the referees sat in front turned to me and put their thumbs up and said, “Well done”, totally relieved they hadn’t got that game themselves! I was chuffed to get that game, irrespective of politics, which were of no concern to me.

Q. How did you prepare for that game?

A. Three days before the game I went into the hotel library. We had tapes of all the games from years gone by. I looked up a Brazilian game and how they played, and I did the same with Sweden. I could see that it was going to be necessary to referee Brazil and Sweden in a way I didn’t normally referee. The reason for that was that Brazil were brilliant, outstanding footballers. Their control of that round thing that was 27 inches in circumference was amazing. But off the ball I knew I’d have to be mindful of what they did. They would commit offences

122 • • 123

and I had to be ready for it.

Q. So how did you adapt?

A.I didn’t run as fast as I normally do. I didn’t chase the play or the ball. I dropped back. So when the ball was kicked, I lay deeper and looked for infringements. I had no problems, it was a straightforward game from my point of view. An enjoyable game. But I know what you’re going to say. “So what happened with that goal?”

Q. So what did happen with that goal?

A. When you’re officiating in games like this, people, supporters, media, forget you’re human at times. I was looking at my watch and there were minutes to go. All had gone well and I was thinking, “I can look forward to my second game.” There had been talk in the press that this young referee, who has already done one World Cup, might get the World Cup Final this time. And, yes, that was my ambition. A footballer wants to play in a World Cup Final - a referee wants to be the main official in a World Cup Final. That was my aim.

Everything was going well in the game and then Brazil won a corner right at the very end. It was 1-1. It was a dead ball situation, so I’m standing by the goalmouth. The Brazilian taking the corner didn’t put the ball correctly in the arc and I had a Polish linesman, who could only speak Polish, couldn’t explain to him what was wrong. So the game was completely dead at this point and the goalkeeper [Ronnie Hellstrom] turned to me and asked, “How long to go Mr Thomas?” I said, “Time is up.” I signalled for the corner to be taken and I blew for time. Now, you have to remember that it wasn’t just 90 minutes. It was something like a minute and 20 seconds. My timing was perfect. I had added time for injuries and it wasn’t a

124 • • 125

dead-on 90 minutes.

I turned to the tunnel, looked behind and the ball was in the net. About five or six players put their arms up. I said, “No goal.” I had no problems from them. I’m not trying to justify that I was right - I know I was right. I had no problems and I didn’t expect problems either. Had I got any dissent or abuse, I would have sent any players off. I walked off the field with my linesmen and we walked into the dressing room, I said, “Thank you very much” to both.

Then a Uruguayan assessor walked in. He walked past me, congratulated my linesmen and then ignored me again. He didn’t say a word. I said, “What’s the matter?” He said, “That was the wrong decision.” He felt I should have allowed the player to take the corner.

“So when do I blow the whistle?” I asked. He replied, “When the ball is kicked out of the penalty area.” I said, “In my country, that is called cheating.” He then told me I shouldn’t have allowed the player to take the corner. But that is cheating too, as you’re blowing the whistle too early. I couldn’t win, according to the FIFA assessor. It was nonsense.

Q. What was the reaction?

A. I got dressed and had to get to the airport to fly back to Buenos Aires as the game was played at Mar del Plata. As I was coming out, I had about 30-odd journalists, including the British boys, waiting for me, wanting a statement. They said, “Is it true they’re sending you home?” I thought they were joking. But they weren’t.

I got on the plane and someone informed me that the BBC had shown it back home and Jack Taylor, who had obviously been

124 • • 125

asked to comment on the decision, had told them I made the wrong decision because it wasn’t “diplomatic”. He felt I should have been diplomatic, but I don’t agree. I’m a referee. I wasn’t refereeing games to be diplomatic.

Anyway, the fuss continued. And then Cliff Morgan approached me. He was working for the BBC with David Coleman. He basically said, “Right, we’re taking you out to the bars and night clubs.” We went out for about seven hours and not once during that night did Cliff ask me for a quote. Not once. I appreciated that. What a top man he was.

