The Football Tragic

At the 1970 World Cup, the nucleus of the West German team that would go on to triumph at the 1972 Nations Cup and the 1974 World Cup was in the process of being formed. The great Franz Beckenbauer was there, still in midfield but edging into the "attacking sweeper" role for which he would become renowned. Appearing for the first time at a major tournament, "Der Bomber" Gerd Muller took the Mexican World Cup by storm, scoring 10 close-range goals, many of them spectacular. Sepp Maier had emerged as a world-class goalkeeper. Wolfgang Overath and his brilliant left foot made a significant contribution too, as did the tricky game-breaker Jurgen Grabowski.

But there was only one Mannschaft player at the event who was given the honour of the whole German section of the crowd chanting his name. It happened during the match of his life, the game in which he dazzled crowd and commentators alike, and took the opposition apart. This player was Reinhard Libuda.

Who? I hear you cry.

It was an era of great attacking players, and it is perhaps inevitable that some of them have been largely forgotten. Libuda's story is both instructive and tragic, the tale of a player who was born ten years too late, whose elegant style was slowly becoming obsolete, and whose innocent folk-hero status could not survive a murky scandal.

A miner's son from the Ruhr, with film-star looks and a shy, almost childlike manner, Libuda quickly became an idol with his beloved hometown club Schalke 04. A classical right-winger with superb dribbling skills, he was given the nickname "Stan" for his resemblance to the legendary Stanley Matthews; the "Matthews swerve", that signature drop-of-the-shoulder move named after football's first knight, was one that Libuda executed brilliantly.

Although he came to broader notice in Mexico, Libuda first played for the German national team as far back as 1963 under the aegis of Sepp Herberger, the miracle-worker of Bern whose spell as German Bundestrainer began before the war. But Libuda failed to cement his place in the team.

In 1965, with Schalke finishing in last place in the nascent Bundesliga, Libuda secured a move to local rivals Borussia Dortmund so as to remain at the top level. (Oddly enough, Schalke were not relegated, for obscure reasons.) And it was with Borussia that Libuda collected his first major trophy: the 1966 Cup-Winners' Cup, in which the Dortmunder overcame Bill Shankly's Liverpool in a tight final. It was Libuda who scored the spectacular winning goal, chipping the ball in from 25 yards with a little help from the Liverpool captain Ron Yeats, after the tireless Siggi Held had been stopped in his tracks.

It was the first time that a German club had won a major European title, and with fellow Borussia players Held, Lothar Emmerich and Hans Tilkowski going to the World Cup in England later in the year as first-team players, it came as a surprise to some pundits that German manager Helmut Schoen omitted the 22-year-old Libuda from the squad.

But a closer look at the latter stages of the Cup-Winners' Cup indicates that Schoen, whose attitude to wingers was always somewhat equivocal, may have had his reasons. More in Part 2.

# posted by Mike Salter @ 7:46 PM 0 comments

Although the 1978 World Cup ended in disappointment for Enzo Bearzot and his Italian team, performances at the event had been encouraging enough for Bearzot to keep faith with most of the players who had come so close to a place in the final. However, at the 1980 Nations Cup, which they hosted, Italy failed to impress. The unwelcome distraction of the Totonero scandal, which broke in the months leading up to the event, not only demoralised the Italian game as a whole but robbed the national side of perhaps its most important figure by that stage, Paolo Rossi. 

Rossi's partnership with Roberto Bettega in Argentina had been one of the great successes of the tournament from an Italian perspective. At the subsequent Euros, without Rossi's speed and enterprise, the attack was much diminished: Bettega was paired instead with the tall Francesco Graziani, a striker in the mould of Luigi Riva: powerful, hard-working and excellent in the air, but hardly nimble. The result, as in Mexico in 1970, was a lone goal in Italy's three opening games. And this time, due to the structure of the event, it was not enough to "keep them alive" in the tournament. Ultimately, as in 1978, they finished fourth.

