Goal by Jairzinho
It was at the 1970 World Cup. Brazil was playing England.
Tostão got the ball from Paulo Cézar and scurried ahead as far as he could, but all of England was spread out in the penalty area. Even the Queen was there. Tostão eluded one, then another and one more, then he passed the ball to Pelé. Three players suffocated him on the spot. Pelé pretended to press on and the three opponents went for the smoke. He put on the brakes, pivoted and left the ball on the feet of Jairzinho, who was racing in. Jairzinho had learned to shake off his markers on sandlots in the toughest slums of Rio de Janeiro. He came on like a black bullet and evaded one Englishman before the ball, a white bullet, crossed the goal line defended by the keeper Banks.
It was the winning goal. Swaying to the rhythm of a fiesta, Brazil’s attackers had tossed off seven guardians of the steel fortress, which simply melted under the hot breeze blowing from the south.
The Fiesta
There are towns and villages in Brazil that have no church, but not a one lacks a soccer field. Sunday is the day of hard labor for cardiologists all over the country. On a normal Sunday people die of excitement during the mass of the ball. On a Sunday without soccer, people die of boredom.
When the Brazilian national team met disaster at the ’66 World Cup, there were suicides, nervous breakdowns, flags at half-staff, and black ribbons on doors. A procession of dancing mourners filled the streets to bury the country’s soccer prowess in a coffin. Four years later, Brazil won the world championship for the third time and Nelson Rodrigues wrote that Brazilians were no longer afraid of being carried off by the dogcatcher, they were all ermine-caped kings in pointy crowns.
At the World Cup in 1970, Brazil played a soccer worthy of her people’s yearning for celebration and craving for beauty. The whole world was suffering from the mediocrity of defensive soccer, which had the entire side hanging back to maintain the catenaccio while one or two men played by themselves up front. Risk and creative spontaneity were not allowed. Brazil, however, was astonishing: a team on the attack, playing with four strikers—Jairzinho, Tostão, Pelé and Rivelino—sometimes increased to five and even six when Gérson and Carlos Alberto came up from the back. That steamroller pulverized Italy in the final.
A quarter of a century later, such audacity would be considered suicide. At the ’94 World Cup, Brazil won another final against Italy, this time decided in a penalty shootout after 120 minutes without a single goal. If it had not been for the penalty shots, the nets would have remained untouched for all eternity.
Soccer and the Generals
At the victory carnival in 1970, General Médici, dictator of Brazil, handed out cash to the players, posed for photographers with the trophy in his arms, and even headed a ball for the cameras. The march composed for the team, “Forward Brazil,” became the government’s anthem, while the image of Pelé soaring above the field was used in TV ads proclaiming, “No one can stop Brazil.” When Argentina won the World Cup in 1978, General Videla used the image of Kempes, unstoppable as a hurricane, for exactly the same purpose.
Soccer is the fatherland, soccer is power: “I am the fatherland,” these military dictators were saying.
Meanwhile, Chile’s bigwig General Pinochet named himself president of Colo-Colo, the most popular club in the country, and General García Meza, who had taken over Bolivia, named himself president of Wilstermann, a club with a multitude of fervent fans.
Soccer is the people, soccer is power: “I am the people,” these military dictators were saying.
Don’t Blink
Eduardo Andrés Maglioni, forward for the Argentine club Independiente, won a spot in The Guinness Book of World Records as the player who scored the most goals in the least time.
In 1973, at the beginning of the second half of a match against Gimnasia y Esgrima from La Plata, Maglioni beat the goalkeeper Guruciaga three times in a minute and fifty seconds.
Goal by Maradona
It was 1973. The youth teams of Argentinos Juniors and River Plate were playing in Buenos Aires.
Number 10 for Argentinos received the ball from his goalkeeper, evaded River’s center forward, and took off. Several players tried to block his path: he put it over the first one’s head, between the legs of the second, and he fooled the third with a backheel. Then, without a pause, he paralyzed the defenders, left the keeper sprawled on the ground, and walked the ball to the net. On the field stood seven crushed boys and four more with their mouths agape.