Q. When did you find out you were going home?

A. I didn’t. Not officially anyway. After each round, we would get together with FIFA’s refereeing committees and talk about each game. It would be a discussion. Brazil versus Sweden was the only game not discussed by anyone. It’s as if it had never taken place. FIFA, the referees’ committee, they never once discussed that match. That still hurts. Nearly 40 years on and it’s still taboo. What I did know is that it was the end of my World Cup. I bought a ticket from the travel agents and went home early.

Q. How did it affect you?

A. As a person it made no difference. But as a referee it concerned me immensely, mainly because I love the game. I loved it then, I still do now. I made that decision then, I would make the same decision now too. I’m not going to be afraid to speak out. I officiated at two World Cups, three games - I was also a linesman - and I officiated to the letter of the law, as I always did. In rugby you play until the ball is dead. This is football. You play to when the watch tells you. And my watch told me it was game over. It was an honest decision and my

126 • • 127

honesty cost me a World Cup Final. FIFA never once had the courage to tell me what I had done wrong. And that still bothers me to this day.

Graham Poll dropped a clanger in the World Cup later on and it always followed him around. He quit soon after. I was determined to carry on. And I still got the big games and the European matches. In 1982, I was still among the top three referees in the Football League and among the elite in Europe. I did the 1981 League Cup Final. So I couldn’t have been that bad, eh?

I wrote letters to Sepp Blatter and Joao Havelange - quite a few times as it happens - and they blamed the referees’ committee. Pass-the-buck mentality.

Q. Speaking generally about 1978, did referees feel the pressure from a home nation who were expected to win against a backdrop of political unease?

A. The pressures were different. They wanted Argentina in the World Cup Final and I get the feeling that referees were carefully chosen. I use those words very, very diplomatically.

Q. The game between Argentina and Peru was under suspicion [Argentina needed a four-goal swing and won 6-0, with the Peruvian goalkeeper found to have an Argentinean background]. Were you aware of that?

A. Who was the referee?

Q. Robert Wurtz, of France was the referee...

A. No comment.

126 • • 127

Q. Were you aware of the controversy surrounding Willie Johnston and his failed drugs test?

A. I went to a function at a hotel - they’d invited officials from each country and referees. There was a whisper that someone had failed a drugs test in the Scotland team. I had no idea how bad it was at the time, but it made no direct impact on me.

Q. Do referees have it easier now?

A. I’m not so sure. What really bothers me now is the lack of respect given to referees from professional footballers. There is still this notion - certainly at world level - that officials are amateurs.

It’s all too easy to blame referees but what about the players? That said, there aren’t that many rules in football and not enough referees apply them properly. The referees don’t show enough strength in my view. Too many referees are doing the job for themselves, not for football. And, more so, they’re doing it for diplomacy. Diplomacy is something which never came into my vocabulary.

Q. Would you change that decision in the Brazil versus Sweden game?

A. No. Not once. Jack Taylor was right. I wasn’t diplomatic. And I’m so glad that I wasn’t. I can look back on my career with a lot of pride and honour. I would make the same decision this afternoon. And I would make the same decision tomorrow.

128 • • 129

1970

THE BRIGHT SIDE OF THE MOON- BILL THOMAS

There’s a school of thought that argues that the modern world as we live in it now began on July 20th 1969 at the moment when Apollo 11’s lunar module touched down on the surface of the moon.

This is all very well, but most proper scholars will surely agree that the world truly changed with the advent of the 1970 World Cup in Mexico, a tournament when we first actually made contact with beings from another world, masquerading as Brazilians.

Retrospect suggests that it was the vibrancy of the colour that made that World Cup so transcendent, a tournament that wore the psychedelic garb of the 1960s in one last defiant gesture just as John Lennon was telling us that that particular dream was over. The reality though is that it was the football itself that provided the colour, for the bulk of the nation’s television sets could still only receive black and white pictures. We’ve since coloured the images in for ourselves over the years from repeated viewings of the golden moments of this most enduringly precious of tournaments but for most of us watching in monochrome, Brazil were not the team in the canary yellow shirts. They were just aliens, plain and simple.

The two events, moon landing and World Cup, are inextricably linked in my memory given that these most seismic of

128 • • 129

happenings tended to happen late at night so that those of us who were five or six at the time got to see most of it relayed through recorded highlights shown the following day.