That single goal was scored by Marco Tardelli in a match against a blunt, unimaginative England side far too reliant on Kevin Keegan. It was a tedious game, but it did at least show that Italy had maintained their defensive virtues, whatever their defects in attack. The man-to-man marking was as fierce and effective as ever; Tardelli nullified Keegan, while the aggressive Claudio Gentile did his usual job on the agile Tony Woodcock, and the recent European Cup winner Gary Birtles was completely played out of the game by an important newcomer to the team, the AC Milan stopper Fulvio Collovati.

At the 1982 World Cup in Spain, it was Bettega who was absent, with a knee ligament injury. Rossi, his Totonero ban conveniently reduced, had returned to the game and to the national side but was out of practice, and in the opening few games, it showed. Italy began with a dull 0-0 draw against Poland; Rossi, according to one journalist present, was "a shadow of the exciting player who delighted crowds in Argentina". 

Italy's next match was against unfancied Peru, and although it is generally forgotten these days, I believe that the lessons drawn from it played a crucial role in Italy's eventual, and widely unexpected, triumph.

Peru's side, with the evergreen Teofilo Cubillas still patrolling the midfield, had barely changed their overall strategy since 1970: short one-twos through the centre, minimal use of the wings, and shots generally coming from either just within the box or just outside it. They were not expected to mount much of a challenge in Spain, with most of their starting side the wrong side of 30 (fittingly, they also had the oldest coach at the event in the Brazilian Tim, a veteran of the 1938 (!) World Cup).

To be sure, Italy dominated the early stages of the game and went ahead with a fine goal from the winger Bruno Conti. Keeping a hand on the tiller for the rest of the half, but hardly exerting themselves, they went in at half-time looking almost certain winners.

But the cult of 1-0 still lived. And Bearzot, as in Buenos Aires against the Dutch, fell victim to it. He took Rossi off at the interval.

In retrospect, it seems extraordinary that Paolo Rossi was voluntarily withdrawn at half-time in a game from the 1982 World Cup. But Bearzot could have justified the decision based on Rossi's performance in the first half: again, he had looked uneasy and ineffective. Perhaps the most significant factor, however, was that Rossi was not replaced by another attacker. Instead, somewhat ironically, it was Franco Causio who took his place.

But this was not the Causio of 1978. A veteran by now, the Baron was no longer able to link up with the forwards as often as in the past, and the result was that Graziani was hopelessly isolated in the second period - shades of Riva in 1970. A further predictable result was that Italy now fell back into their crouch, relying on ferocious man-marking and giving Peru the run of the midfield. 

Unfortunately for the Azzurri, this proved to be a risky strategy, especially with the still dangerous Cubillas facing them. Straight after the restart, the veteran nearly scored with an extraordinary outside-of-the-foot free kick, and the momentum was with Peru from that moment. This time, the referee was less than indulgent with Italy's close marking, and plenty of free kicks for the Peruvians ensued; they might have had a penalty, too, when Gentile upended another veteran, Juan Oblitas, in the box.

The chances began to come. Dino Zoff saved superbly from Ruben Diaz's free kick, after which the substitute Guillermo La Rosa connected with a corner to shoot just over the bar. Soon afterwards, he missed a sitter from six yards. "This second half is neverending," was the comment from the dean of Italian football commentators, Nando Martellini.

Finally, seven minutes from the end, an equaliser for Peru: another free kick was touched off to Diaz, and his shot deflected off Collovati and skidded past Zoff. It was far too late for Italy to reverse the momentum, and the game ended 1-1.

Significantly, it was the last time at the event that Bearzot would go back on the defensive after going 1-0 ahead. 

Italy scraped into the second round after a draw against Cameroon; progressing "without glory", as Martellini stressed. But in the games that followed, Italy went ahead against Argentina, Brazil, Poland and West Germany. In each case, the personnel remained the same, and the attitude remained the same. The lesson had finally sunk in.

And in the final, another significant moment: the Rossi-Graziani partnership, which had blossomed as the tournament had progressed, was broken when the hard-working Graziani succumbed to an injury early in the final. It must have been tempting for Bearzot to reinforce the midfield and leave Rossi on his own up front to hunt for scraps, as had been the Italian custom so often in the past.

