Truman Capote had just published In Cold Blood. García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude and Lezama Lima’s Paradiso were in the bookstores. The priest Camilo Torres was dying in battle in the mountains of Colombia, Che Guevara was riding his skinny Rocinante through Bolivia’s countryside, and Mao was unleashing the Cultural Revolution in China. Several atomic bombs were falling on the Spanish coast at Almería, sowing panic even though none of them went off. Well-informed sources in Miami were announcing the imminent fall of Fidel Castro, it was only a matter of hours.
In London, with Harold Wilson chewing his pipestem and celebrating victory at the polls, young women sporting miniskirts, Carnaby Street as fashion capital, and the entire world humming Beatles tunes, the eighth World Cup got under way.
This was the final World Cup for Garrincha and it was also a good-bye party for Mexican goalkeeper Antonio Carbajal, the only player to be in the tournament five times.
Sixteen teams took part: ten from Europe, five from the Americas, and, strange as it seems, North Korea. Astonishingly, the Koreans eliminated Italy with a goal by Pak, a dentist from the city of Pyongyang who played soccer in his spare time. On the Italian squad were no less than Gianni Rivera and Sandro Mazzola. Pier Paolo Pasolini used to say they played soccer in lucid prose interspersed with sparkling verse, but that dentist left them speechless.
For the first time the entire championship was broadcast live by satellite and, though in black and white, the whole world could watch the show put on by the referees. In the previous World Cup, European referees officiated at twenty-six matches; in this one, they ran twenty-four out of thirty-two. A German referee gave England the match against Argentina, while an English referee gave Germany the match against Uruguay. Brazil had no better luck: Pelé was hunted down and kicked with impunity by Bulgaria and Portugal, which knocked Brazil out of the championship.
Queen Elizabeth attended the final. She did not scream when players scored, but she did applaud discreetly. The World Cup came down to the England of Bobby Charlton, a man of fearful drive and marksmanship, and the Germany of Beckenbauer, who had just begun his career and was already playing with hat, gloves, and cane. Someone had stolen the Rimet Cup, but a dog named Pickles found it in a London garden, and the trophy reached the winners’ hands in time. England won 4–2. Portugal came in third, the Soviet Union fourth. Queen Elizabeth gave Alf Ramsey, the manager of the victorious team, a title of nobility, and Pickles became a national hero.
The ’66 World Cup was usurped by defensive tactics. Every team used the sweeper system with an extra defender by the goal line behind the fullbacks. Even so, Eusebio, Portugal’s African artilleryman, managed to pierce those impenetrable rear-guard walls nine times. Behind him on the list of leading scorers was Haller of Germany with six.
Greaves
In a Western he would have been the fastest foot in the West. On the soccer field he scored a hundred goals before he was twenty, and by the time he was twenty-five they still hadn’t invented a lightning rod that could ground him. More than run, he exploded: Jimmy Greaves pushed off so fast, the referees used to call him offside by mistake, because they could not figure out where his sudden stabs and bull’s-eye shots came from. They would see him land, but they never saw him take off.
“I want to score so badly,” he said, “it hurts.”
Greaves had no luck at the ’66 World Cup. He did not score a single goal, and an attack of jaundice made him sit out the final.
Goal by Beckenbauer
It happened at the World Cup in 1966. Germany was playing Switzerland.
Uwe Seeler launched the attack along with Franz Beckenbauer, the two of them like Sancho Panza and Don Quixote, the ball fired by an invisible trigger, back and forth, yours and mine. Once the entire Swiss defense was left useless as a deaf ear, Beckenbauer faced the goalkeeper Elsener, who leaped to his left. Beckenbauer pivoted at full tilt, shot to the opposite side, and in it went.
Beckenbauer was twenty and that was his first goal in a World Cup. After that he took part in four more, as player or manager, and never finished below third place. Twice he raised the Rimet Cup: playing in ’74 and managing in ’90. Bucking the trend toward a soccer of sheer panzer-style strength, he proved that elegance can be more powerful than a tank and delicacy more penetrating than a howitzer.