It seemed as if one lunchtime highlights programme featuring Neil Armstrong cavorting across a pitch reminiscent of the Baseball Ground was then seamlessly replaced by Frank Bough introducing the latest shots of Rivelino defying the laws of physics without need for recourse to this weightlessness business. It was just the same programme wasn’t it? Life was just perpetually this full of astonishing moments surely? This stuff was even better than “Thunderbirds”.

This was still a world where the Likely Lads could plausibly avoid the England score all day long before watching a foreign international relayed on “Sportsnight With Coleman” that evening. Thankfully however, there was no need for that, for the BBC had gone World Cup crazy and actually put a highlights show on in the morning, a decade and more before Bough re-emerged as a wholly different kind of breakfast television personality. This meant that you could gen up on the goings on before you headed off for school and not have to hide your head inside your PE bag every time somebody mentioned the word England.

Those are deeply impressionable years, being five and six, and things seem to jumble together one way or another, becoming one great mass rather than individual, discrete events. Surely Buzz Aldrin was playing outside left for Bulgaria wasn’t he? Hadn’t Luigi Riva been inside the Lunar Module with Armstrong? Wasn’t the Sea of Tranquility just down the road from Guadalajara? Wasn’t that Michael Collins singing backing harmonies on England’s number one smash, “Back Home”? So many questions, so much confusion, so much exactly the same.

130 • • 131

Thank the Good Lord in his infinite wisdom for the provision of the sticker book. Of course, these were not stickers in the Panini sense of today, slick, self adhesive things with their fancy dan peel-off backing, a by-product of the space race itself I shouldn’t be surprised. Oh no, if you had a copy of the World Cup Soccer Stars Mexico ’70 book, you were into the realms of DIY.

The stickers, printed on paper so wafer thin that they would not have troubled Mr Creosote’s digestion, had to be glued into the pages. This was a delicate business, requiring your tiny six year old hands to place a thin bead of gum across the top of the sticker. Adding any more meant that the sticker would then cover up the player biography written in the space where the sticker was intended to go, meaning that you could no longer read of exotic places like Sofia – wasn’t that a girl? In the World Cup? – and Casablanca. It demanded you acquire mastery beyond your years of those strange old glue pots that came equipped with a bizarre red funnel affair on the top, rubber that you had to slice through in order to let the glue out, the glue almost immediately doing what came naturally and gumming up the slit, a portent for a future of which I was still wholly innocent.

But the key thing with these “stickers” was that they were different to the Apollo 11 pictures that came with the tea, in the days when you not only got an “Oooo” with Typhoo, you got a bit of card as well. Sturdier by far than the slivers of paper reserved for footballers, it seemed to scream out that walking on the moon was a greater achievement than playing in the World Cup, the kind of notion that was surely a split decision at best.

Certainly, much as I’d sat in thrall at those grainy pictures coming back from the Moon through that summer of 1969,

130 • • 131

it was a bit difficult to get fully swept up in the sense of awe that seemed to strike the grown ups. After all, didn’t this stuff happen all the time? We were on the Moon, so what? I came to realise later that this was merely a function of age and the armour plated human ego that suggests that no life existed prior to our own, something I now understand when I see five year olds manipulating an iPad as though it’s an extra hand while I’m struggling to work out which end to plug in the adaptor.

And the Moon, what’s so clever about that anyway? After all, I could see that every night, I only had to look up in the sky. But where was Mexico? I couldn’t see that, so surely that must be even harder to get to? One small step for man? Pah! What about bending the ball past a wall with this new fangled “banana shot” that the Brazilians could knock out at will?

Having grown up on a diet of Gerry Anderson cartoons, interplanetary excursions didn’t seem beyond the realms of possibility. But the things that happened in Mexico, they truly were impossible. Pele trying to score from the halfway line, dummying a goalkeeper on the edge of the box, Gordon Banks making a save when the ball already seemed past him. We’d never managed anything like that in the playground. This business was mesmerising. Why weren’t the BBC getting James Burke to explain all that while Pink Floyd noodled away in the background?