That kid’s team, the Cebollitas, went undefeated for a hundred matches and caught the attention of the press. One of the players, “Poison,” who was thirteen, declared, “We play for fun. We’ll never play for money. When there’s money in it, everybody kills themselves to be a star and that’s when jealousy and selfishness take over.”
As he spoke he had his arm around the best-loved player of all, who was also the shortest and the happiest: Diego Armando Maradona, who was twelve and had just scored that incredible goal.
Maradona had the habit of sticking out his tongue when he was on the attack. All his goals were scored with his tongue out. By night he slept with his arms around a ball and by day he performed miracles with it. He lived in a poor home in a poor neighborhood and he wanted to be an industrial engineer.
The 1974 World Cup
President Nixon was hanging from the ropes, weak-kneed, buffeted ceaselessly by the Watergate scandal, while a spaceship was hurtling toward Jupiter and in Washington an army lieutenant who had murdered a hundred civilians in Vietnam was being found innocent: after all, there weren’t more than a hundred, and they were civilians, and what’s more, they were Vietnamese.
The novelists Miguel Ángel Asturias and Pär Lagerkvist lay dying, along with the painter David Alfaro Siqueiros. General Perón, who had burned his mark on Argentina’s history, was on his deathbed. Dying too was Duke Ellington, the king of jazz. The daughter of the king of the press, Patricia Hearst, was falling in love with her kidnappers, robbing banks, and denouncing her father as a bourgeois pig. Well-informed sources in Miami were announcing the imminent fall of Fidel Castro, it was only a matter of hours.
The dictatorship in Greece was crumbling, and so was the one in Portugal, where the Carnation Revolution was dancing to the beat of “Grândola, vila morena.” The dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet was tightening its grip on Chile, while in Spain, Francisco Franco was dying in the Francisco Franco Hospital, sick with power and age.
In a historic plebiscite, Italians were voting to legalize divorce, which seemed preferable to daggers, poison, and other methods favored by tradition for resolving marital disputes. In a no less historic vote in Switzerland, the leaders of world soccer were electing João Havelange president of FIFA, ousting the prestigious Stanley Rous, while in Germany the tenth World Cup was getting under way.
A brand-new cup was on display. Though uglier than the Rimet Cup, it was nonetheless coveted by nine teams from Europe and five from the Americas, plus Australia and Zaire. The Soviet Union had lost out in the run-up for refusing to play a qualifying-round match in Chile’s National Stadium, which not long before had been a concentration camp and the site of executions by firing squad. So in that stadium the Chilean team played the most pathetic match in the history of soccer: it played against no one and scored several goals on the empty net, to cheers from the crowd. In the World Cup, Chile did not win a single match.
Surprise: the Dutch players brought their wives or girlfriends with them to Germany and stayed with them throughout the tournament. It was the first time such a thing had happened. Another surprise: the Dutch had wings on their feet and reached the final undefeated, with fourteen goals in their favor and only one against, which out of sheer bad luck had been scored by one of their own. The 1974 World Cup revolved around the “Clockwork Orange,” the overwhelming creation of Cruyff, Neeskens, Rensenbrink, Krol, and the other indefatigable Dutch players driven by coach Rinus Michels.
At the beginning
of the final match, Cruyff exchanged pennants with Beckenbauer. And then the third surprise occurred: the Kaiser and his team punctured the Dutch party balloon. Maier who blocked everything, Müller who scored everything, and Breitner who solved everything, poured two buckets of cold water on the favorites, and against all odds the Germans won 2–1. Thus the history of the ’54 Cup in Switzerland, when Germany beat the unbeatable Hungary, was repeated.
Behind West Germany and the Netherlands came Poland. In fourth place Brazil, which did not manage to be what they could have been. One Polish player, Lato, ended up as leading scorer with seven, followed by another Pole, Szarmach, and the Dutchman Neeskens with five apiece.