This emperor of the midfield, known as “The Kaiser,” was born in a working-class section of Munich, but he commanded both attack and defense with nobility: in the back nothing escaped him, not one ball, not a fly, not a mosquito could get through; and when he crossed the field he was like fire.
Eusebio
He was born to shine shoes, sell peanuts, or pick pockets. As a child they called him “Ninguém”: no one, nobody. Son of a widowed mother, he played soccer from dawn to dusk with his many brothers in the empty lots of the shantytowns.
He set foot on the field running as only someone fleeing the police or poverty nipping at his heels can run. That’s how he became champion of Europe at the age of twenty, sprinting in zigzags. They called him “The Panther.”
At the World Cup in 1966 his long strides left adversaries scattered on the ground, and his goals, from impossible angles, set off cheers that never ended.
Portugal’s best player ever was an African from Mozambique. Eusebio: long legs, dangling arms, sad eyes.
The Curse of the Posts
The keeper had a face chiseled with an ax and pitted by smallpox. His huge gnarled hands bolted and padlocked the net, and his feet shot off cannonballs. Of all the Brazilian goalkeepers I’ve ever seen, Manga is the one I remember most. Once, in Montevideo, I saw him score a goal from net to net: Manga kicked from his goal and the ball went into the opponents’ goal without any other player touching it. He was playing for the Uruguayan club Nacional as a penance after having been driven out of Brazil. The Brazilian team went home shamefaced from the ’66 World Cup, where they suffered an ignominious defeat, and Manga was the scapegoat of that national disgrace. He had played in only one match. He made a mistake, got drawn out and, as bad luck would have it, Portugal scored on the empty net. That unfortunate error became such a scandal that for a long time thereafter mistakes by goalkeepers came to be known as “mangueiradas.”
Something like that happened at the ’58 World Cup, when the keeper Amadeo Carrizo paid the price for Argentina’s defeat. And before that, in 1950, when Moacyr Barbosa was the whipping boy for Brazil’s loss in the final at Maracanã.
At the 1990 World Cup Cameroon unseated Colombia, which had just won a brilliant match against Germany. The African team’s winning goal came on a foolish mistake by the goalkeeper René Higuita, who took the ball up to midfield and lost it there. The same people who like to cheer such audacity when it turns out well wanted to eat Higuita alive when he got back home.
In 1993 the Colombian team, without Higuita, crushed Argentina 5–0 in Buenos Aires. Such a humiliation cried out for someone to blame, and the guilty party had to be—who else?— the goalkeeper. Sergio Goycoechea paid for all the broken dishes. The Argentine team had been undefeated in more than thirty matches, and in each one Goycoechea was the key to its success. But after Colombia’s goalfest the miracle penalty-blocker not only lost his nickname, Saint Goyco, he also lost his spot on the team. More than one fan recommended suicide.
Peñarol’s Glory Years
In 1966 the champions of the Americas and Europe, Peñarol and Real Madrid, faced each other twice. With fancy dribbling, beautiful plays, and barely any sweat on their shirts, Peñarol won both matches 2–0.
In the 1960s, Peñarol inherited the scepter from Real Madrid, the greatest team of the previous decade. Peñarol won the Inter-Continental Cup twice in those years and was champion of the Americas three times.
When the best squad in the world took the field, they warned the opposing players: “Did you bring another ball? This one belongs to us.”
The ball was forbidden entry to Mazurkiewicz’s net, in the midfield she obeyed
the orders of “Tito” Gonçalves, and up front she buzzed on the feet of Spencer and Joya. At “Pepe” Sasía’s command, she would pierce the goal. But she had fun too, especially when Pedro Rocha would swing her back and forth.
Goal by Rocha
It was 1969. Peñarol was playing Estudiantes from La Plata.
Rocha was at the center of the field, marked by two players, with his back to the enemy area, when he got the ball from Matosas. He put it to sleep on his right foot, spun around with the ball still there, slipped it behind his other foot, and escaped his markers Echecopar and Taverna. He made three quick dashes, left the ball to Spencer, and continued running. The return pass came in high in the semicircle. He trapped it with his chest, broke free of Madero and Spadaro, and volleyed a shot before it hit the ground. The goalkeeper, Flores, did not even see it.