In some ways, I guess six years old was the perfect age to experience Mexico ’70 because it was football’s fairy story in many ways, not least because, in that rare twist for the usually imperfect game, it had the happiest of endings. The best team won and they did it by playing sublime football not just during the tournament but in the final itself and that game duly came to the most shattering of crescendos, an orgasmic climax with

132 • • 133

a goal that should be shown to any non-believers. If, after watching Brazil’s fourth goal in their demolition of Italy, you find someone whose soul is unstirred, let them jump off that cliff they’re edging towards. They’re beyond saving.For that goal is a human achievement on an unparalleled scale, a feat of creative artistry akin to getting Dali, Picasso, Da Vinci, Monet, Manet, Rembrandt, Pollock, Michelangelo, Matisse, Cezanne and Van Gogh (Dutch playmaker) in one room together – yes, I know a few would have been a bit mouldy – to collaborate on one painting so all encompassing, so breathlessly beautiful that to simply gaze upon it would cause the brain to boil and the top of your head to blow off. Such moments where an entire combine are at the top of their game and come together to forge one blistering moment of shimmering perfection are few and far between.

Harrying back into defence, Tostao eases the ball away from Italy’s Juliano and rolls it back to Brito on the edge of his own penalty area. The ball is handed gently on to Clodalado, to Pele. He plays a simple five yard ball to Gerson and lollops forward while Gerson knocks it back to Clodalado.

Now the fairy dust descends.

Clodalado strides and stretches, the ball always looking as if it might squirt from his grasp, yet never does it leave his absolute mastery as he skips and slaloms away from four Italians in the space of a dozen yards before picking out Rivelino on the left wing.

With the languid air of a man who has just stepped out of a balmy afternoon on the terrace in a Wodehouse novel, he uncoils his left foot and describes the ball 25 yards forward where Jairzinho collects it with the same prehensile ease with which a lizard flicks out its tongue and wraps it around a fly.

132 • • 133

Now, danger.

The tempo switches from stroll to sprint, Jairzinho cutting inside and then rolling it across to the top of the penalty area to Pele, now just on the right side of the D. The world’s greatest footballer, playing his final World Cup game, four minutes left on the clock. Surely he is about to crown the greatest career in the most swashbuckling fashion?

Crown it he does, but it’s better than simply scoring from 20 yards. Much better. He rolls the ball from one foot to another, then with his left foot, he scoops it out to the right side of the box and sets off on a stroll forward. What is he doing? There’s nobody there. It’s no wonder the old boy is retiring, he’s clearly losing it. So sad, and so close to the end too. Still, it comes to us all.

And then there’s this blur and before you can work out what’s happening, the ball is in the back of the net. Carlos Alberto has appeared from nowhere, run onto the ball and, without breaking stride, has bludgeoned it beyond Albertosi and in. The greatest goal of all time.

But go back and watch the film again, with all that you know of science uppermost in your mind. You will see that Carlos Alberto is not there and then he is. I put it you, dear reader, that rather than merely galloping forward, the Brazilian captain was teleported into position a la Star Trek.

And that is why the World Cup of 1970 was a far greater achievement than landing on the Moon. I rest my case.

134 • • 135

1994-2006

CLAUDIO REYNA - USA- BILL THOMAS

If you’re old enough, cast back your mind to the early 1990s. The footballing community was still basking in the warm glow of Italia ’90, the game as grand opera, a tournament of slowly swelling majesty that had somehow transcended the cynicism of much of the football to create its own particular niche in the game’s folklore.

Yet there was unease in the air too, all because the next competition had been gifted to the United States of America, FIFA having selected it in an attempt to finally entrench the game in the biggest marketplace in the world, a sensible move in both the sporting and economic sense.

But traditionalists and cynics alike recoiled from the plan, from the creation of a Coca-Cola World Cup. As it transpired, they need not have worried. USA ’94 was the real thing right enough. Indeed, it has gone down in the annals of the game as a competition that delivered on all its promises, notably the most fundamental one of all – two decades on and the United States has its own thriving, growing football league, Major League Soccer building steadily and sensibly. But as Claudio Reyna, a four time World Cup veteran for the United States from 1994 to 2006, explains, the mother of MLS was USA ’94.