Cruyff
They called the Dutch team the “Clockwork Orange,” but there was nothing mechanical about this work of the imagination that had everyone befuddled with its incessant changes. Like River’s “Machine,” another team libeled by its nickname, this orange fire flitted back and forth, fanned by an all-knowing breeze that sped it forward and pulled it back. Everyone attacked and everyone defended, deploying and retreating in a vertiginous fan. Faced with a team in which each one was all eleven, the opposing players lost their step.
A Brazilian reporter called it “organized disorganization.” The Netherlands had music, and the one who carried the melody, keeping so many simultaneous notes on pitch and in tune, was Johan Cruyff. Conducting the orchestra and playing his own instrument at the same time, Cruyff worked harder than anyone.
This scrawny live wire earned a spot on the Ajax roster when he was only a child: while his mother waited tables at the club bar, he collected balls that went off the field, shined the players’ shoes, and placed the flags in the corners. He did everything they asked of him and nothing they ordered him to do. He wanted to play and they would not let him because his body was too weak and his will too strong. When they finally gave him a chance, he took it and never let it go. Still a boy, he made his debut, played stupendously, scored a goal, and knocked out the referee with one punch.
From that night on he kept up his reputation for being tempestuous, hardworking, and talented. Over two decades he won twenty-two championships in the Netherlands and Spain. He retired when he was thirty-seven; after scoring his final goal, the crowd carried him on its shoulders from the stadium to his house.
Müller
The coach of Club TSV in Munich told him, “You won’t go far in soccer. Better try something else.”
Back then, Gerd Müller worked twelve hours a day in a textile mill.
Eleven years later, in 1974, this stumpy tub of a player was champion of the world. No one scored more goals than he in the history of either the German league or the national team.
Disguised as an old woman, his fangs and claws hidden, the wild wolf on the field strolled along unseen, making a show of showering innocent passes and other works of charity. Meanwhile, he slipped unnoticed into the box. The net was the bridal veil of an irresistible girl. In front of the open goal he licked his chops. And in one fell swoop he stood naked, then bit.
Havelange
In 1974, after a long climb, Jean-Marie Faustin Goedefroid de Havelange reached FIFA’s summit. And he announced: “I have come to sell a product named soccer.”
From that point on, Havelange has exercised absolute power over the world of soccer. His body glued to the throne, Havelange reigns in his palace in Zurich surrounded by a court of voracious technocrats. He governs more countries than the United Nations, travels more than the Pope, and has more medals than any war hero.
Havelange was born in Brazil, where he owns Cometa, the country’s largest bus and trucking company, and other businesses specializing in financial speculation, weapons sales, and life insurance. But his opinions do not seem very Brazilian. A journalist from The Times of London once asked him: “What do you like best about soccer? The glory? The beauty? The poetry? Winning?”
And he answered: “The discipline.”
This old-style monarch has transformed the geography of soccer and made it into one of the more splendid multinational businesses in the world. Under his rule, the number of countries competing in world championships has doubled: there were sixteen in 1974, and there will be thirty-two as of 1998. And from what we can decipher through the fog around his balance sheets, the profits generated by these tournaments have multiplied so prodigiously that the biblical miracle of bread and fish seems like a joke in comparison.
The new protagonists of world soccer—countries in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia—offer Havelange a broad base of support, but his power gains sustenance, above all, from his association with several gigantic corporations, Coca-Cola and Adidas among them. It was Havelange who convinced Adidas to finance the candidacy of his friend Juan Antonio Samaranch for the presidency of the International Olympic Committee in 1980. Samaranch, who during the Franco dictatorship had the good sense to wear a blue shirt and salute with his palm extended, is now the other king of world sport. These two manage enormous sums of money. How much, no one knows. They are rather bashful about the subject.