Pedro Rocha slithered along like a snake in the grass. He played joyfully and his joy was infectious: the joy of the play, the joy of the goal. He did whatever he wanted with the ball, and she believed every bit of it.
My Poor Beloved Mother
At the end of the 1960s, the poet Jorge Enrique Adoum returned to Ecuador after a long absence. As soon as he arrived, he performed an obligatory ritual in the city of Quito: he went to the stadium to see the Aucas play. It was an important match and the stands were packed.
Before the kickoff there was a minute of silence for the referee’s mother, who had died that morning. Everyone stood, everyone was silent. Then someone made a speech praising the dedication of this exemplary sportsman who was going to officiate, performing his duty even in the most difficult of circumstances. At the center of the field, his head bowed, the man in black acknowledged the sustained applause of the crowd. Adoum blinked, he pinched himself: he couldn’t believe it. What country was he in? So much had changed. Before, people’s only concern for the referee was to call him a son of a bitch.
And the match began. At fifteen minutes Aucas scored and the stadium exploded. But the referee disallowed the goal due to an offside, and the thoughts of the crowd turned immediately to his deceased mater: “Orphan of a bitch!” roared the stands.
Tears Do Not Flow from a Handkerchief
Soccer, metaphor for war, at times turns into real war. Then “sudden death” is no longer just a name for a dramatic way of deciding a tied match. These days, soccer fanaticism has come to occupy the place formerly reserved for religious fervor, patriotic ardor, and political passion. As often occurs with religion, patriotism, and politics, soccer can bring tensions to a boil, and many horrors are committed in its name.
Some believe men possessed by the demon of the ball foam at the mouth, and frankly that image presents a fairly accurate picture of the frenzied fan. But even the most indignant of critics would concede that in most cases violence does not originate in soccer, any more than tears flow from a handkerchief.
In 1969 war broke out between Honduras and El Salvador, two small and very poor Central American countries that for more than a century had been accumulating reasons to distrust one another. Each has always served as the magical explanation for the other’s problems. Hondurans have no work? Because Salvadorans come and take their jobs. Salvadorans are hungry? Because Hondurans mistreat them. Both countries believed their neighbor was the enemy, and the relentless military dictatorships of each did all they could to perpetuate the error.
This war was called the Soccer War because the sparks that set off the conflagration were struck in the stadiums of Tegucigalpa and San Salvador. The trouble began during the qualifying rounds for the 1970 World Cup. There were tussles, a few injuries, several deaths. A week later, the two countries broke off relations. Honduras expelled a hundred thousand Salvadoran peasants who had always worked in that country’s plantings and harvests; Salvadoran tanks crossed the border.
The war lasted a week and killed four thousand people. The two governments, dictatorships forged at a U.S. factory called the School of the Americas, fanned the fires of mutual hatred. In Tegucigalpa the slogan was “Honduran, don’t sit still, grab a stick and a Salvadoran kill.” In San Salvador: “Teach those barbarians a lesson.” The lords of land and war did not lose a drop of blood, while two barefoot peoples avenged their identical misfortunes by killing each other with abandon.
Goal by Pelé
It was 1969. Santos was playing Vasco da Gama in Maracanã Stadium. Pelé crossed the field in a flash, evading his opponents without ever touching the ground, and when he was about to enter the goal along with the ball he was tripped.
The referee whistled a penalty. Pelé did not want to take it. A hundred thousand people forced him to, screaming out his name.
Pelé had scored many goals in Maracanã. Prodigious goals, like the one in 1961 against Fluminense when he dribbled past seven defenders and the keeper as well. But this penalty was different; people felt there was something sacred about it. That’s why the noisiest crowd in the world fell silent. The clamor disappeared as if obeying an order: no one spoke, no one breathed. All of a sudden the stands seemed empty and so did the playing field. Pelé and the goalkeeper, Andrada, were alone. By themselves, they waited. Pelé stood by the ball resting on the white penalty spot. Twelve paces beyond stood Andrada, hunched over at the ready, between the two posts.