“Being able to hold the 1994 World Cup was hugely important for the game here, it became a really big milestone for our

134 • • 135

country. Before that, although soccer had a big following right across the country, it was not by any means a popular sport when you think of baseball, basketball, American football. “Bringing the World Cup to the United States was great for those of us who had grown up loving the game, because it showed us that the world was interested in us I guess. To host the tournament was amazing and then personally, to be a part of it, that was an incredible experience. Unfortunately, I was injured and didn’t get the opportunity to play in the games, but being on the roster and being a part of the whole team, that was a once in a lifetime opportunity.

“Going around the country, it was so exciting to see the stadiums being filled, just packed out. When our run in the competition ended against Brazil, I went out to all the games I could after that, I saw the semis, the final, and to be a part of the World Cup even in that way really is a thrill. You realise that the game is reaching out to the whole country and that was fantastic.

“It was that competition that began to cement soccer into the American culture. It helped that the US did well as a team, we got out of the group and created some real buzz around the country and that was very helpful for the sport. It launched some of the next steps that were vital to the game in this country, one being Major League Soccer.

“FIFA pushed extremely hard to get a league up and running and in doing that, 20 years ago, we were lucky to have some true pioneers here, people with real vision and belief who invested a lot of time and money in building MLS. That all came together but it was the World Cup that was the original moving force.”

Like any other Mundial you might care to name, 1994 had

136 • • 137

its share of iconography and controversy, from Diana Ross missing her opening penalty in some misguided tribute to Chris Waddle to the Irish screaming for water like a troupe of Ancient Mariners in the Florida heat before Jack Charlton and John Aldridge went berserk over the officials’ refusal to allow them to make a substitution. But the most remarkable facet of it all was the way the crowds turned out, packing stadia that the cynics had expected to stand empty. You can sense the pride Reyna felt in that particular achievement as he talks.

“I think it surprised people just how many soccer fans there were in the US at that time. We are a country with a lot of immigrants who have come from countries where it’s the number one sport, so it was always a big sport here even if it wasn’t so visible as the others. But it was always there, the World Cup just brought it forwards more and things have got stronger from there.

“I think a lot of kids who were introduced to the game then, they stuck with it, now they’re having kids of their own and passing that love of soccer on and so the understanding of the game gets deeper rooted. From that base of ’94, it’s progressing nicely.”

While simply having the tournament there made a seismic difference to the way the US approached soccer, there was genuine concern that the hosts would be an embarrassment on the field. Since beating England in 1950, they had made just one further World Cup appearance, that in 1990 when they finished rock bottom of their group after losing to Czechoslovakia, Italy and Austria. There were very real fears in the world game that they might even become the first hosts to fail to register a point. As Claudio explains though, those fears were not shared by a very determined group of players.

136 • • 137

“That team was very focused because we knew how important it was for us to do well. The players knew we were carrying a special responsibility that year. As a competitor, when you’re representing your country there is always pressure and you always need to show pride in that and do your best to do well, but for soccer in the United States, it was especially important that year.

“We needed to get out of the group and to do that, you need to win at least one game. Like everyone, when the draw was made, you look at your opponents and you think, “That’s where we have a real chance to win, we’ll take a draw there”, the same way the fans do. And of course, many times, it doesn’t go that way!

“In that World Cup, we started against Switzerland who were coached by Roy Hodgson. Many people felt that was a game we had to try to win but we tied that one 1-1 in Pontiac, with nearly 75,000 people there. So you go from there to play Colombia who were one of the favourites for the competition, but so much was already riding on it because they’d lost to Romania, we both really needed to win. People weren’t expecting us to do well in that game, but we won, 2-1, their goal came in the last minute I think, and that was an incredible moment for us, you could feel people in the country starting to really get interested in us.

“We had Romania in the last game and they were a really good side that year, they lost in the quarter-finals on penalties. We lost narrowly to them, but we qualified out of the group, which was the goal we set ourselves.

“We got to the knockout situation and then we were unlucky, we faced Brazil, which is not the ideal game! We lost 1-0, it was a pretty good showing against the team that became the

138 • • 139

champions, so I think we had as good a tournament as we possibly could have.”

