Thirteen teams from Europe, six from the Americas, and three from Africa took part, plus South Korea and Saudi Arabia. To discourage ties, three points were given for each win instead of two. And to discourage violence, the referees were much more rigorous than usual, handing out warnings and ejections throughout the tournament. For the first time the referees wore colorful uniforms and for the first time each team was allowed a third substitute to replace an injured goalkeeper.
Maradona played in his final World Cup and it was a party, until he was defeated in the laboratory that tested his urine after the second match. Without him and without the speed demon Caniggia, Argentina fell apart. Nigeria played the most entertaining soccer of the Cup. Bulgaria, Stoitchkov’s team, won fourth place after knocking the fearful German squad out of the running. Third place went to Sweden. Italy faced Brazil in the final. It was a boring, drawn-out affair that ended scoreless, but between yawns Romario and Baggio offered some lessons in good soccer. In the penalty shootout, Brazil won 3–2 and was crowned champion of the world. An amazing story: Brazil is the only country that qualified for every World Cup, the only country to win it four times, the country that has won the most matches, and the country that has scored the most goals.
Leading the list of scorers in the ’94 Cup were Stoitchkov of Bulgaria and Salenko of Russia with six goals, followed by Brazil’s Romario, Italy’s Baggio, Sweden’s Andersson, and Germany’s Klinsmann, with five apiece.
Romario
From who knows what part of the stratosphere, the tiger appears, mauls, and vanishes. The goalkeeper, trapped in his cage, does not even have time to blink. Romario fires off one goal after another: half-volley, bicycle, on the fly, banana shot, backheel, toe poke, side tap.
Romario was born poor in a favela called Jacarezinho, but even as a child he practiced writing his name to prepare for the many autographs he would sign in his life. He clambered up the ladder to fame without paying the toll of obligatory lies: this very poor man always enjoyed the luxury of doing whatever he wished, a barhopping lover of the night who always said what he thought without thinking about what he was saying.
Now he owns a collection of Mercedes-Benz cars and 250 pairs of shoes, but his best friends are still that bunch of unpresentable hustlers who, in his childhood, taught him how to make the kill.
Baggio
In recent years no one has given Italians better soccer or more to talk about. Roberto Baggio’s game is mysterious: his legs have a mind of their own, his foot shoots by itself, his eyes see the goals before they happen.
Baggio is a big horsetail that flicks away opponents as he flows forward in an elegant wave. Opponents harass him, they bite, they punch him hard. Baggio has Buddhist sayings written under his captain’s armband. Buddha does not ward off the blows, but he does help suffer them. From his infinite serenity, he also helps Baggio discover the silence that lies beyond the din of cheers and whistles.
A Few Numbers
Between 1930 and 1994 the Americas won eight World Cups and Europe won seven. Brazil won the trophy four times, Argentina twice, and Uruguay twice. Italy and Germany were world champions three times apiece; England only won the Cup played on its home turf.
However, since Europe’s teams formed the overwhelming majority, it had twice as many chances. In fifteen World Cups, European teams had 159 opportunities to win, compared with only seventy-seven opportunities for teams from the Americas. What’s more, the overwhelming majority of the referees have been European.
Unlike the World Cup, the Intercontinental Cup has offered the same number of opportunities to the teams of Europe and the Americas. In these tournaments, waged by clubs rather than national teams, squads from the Americas have won twenty times to the Europeans’ thirteen.
The case of Great Britain is the most astonishing in this matter of inequality of rights in world soccer championships. The way they explained it to me as a child, God is one but He’s three: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. I never could understand it. And I still don’t understand why Great Britain is one but she’s four: England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales, while Spain and Switzerland, to take two examples, continue to be no more than one despite the diverse nationalities that make them up.
In any case, Europe’s traditional control is beginning to break down. Until the 1994 World Cup, FIFA accepted one or two token countries from the rest of the world, as if paying a tax to the mappa mundi. Starting with the ’98 Cup, the number of participating countries will go from twenty-four to thirty-two. Europe will maintain its unjust proportion in relation to the Americas, but it will have to contend with greater participation by the countries of black Africa, with their lightning and joyful soccer in full expansion, and also Arab and Asian countries, like the Chinese who pioneered the sport but until now have had to watch from the stands.
[Since this was written in 1995, Europe has won three more championships and the Americas one, giving Europe a 10–9 edge overall. Brazil has now won the trophy an astounding five times, Italy four. But geographical injustice persists: FIFA continues to allot three times as many berths to Europe as to the Americas. In 2014, the thirty-two contenders that meet in Brazil will feature thirteen from Europe, four or five from South America, five from Africa, four or five from Asia, three or four from North and Central America plus the Caribbean, and, if lucky, one will travel all the way from Oceania.]
The Duty of Losing
For Bolivia, qualifying for the ’94 World Cup was like reaching the moon. Penned in by geography and mistreated by history, it had attended other World Cups only by invitation and had lost all its matches, failing to score a single goal.
The work of manager Xabier Azkargorta was paying off, not only in La Paz, where you play above the clouds, but at sea level. Bolivia was proving that altitude was not its only great player; the team could overcome the hang-ups that obliged it to lose before the match even began. Bolivia sparkled in the qualifying rounds. Melgar and Baldivieso in the midfield and the forwards Sánchez and above all Etcheverry, known as “El Diablo,” were cheered by the most demanding of crowds.
As bad luck would have it, Bolivia had to open the World Cup against all-powerful Germany. A baby finger against Rambo. But no one could have foreseen the outcome: instead of shrinking back into the box, Bolivia went on the attack. They didn’t play equal against equal. No, they played as the big guys against the little. Germany, thrown off stride, was in flight and Bolivia was in ecstasy. And that’s how it continued, until the moment when Bolivia’s star Marco Antonio Etcheverry took the field only to kick Matthäus inexcusably and get sent off. Then the Bolivians collapsed, wishing they had never sinned against the secret spell cast from the depths of centuries that obliges them to lose.
The Sin of Losing
Soccer elevates its divinities and exposes them to the vengeance of believers. With the ball on his foot and the national colors on his chest, the player who embodies the nation marches off to win glory on far-off battlefields. If he returns in defeat, the warrior becomes a fallen angel. At Ezeiza airport in 1958, people threw coins at Argentina’s players returning from a poor performance at the World Cup in Sweden. At the ’82 Cup, Caszely missed a penalty kick and in Chile they made his life impossible. Ten years later, several Ethiopian players asked the United Nations for asylum after losing 6–1 to Egypt.