The Owners of the Ball
FIFA, which holds court in Zurich, the International Olympic Committee, which rules from Lausanne, and the company ISL Marketing, whose orders issue from Lucerne, manage the World Cup and the Olympics. All three of these powerful organizations maintain their head offices in Switzerland, a country famous for William Tell’s marksmanship, precision watches, and religious devotion to bank secrecy. Coincidentally, all three profess an extraordinary degree of modesty when it comes to the money that passes through their hands, and the money that in their hands remains.
ISL Marketing owns exclusive rights over stadium advertising, films and videos, logos, banners, and mascots for international soccer competitions until the end of the century. This business belongs to the heirs of Adolf Dassler, founder of Adidas, brother and enemy of the founder of its competitor Puma. When Havelange and Samaranch offered a sales monopoly to the Dassler family, they were acting out of gratitude, a noble sentiment. Adidas, the largest sports clothing manufacturer in the world, had shown considerable generosity when it came to helping them consolidate their own personal power. In 1990, the Dasslers sold Adidas to French businessman Bernard Tapie, but held on to ISL, which the family runs in association with the Japanese advertising firm Dentsu.
Control over world sport is no small potatoes. At the end of 1994, speaking in New York to a business association, Havelange confessed a few numbers, something he rarely does: “I can confirm that soccer generates a total of $225 billion worldwide every year.” He boasted that such a fortune compared favorably to the $136 billion in sales that General Motors, the world’s largest multinational corporation, recorded in 1993.
In the same speech Havelange warned, “Soccer is a commercial product that must be sold as wisely as possible.” And he cited the first law of wisdom in today’s world: “You have to pay a lot of attention to the packaging.”
The sale of television rights is the most productive vein in the fantastically rich mine of international competitions, and FIFA and the International Olympic Committee enjoy the lion’s share of the proceeds. That money has multiplied spectacularly since television began to broadcast world championships live around the world. The 1993 Barcelona Olympics earned 630 times as much from television as the Rome Olympics in 1960, when the broadcast did not reach beyond the national market.
When it comes to choosing the advertisers for each tournament, Havelange, Samaranch, and the Dassler family never quarrel. The machine that turns every passion into money cannot afford the luxury of promoting the most healthy or useful products for active sports fans. They simply place themselves at the service of the highest bidder, and they only want to know if MasterCard will pay more than Visa, and if Fujifilm will put more money on the table than Kodak. Coca-Cola, that nutritious elixir no athlete’s body can do without, always heads the list. Its wealth of virtues places it beyond question.
With fin de siècl
e soccer so wrapped up in marketing and sponsors, it’s no surprise that some of Europe’s biggest clubs are actually companies that belong to other companies. Juventus from Turin, just like Fiat, is part of the Agnelli Group. Milan belongs to the constellation of three hundred companies of the Berlusconi Group. Parma belongs to Parmalat. Sampdoria, to the oil conglomerate Mantovani. Fiorentina, to the movie production company Cecchi Gori. Olympique de Marseilles moved to the forefront of European soccer when it became one of Bernard Tapie’s companies, until a bribery scandal ruined his successful career. Paris Saint-Germain belongs to the television firm Canal Plus. Sochaux’s sponsor, Peugeot, also owns the club stadium. Philips owns the Dutch club PSV in Eindhoven. Bayer is the name of the two German first-division clubs the company finances: Bayer Leverkusen and Bayer Uerdingen. The inventor and owner of Amstrad computers is also the proprietor of the British club Tottenham Hotspur, whose shares are traded on the stock exchange. Blackburn Rovers belongs to Walkersteel magnate Jack Walker.
In Japan, where professional soccer is still young, the largest companies have set up their own teams and hired foreign stars, making the safe bet that soccer is a universal language for advertising their businesses the world over. Furukawa electric company started the club Jef United Ichihara and hired German superstar Pierre Littbarski and the Czechs František and Pavel. Toyota set up Club Grampus and signed on English striker Gary Lineker. The veteran but ever-brilliant Zico played for Kashima, which belongs to the Sumitomo industrial-financial conglomerate. Mazda, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Panasonic, and Japan Airlines also have soccer teams.