One of the great fascinations of team sports is the way in which the needs of the individual have to be subjugated to the demands of the collective – and we’ve all seen plenty of examples where that doesn’t happen. Personal ambition when harnessed correctly can be a driving force in a team, but equally, personal disappointment can prove to be a destructive force when unleashed inside a dressing room. It speaks volumes of Reyna’s character that despite huge personal frustration in ’94, he was nothing but a force for the positive within the US camp. Even so, the injury that sidelined him is surely still a source of regret some 20 years on.

“It was tough being on the sidelines, because everyone always wants to play. Leading up to the World Cup, I was playing quite a bit on the first team, I got a run of games, a lot of starts, and I was feeling good, I was getting used to the international game. So to pick up an injury was disappointing, but I look back and think that just being on the roster that year was such an invaluable experience for the rest of my career. Going through it, seeing the magnitude of it, being in those packed stadiums, I learnt such a lot from it and I took so much from that into the World Cups that followed.”

Since 1994, the United States have been perennial attendees at the World Cup, albeit with mixed results – they’re hardly alone in that, as plenty of the more historically established nations can testify. A little like things once were for England – far less so these days as the Mother Country’s global power slips away - being the USA at any international competition can mean that geopolitical issues can sometimes detract from the purely sporting ones, France ’98 being a case in point when Iran were in the qualifying group. The resonances that surrounded that

138 • • 139

were pretty obvious from the moments the balls came out of the bingo machine.

“When you get to the World Cup, because they are four team groups, such a lot depends on the draw and you don’t have a lot of room for mistakes. In ’98, we were drawn with Germany, and that’s not something you want to see! To make things worse, they were our first game and if you lose that first one, the percentage chances of you getting out of that group are already way down to 20% or less. They were a great team. We gave a pretty valiant effort I thought, they were the better team but we held on pretty well to them after we lost an early goal, but losing 2-0 in the end, it gives you a mountain to climb.

“Then we were playing Iran and things were very different there. Playing Iran, it was the first sort of big, political game that I was involved in. We were so far removed from it, these were different times, but everyone around us in the media made a big deal out of it.

“As players, we were trying not to get caught in the middle of all that, we were just there to play, but you could see that it wasn’t like any other game. In that sense, it meant a lot more to them than it did to us. Of course we were there to win, but to us, Iran was no different from playing Germany or Yugoslavia in that group. That maybe gave them the edge in that game and when they came out and won it, afterwards we saw pictures from Iran of people celebrating like they’d won the World Cup.

“Again, they had a very good team at that point, that was their golden generation I guess, so we knew it would be difficult and we were prepared. I remember the game vividly because it was one we could easily have won. We had lots of really good chances, I hit the post, but they got in front at the end of the first half and we couldn’t get it back. They scored again late on

140 • • 141

and though Brian McBride scored with a few minutes left, we couldn’t get an equaliser and we lost two to one. That pretty much ended our tournament but again, we played pretty well against Yugoslavia, kept it close, but ended up beaten one-zero and that made it a pretty disappointing competition for us.

“When we got out to South Korea in 2002, it was a World Cup where we wanted to put things right from four years earlier. There was a change in direction, things had evolved with the coach and we had a really good squad with a lot of experience. We had a lot of good competition for positions, and that is really important. We felt confident.”

The whole Captain America cliché is an easy one to drop into, but there is no doubt that Reyna does play a pivotal role in the US’ modern football history and that his leadership of the team into the 21st century played a major part in the States producing perhaps their best World Cup to date in that joint Japan / South Korea World Cup.

“Being captain? That role was so easy at that World Cup because the players made it that way. Everyone was focused, everyone trained hard, we had a lot of ability, we had a good collection of players and we were all pulling in the same direction. That’s what you need in this game if you’re going to have success, and that gave us a great chance going into the competition.

“We spent a lot of time together before things started and then when you get that far into a tournament as well, you get closer because you are together for longer, you are going through some intense experiences. We were very close to getting to the semi-finals in the end and that would have been amazing for us, but even though we went out at the quarters, we left that tournament with a lot of respect from the international

140 • • 141

community and proud of what we had achieved.