Not this time. Graziani was replaced by another striker in Alessandro Altobelli: the Azzurri would not go into their erstwhile crouch because of such a setback. Especially when the Germans possessed a number of players capable of posing a threat with...shots from distance.

Fittingly, Rossi and Altobelli both scored in the final, either side of Marco Tardelli's legendary goal, during which the defenders Gaetano Scirea and Antonio Cabrini played key roles in the build-up, deep inside the opposition half. No defensive crouch.

In a last, exquisite irony, Bearzot did withdraw a striker for a midfielder as the game was drawing to a close. But this was no panicky defensive move, this was a sentimental moment in which Bearzot felt he owed some game time to a player who had been there throughout Italy's zigzagging path to World Cup nirvana.

That player was Franco Causio.

# posted by Mike Salter @ 9:27 PM 0 comments

The Italian team that Enzo Bearzot took to Argentina in 1978 had a number of new faces. The old guard - Riva, Rivera, Mazzola, Facchetti, even Fabio Capello - had made way for a group of players in their early-to-mid-twenties who were, on the whole, far more attack-minded. Representative of this tendency was the fine sweeper Gaetano Scirea of Juventus, who ventured upfield far more often than his predecessors. Another player who forced his way into the team just before the competition was the left-back Antonio Cabrini, who was similarly keen to link up with the forwards.

It was still a man-marking-and-sweeper system, but with greater flexibility and enterprise; positive catenaccio, if you like. And although there was no schemer with the elegance and range of passing of a Gianni Rivera, Bearzot had a promising young midfield general in Giancarlo Antognoni and a springer of surprise in Franco Causio, one of the few survivors from 1974. There were also two genuine goalscoring forwards in the astute Roberto Bettega and the energetic young Paolo Rossi.

Causio, nicknamed "The Baron" for his aristocratic bearing and his stylish play, was something of an enigma. Capable of winning a game almost single-handedly with his incisive dribbling and passing, as he did in a crucial qualifier against England in late 1976, he could also be wretchedly ineffective at times if his form and mood were down. 

As in the knockout stage of the 1970 tournament, it was an early goal scored against the Azzurri which brought the best out of them. A very early goal this time, scored in less than a minute by France in their opening game, when Didier Six crossed from the left for Bernard Lacombe to glance a header past Dino Zoff. Italy recovered to win 2-1, playing with great skill and character. In the following game against Hungary, whose two best players were suspended after being sent off in the opener against Argentina, Italy were dominant from the outset. Bettega and Rossi combined superbly up front, and, but for some wasteful finishing, the final score could have been far more impressive than just 3-1.

In their final group match, against the hosts Argentina, Italy played steadily intelligent, measured football to pull off a surprise 1-0 win; Bettega scored the only goal. The Azzurri had been far and away the most impressive team of the opening stage, winning all three games in the competition's toughest group.

In the second stage, Bearzot's men began to look a little tired. They were held to a 0-0 draw by an unimpressive but resilient West Germany, but in their next game against Austria, they went into an early lead, Rossi characteristically taking advantage of some slackness in the Austrian defence. 1-0 to the Azzurri, once again.

Old habits die hard. Italy, for the first time in the competition, went back into their historic crouch. This time, they did manage to hold on to their lead until the final whistle; partly because, like Sweden in 1970, the Austrians made very little of their shots from distance. The midfielder Eduard Krieger tried his luck a couple of times in the second half, but Zoff was hardly extended. So the tight man-marking did its job, and Italy faced Holland in the vital match in Buenos Aires.

Causio had been very ordinary against Austria, misplacing passes, trying tricks which didn't come off, and generally looking unhappy with himself. But such was his importance to the team at this stage that Bearzot was clearly unlikely to omit him from the encounter with the Dutch. And it was to be a very different Causio against Holland.

