Europe won the top spots in the tournament, although Brazil played the best soccer on the feet of Zico, Falcão, and Sócrates. Luck was not with the Brazilians, but they delighted the crowd and Zico, who had just won the title of best player in South America, justified once again the “Zicomania” in the stands.
The Cup went to Italy. The Italian team started off badly, stumbling from draw to draw, but finally took flight, thanks to its overall cohesion and the opportune machine-gun blasts of Paolo Rossi. In the final against Germany, Italy won 3–1.
Poland, guided by Boniek’s fine music, took third place. Fourth went to France, which deserved better for the European effectiveness and African joy of its memorable midfield.
The Italian Rossi led the list of scorers with six goals, followed by the German Rummenigge, who scored five and set the team on fire.
Pears from an Elm
Alain Giresse, along with Platini, Tigana, and Genghini, made up the most spectacular midfield of the ’82 Cup and in the entire history of French soccer. Giresse was so small that on the TV screen he always appeared to be far away.
The Hungarian Puskás was short and fat like the German Seeler. The Dutchman Cruyff and the Italian Gianni Rivera were skinny. Pelé had flat feet, as did Néstor Rossi, Argentina’s solid center half. The Brazilian Rivelino scored worst on the Cooper test, but on the field no one could catch him. His countryman Sócrates had the body of a heron, long bony legs and small feet that tired easily, but he was such a master of the backheel he even used it for penalty kicks.
Whoever believes physical size and tests of speed or strength have anything to do with a soccer player’s prowess is sorely mistaken. Just as mistaken as those who believe that IQ tests have anything to do with talent or that there is a relationship between penis size and sexual pleasure. Good soccer players need not be titans sculpted by Michelangelo. In soccer, ability is much more important than shape, and in many cases skill is the art of turning limitations into virtues.
The Colombian Carlos Valderrama has warped feet, and the curvature helps him hide the ball. It’s the same story with Garrincha’s twisted feet. Where is the ball? In his ear? Inside his shoe? Where did it go? The Uruguayan “Cococho” Alvarez, who walked with a limp, had one foot pointing toward the other, and he was one of the few defenders who could stop Pelé without punching or kicking him.
Two short, chubby players, Romario and Maradona, were the stars of the ’94 World Cup. And two Uruguayan strikers who later on became stars in Italy, Ruben Sosa and Carlos Aguilera, have a similar physique. Thanks to their diminutive size, the Brazilian Leônidas, the Englishman Kevin Keegan, the Irishman George Best, and the Dane Allan Simonsen, known as “The Flea,” all managed to slip through impenetrable defenses and scurry easily by huge fullbacks who hit them with all they had but could not stop them. Also tiny but well armored was Félix Loustau, left winger for River Plate’s “Machine.” They called him “The Ventilator” because he was the one who allowed the rest of the squad to catch their breath by making the opposing players chase him. Lilliputians can change speed and accelerate brusquely without falling because they aren’t built like skyscrapers.
Platini
Michel Platini did not have an athlete’s physique either. In 1972 the club Metz doctor told Platini he was suffering from “a weak heart and poor respiratory capacity.” The report was enough for Metz to reject this aspiring player, even though the doctor failed to notice that Platini’s ankles were stiff and easily fractured and that he tended to put on weight due to his passion for pasta. In any case, ten years later, shortly before the World Cup in Spain, this defective reject got his revenge: his team, Saint Étienne, beat Metz 9–2.
Platini was the synthesis of the best of French soccer: he had the aim of Justo Fontaine, who in the ’58 World Cup scored thirteen goals, a record never beaten, along with the speed and smarts of Raymond Kopa. In each match Platini not only put on a magic show of goals, ones that could not possibly be real, he also lit up the crowd with the way he organized the team’s plays. Under his leadership, the French team played a harmonious soccer, fashioned and relished step by step as each play grew organically: precisely the opposite of center to the box, all-out stampede or God have mercy.
In the semifinals of the ’82 World Cup, France lost to Germany in a penalty shootout. That was a duel between Platini and Rummenigge, who was injured but leaped onto the playing field anyway and won the match. Then, in the final, Germany lost to Italy. Neither Platini nor Rummenigge, two players who made soccer history, ever had the pleasure of winning a world championship.
Pagan Sacrifices
In 1985 fanatics of unfortunate renown killed thirty-nine Italian fans on the terraces of the old Heysel Stadium in Brussels. The English club Liverpool was set to play Juventus from Italy in the European Cup final when hooligans went on the rampage. The Italian fans, cornered against a wall, were trampled among themselves or pushed into an abyss. Television broadcast the butchery live along with the match, which was not suspended.
After that, Italy was off-limits to English fans, even those who carried proof of a good upbringing. In the 1990 World Cup, Italy had no choice but to allow fans onto Sardinia, where the English team was to play, but there were more Scotland Yard agents among them than soccer addicts, and the British minister of sport personally took charge of keeping an eye on them.
One century earlier, in 1890, The Times of London had warned: “Our ‘Hooligans’ go from bad to worse … the worse circumstance is that they multiply … the ‘Hooligan’ is a hideous excrescence on our civilization.” Today, such excrescence continues to perpetrate crimes under the pretext of soccer.
Wherever hooligans appear, they sow panic. Their bodies are plastered with tattoos on the outside and alcohol on the inside. Patriotic odds and ends hang from their necks and ears, they use brass knuckles and truncheons, and they sweat oceans of violence while howling “Rule Britannia” and other rancorous cheers from the lost Empire. In England and in other countries, these thugs also frequently brandish Nazi symbols and proclaim their hatred of blacks, Arabs, Turks, Pakistanis, or Jews.
“Go back to Africa!” roared one Real Madrid “ultra,” who enjoyed shouting insults at blacks, “because they’ve come to take away my job.”
Under the pretext of soccer, Italian “Naziskins” whistle at black players and call the enemy fans “Jews”: “Ebrei!” they shout.
Rowdy crowds that insult soccer the way drunks insult wine are sadly not exclusive to Europe. Nearly every country suffers from them, some more, some less, and over time the rabid dogs have multiplied. Until a few years ago, Chile had the friendliest fans I’d ever seen: men, and women and children too, who held singing contests in the stands that even had judges. Today the Chilean club Colo-Colo has its own gang of troublemakers, “The White Claw,” and the gang from the University of Chile team is called “The Underdogs.”
In 1993 Jorge Valdano calculated that during the previous fifteen years more than a hundred people had been killed by violence in Argentina’s stadiums. Violence, Valdano said, grows in direct proportion to social injustice and the frustrations that people face in their daily lives. Everywhere, gangs of hooligans attract young people tormented by lack of jobs and lack of hope. A few months after he said this, Boca Juniors from Buenos Aires was defeated 2–0 by River Plate, their traditional rival. Two River fans were shot dead as they left the stadium. “We tied 2–2,” commented a young Boca fan interviewed on TV.