“I guess it was the year that we really came of age as an international team. It was the next major step that we needed to take. We’d become regular qualifiers for the World Club, that was our fourth tournament in a row, we’d got out of the group in ’94. Now we wanted to become relevant in the later stages of the tournament and really get people back home excited about the team and really get them to feel like they were a part of the competition even when it wasn’t being held at home.

“In ’94, it was happening in front of them, but to get them really involved in us and in soccer when it was happening in another country, that was the next frontier I guess. I think as you look back, it’s kind of worked that every eight years is a jump forward, the big points in our evolution have come in 1994, 2002 and then again in 2010. Those have been the competitions that have been really good for the sport at home because with the three big sports we have that have dominated for so long, whenever we have success like that in a World Cup, it helps build visibility for the sport at home.

“In 2002, we got our win in the first game and that was a breakthrough for us because from there, you have a real chance to qualify. We started so well, we were 3-0 up against Portugal after 35 minutes and we closed the game out three to two. That was important because the second game was against the co-hosts, South Korea, and from 1994, we knew how big it was to be playing at home.

“Playing in that game was one of the best experiences of my World Cup career. The army of red, that red sea they had in the stadium, it was amazing. As the tournament proved, they were very good and of course they were playing with a lot of pride.

142 • • 143

And we got sucked into another political situation, not over global policy this time, but over the Winter Olympics because the American skater Apolo Ohno had won a gold medal in the 1500m speed skating event after the South Korean skater was disqualified for obstructing him or something. That had happened four or five months before the World Cup but there was still some anger there about that and they tried to use that as motivation against us. It’s kind of interesting how so many things become intertwined!

“It turned out to be an amazing game. We were ahead for a long time, we had chances to score more goals, they came back at us in the second half and eventually they tied the game, but the draw was a good result in the end against another difficult team – they went to the semi-finals in the end and we were very close to playing them again there. We lost to Poland in the last game, but we were through.

“To play Mexico in the round of 16, those are always special games between us because they are our neighbours, our main rivals in Concacaf, and that rivalry just got propelled onto the global stage by that game. We’d always had that regionally, and it was still growing there, but when you get to play it in a World Cup, that intensity certainly took another step!

“I think the two countries have a big influence on each other in soccer. They are our direct competition so we are always looking to be better than each other, that’s kind of our first measure and the same for them. So for the United States, it’s good if Mexico is strong and the same for them. If you have a neighbour that is setting a high bar internationally, you have to go and match that and then beat it. As much as neither country might wants to admit it, the stronger the other one is, the better. The growth of each country is dependent on the other so that rivalry is very valuable, to push us both.

142 • • 143

“For our history, it was great that the result went our way because always in the past, the games were New York, Los Angles, Mexico City so playing it in a neutral country, in Korea, it was certainly a little strange, but that’s the real test in a lot of ways. On that day, we played very well. We had a very good start to the game, we scored early and from there, we were very solid, we counter-attacked really well, we were dangerous, and we deserved the 2-0 win in the end. It was a really strong result because Mexico had topped their group ahead of Italy and Croatia, they were a good team.

“So then we had Germany again in the quarter-final and they had Oliver Kahn in goal and he was awesome through that competition. I think he was player of the tournament – certainly the goalie of the tournament anyway! He was man of the match against us, Franz Beckenbauer said that we had deserved to win in an interview after the game and those things kind of tell you what the game was. We played really well, created many chances, could not finish.

“But it’s against Germany and those guys, they know how to win! They a long history and tradition of winning, and winning in many different ways too! That is a true art in itself and one that maybe we hadn’t learnt yet, and so they went through. It was disappointing because we had opportunities, they had a handball on the goal line where we should have got a penalty kick and, by the rule of law, it should have been a red card too.

“These minute differences, these little breaks that go one way or the other, they make the difference and on that day, it went for them. I guess the good thing is that we went out with a lot of respect from people about how we played, and that was what we were looking for. You go to tournaments and teams can go out with a whimper and for sure, you don’t want to be remembered in that way.”