The goalkeeper managed to graze the ball, but Pelé nailed it to the net. It was his thousandth goal. No other player in the history of professional soccer had ever scored a thousand goals.
Then the multitude came back to life and jumped like a child overjoyed, lighting up the night.
Pelé
A hundred songs name him. At seventeen he was champion of the world and king of soccer. Before he was twenty the government of Brazil named him a “national treasure” not to be exported. He won three world championships with the Brazilian team and two with the club Santos. After his thousandth goal, he kept on counting. He played more than thirteen hundred matches in eighty countries, one after another at a punishing rate, and he scored nearly thirteen hundred goals. Once he held up a war: Nigeria and Biafra declared a truce to see him play.
To see him play was worth a truce and a lot more. When Pelé ran hard, he cut right through his opponents like a hot knife through butter. When he stopped, his opponents got lost in the labyrinths his legs embroidered. When he jumped, he climbed into the air as if it were a staircase. When he executed a free kick, his opponents in the wall wanted to turn around to face the net, so as not to miss the goal.
He was born in a poor home in a far-off village, and he reached the summit of power and fortune where blacks were not allowed. Off the field he never gave a minute of his time and a coin never fell from his pocket. But those of us who were lucky enough to see him play received alms of extraordinary beauty: moments so worthy of immortality that they make us believe immortality exists.
The 1970 World Cup
In Prague cinema puppet master Jiří Trnka was dying; so was Bertrand Russell in London, after nearly a century of very lively living. After only twenty years, the poet Rugama was dying too, in Managua, fighting alone against a battalion from the Somoza dictatorship. The world was losing its music: the Beatles were breaking up thanks to an overdose of success, and thanks to an overdose of drugs guitarist Jimi Hendrix and singer Janis Joplin were also taking their leave.
A hurricane was ripping through Pakistan and an earthquake was wiping out fifteen cities in the Peruvian Andes. In Washington, though no one believed in the Vietnam War anymore, it kept dragging on, with the death toll reaching one million according to the Pentagon, and the generals fleeing forward by invading Cambodia. After losing in three previous attempts, Allende was launching another campaign for the presidency of Chile, promising milk for every child and nationalization of the nation’s copper. Well-informed sources in Miami were announcing the imminent fall of Fidel Castro, it was only a matter of hours. For the first time in history, the Vatican was on strike. While employees of the Holy Father in Rome were crossing their arms, in Mexi
co players from sixteen countries were moving their legs and the ninth World Cup got under way.
Nine teams from Europe, five from the Americas, plus Israel and Morocco took part. In the first match, the referee raised a yellow card for the first time. The yellow card, sign of warning, and the red card, sign of expulsion, were not the only novelties at the Mexico World Cup. The rules now allowed for two substitutions during the course of each match. Before, only the goalkeeper could be replaced in case of injury, and it was never very hard to reduce the adversary’s numbers with a few well-placed kicks.
Images of the 1970 World Cup: the impression left by Beckenbauer as he battled to the final minute with one arm in a sling; the fervor of Tostão, fresh from an eye operation and managing a sure-footed performance in every match; the aerobatics of Pelé in his final World Cup: “We jumped together,” said Burgnich, the Italian defender who marked him, “but when I landed, I could see Pelé was still floating in the air.”
Four world champions—Brazil, Italy, West Germany, and Uruguay—faced off in the semifinals. Germany took third place, Uruguay fourth. In the final, Brazil astonished Italy 4–1. The British press commented, “Such beautiful soccer ought to be outlawed.” People stand up to tell the story of the final goal: the ball traveled through all Brazil, each of the eleven players touched it, and at last Pelé, without even looking, laid it out on a silver platter for Carlos Alberto coming in like a tornado to make the kill.
“Torpedo” Müller from Germany led the list of scorers with ten, followed by the Brazilian Jairzinho with seven.
Undefeated champions for the third time, Brazil kept the Rimet Cup for good. At the end of 1983 the cup was stolen and sold after being melted down to nearly two kilos of pure gold. In the display case, a replica stands in its place.