Saturday, June 19, 2021
History Almost Repeats, Part 2
By the time the qualifying series for the 1978 World Cup came around, French football seemed ripe for a revival of sorts. At club level, St. Etienne had become a real force in the European Cup; reaching the final in 1976, they gave the all-conquering Bayern Munich a hectic run for their money before going down 1-0 in Glasgow. Elsewhere, there were other young players making an impact: the talented winger Didier Six at Valenciennes, the tough fullback Maxime Bossis at Nantes, and a certain gifted attacking midfielder and dead-ball specialist from Nancy named Michel Platini.
The national team was under new management, too; the Romanian Stefan Kovacs, who had taken the reins of the French team after steering Ajax to their European Cup triumphs, gave way to his assistant Michel Hidalgo, whose work in developing the young players was to bear fruit in the years ahead. Hidalgo made plenty of changes straight away: remarkably, the team that faced Bulgaria contained only one of the outfield players who had taken part in France’s last competitive international, a 0-0 draw with Belgium in late 1975. That one survivor was the magisterial sweeper Marius Trésor, who had established himself in the national team over the past few years, and who was to play superbly in Sofia.
The contrast between Bulgaria’s performances in World Cup qualifying and their efforts at the tournament itself was striking. In four consecutive World Cup appearances, their generally dull, cautious sides had failed to progress from the group phase (in fact, they had failed even to win a game). Yet they had been dominant in the qualifiers, and boasted a formidable home record: incredibly, they had won every single home World Cup qualifier since 1957. And their opposition in that time had included such European mainstays as Holland, Poland, Belgium and, of course, France. Passionate home support, far more vocal than was the norm in Eastern Europe, had helped…but there were concerns in some quarters that the refereeing, as in 1961, had played a role as well. The man in the middle for this first qualifying match was the Scotsman Ian Foote, who was to become far better known after this match; not, perhaps, for the best of reasons.
Needless to say, the Bulgarians were hardly bereft of talent during their successful period. In the 1960s, they had produced a striker of world class in Georgi Asparuhov, scorer of a famous goal against England at Wembley, among many others. But an injury dimmed his effectiveness in Mexico in 1970 when he was at his peak, and the following year he died in a tragic accident. The torch of Bulgarian football had been passed to the classy playmaker and free-kick specialist Hristo Bonev, who had impressed at both the Mexican and West German World Cups. Now 29, and captain of the side, he was the man the Bulgarians trusted to keep their impressive home record going against the French. And, indeed, his was to be the vital role in the match.
If the events of 1961 were hardly fresh in the memories of the players, many of whom had barely started school when Iliev scored his controversial goal, there were more recent events that could serve to sharpen feelings. Only a couple of weeks before the qualifier, St. Etienne had eliminated Bulgarian champions CSKA Sofia from the European Cup in a tight, bad-tempered tie. Seven players who had taken part in the tie took the field for their countries as well in Sofia; not among them, to Hidalgo’s disappointment, was the celebrated young winger Dominique Rocheteau, who had succumbed again to the injury which had relegated him to a cameo role in the European Cup final.
The stage, then, was enticingly set. When the young French side came onto the field in Sofia, they must have gotten a sense of what had propelled the Bulgarians to victory in so many qualifying matches against comparable teams: a wave of noise from the Levski stadium greeted them, and the Bulgarians surged into attack from the opening whistle.
To be continued…