144 • • 145

Not only did the United States leave the World Cup with a roar, Reyna had been sufficiently impressive to earn himself a place on the FIFA Select outfit at tournament’s end, a remarkable achievement.

“Personally, it was great to be named in the team of the tournament. Growing up and watching World Cups, it’s just something to be able to go and play in one. But just to captain your country in one and then, to top it off, have this great run, create a little history, that’s beyond what you can expect. So to be in the FIFA World Cup team at the end of 2002 as well, that was really, really special. But I have to say that the fact I got a mention was really a credit to the team we had, the spirit we had, the fact that players were able to blossom in the situation. That whole experience was a fun couple of months. It just feels like such a long time ago now!”

Having fared so well in 2002, the United States were now very definitely being taken seriously across the game, but if you want to make that reputation stick, you have to do it every four years, in every World Cup. Sadly, that proved beyond Claudio and his colleagues when they pitched up in Germany in 2006 amid some sniping that perhaps the team had passed its peak. It’s an assessment that finds no favour with the national skipper of the time.

“Whenever you get to a World Cup, there’s always discussion about which players make the team and which don’t, it’s always a hard choice to make for the coach. When you look at guys who are 32, 33, 34, if they are still playing at a high level in club football, for a country like the US, in most cases they’re going to make the World Cup team, especially at that time when there wasn’t maybe so much depth. I don’t really look into age too much, some of the older players look after themselves better than the younger ones, they do the right

144 • • 145

things.

“When you go to a World Cup, you have to look at getting out of the group first of all, and a lot of times, coaches will go with the guys who got them to the tournament in the first place, guys where you know what you are going to get, players with leadership skills too. They’ve been doing it for two years to get you there. You look at Spain going into the 2014 World Cup. They have a lot of older players now but they’ve been through a lot together, the coach trusts them and you’re not going to leave them home! They deserve to be there again.

“It’s a really difficult balance between “Is the team too old” and “Is the team too young”, it’s tough for coaches! In some of the games we didn’t have the experience we needed in some positions, we were a little naïve and at that level, that will cause you problems. Like I’ve said, if you lose the first game then you are going to struggle and we lost 3-0 to the Czech Republic and from there, you’re chasing to get back into the tournament, you maybe have to take more risks.

“But after that, we got a great point against Italy who went on and won it – we were down to nine men, they were down to ten – and that showed the kind of level we cold still play at. That was what made the Czech game so disappointing because we hadn’t reached those standards and shown people what we could do. We played Ghana in the last game and because of the situation, we had to win but we couldn’t do it, we lost 2-1 chasing the game.

“When I look back at 2006, it was different to 1998 when we also got knocked out in the group because in all three games we were controlling them, we were trying to be more offensively minded, but we just gave up naïve goals. The games against the Czech Republic and Ghana were games we could

146 • • 147

have done better in, but we gave away bad goals.

“In a World Cup, it’s a three game shootout at the start so if you make mistakes, you don’t have time to recover from them. I guess too, that year we were in the “Group of Death”, the other three were all fantastic teams, but I think we had a good team too, we just gave away too many goals.

“When you come away from a competition early, sure people have things to say about the selection and everything, but hindsight is a great tool to have. What I do know is that if you go to a World Cup, all those places on the roster have been earned. Nobody ever gets given a place!”

Claudio Reyna is now the director of football operations for New York City FC and president of the Claudio Reyna Foundation.

146 • • 147

148 • • 149

1966

THREE MEN AND A CUP- BILL THOMAS

Did you hear the one about the Englishman, the Scotsman and the Northern Irishman?

They were the greatest individual footballers that each of their countries ever produced and they happened to play for the same club side at the same time.

On 30 July 1966, the Englishman was in a team that befitted his talents and collected a medal for winning the World Cup.

On 30 July 1966, the Scotsman went off and played golf to avoid watching the final. He got his World Cup chance eight years later when he was way past his best.

On 30 July 1966, the Northern Irishman probably walked into a bar. That was what George did. He never got a chance to play in a World Cup.

The accidents of birth…

148 • • 149

The Endof

Just Look At His Face Edition 01

Just Look At His Face will return inAutumn 2014

www.justlookathisface.com