In short, Italy bossed the first half, and Causio was at the centre of everything. The Baron was playing in true aristocratic style, and the Dutch had no answer to him. The opening Italian goal should have been decisive: not only was it a painful own goal, but it resulted in an injury to the Dutch keeper Piet Schrijvers, who had to be replaced by the veteran Jan Jongbloed, Holland's mercurial 1974 keeper.

1-0 to the Azzurri at half-time. Although they had slowed down somewhat after the goal, they had undoubtedly kept the upper hand. But now Bearzot made an absolutely extraordinary decision. He took Causio off.

It made no sense. The man who had been keeping the Dutch on the back foot for most of the first half...removed? But it was 1-0, late in the competition, Italy had run out of steam in the second half against Austria, Causio's brilliance might not have lasted, and the coach felt it was time for the crouch again. So the much less incisive Claudio Sala came on for the Baron, and Italy began to crowd around their own penalty area.

And all might have been well, but for one salient fact: as they perhaps should have remembered from 1974, the Dutch were awfully dangerous when shooting from distance.

Two Dutch goals, both from distance, decided the game. Ernie Brandts scored from just outside the box, and then Arie Haan gave Holland the lead with an extraordinary swerving shot from all of thirty yards, when the Italians had ceded the midfield to their opponents.

In many ways, the 1978 Italian team deserved to win the World Cup even more than the 1982 team which ultimately did. There was a good blend of youth and experience, quality all over the field, and excellent organisation. But when it came down to it, they couldn't quite wean themselves away from the cult of 1-0.

In my view, it took one final, crucial lesson to finally break the addiction to the 1-0 catenaccio crouch. And this lesson was learned in a game from the next World Cup, one which is almost forgotten in the Italy 1982 story but which was actually deeply significant: their opening round match against Peru. 

To be concluded in Part 4.

# posted by Mike Salter @ 10:21 PM 0 comments

Once Italy had secured qualification from the group stage at the 1970 World Cup, their talented players began to get into their stride. Quite significantly, it was an early goal scored against them in their quarter-final against the Mexican hosts that really spurred them into action; they ran out 4-1 winners, with Luigi Riva this time getting on the scoresheet twice. 

In the semi-final, there were hints of the grab-an-early-goal-and-hold-on philosophy which had informed their opener against Sweden once again: after Roberto Boninsegna's early goal, Italy did indeed cede most of the midfield to the West Germans. This time, against a side with far more bite than the Swedes in attack, it didn't quite work: in injury time, Karlheinz Schnellinger scored a potentially traumatising equaliser. It was a tribute to the Italians' improved morale and determination that they fought back in extra time to win.

In the final, of course, Italy were overrun by Pelé and company. Even then, however, after the cheap equaliser gifted to them by Clodoaldo late in the first half, they surely had the chance to turn the tide of the game. Had they shown a bit more boldness, and, significantly, a bit more fitness thereafter, the outcome could have been quite different.

Italy failed to make much of an impact on either the 1972 Nations Cup or the subsequent World Cup in West Germany. At the latter event, far too much faith was placed in heroes of the past such as Gianni Rivera, Tarcisio Burgnich and, yes, Riva, who had a wretched tournament. In their decisive game against Poland, the Italians were simply outplayed, and the difference in fitness and sharpness between the two sides was stark.

It was a much younger Italian side which travelled to Argentina in 1978, but before we come to the crucial Italian match of that tournament, the "semi-final" against the Dutch, it is worth taking a look at an instructive trial run for that game: the Nations Cup qualifying match between the same two sides back in late 1974.

Soapbox time, for a moment.

A lot of utter nonsense is written and spoken these days about the Dutch of 1974, and the European Cup-winning Ajax sides of the years just prior. We are still regaled with tales of stunning, technically brilliant football artistes playing with gay abandon, changing positions at will, and bringing a ray of sunshine into the grim post-1960s world of European football.

In truth, with the very important exception of Johan Cruyff, there was nothing technically exceptional about the Dutch. Nothing at all. What set Ajax and the Dutch national side apart from rivals of their era was their relentless pressing and commitment to attack, their speed and physical power, and their tactical discipline (yes, folks: discipline). Their use of the offside trap was revolutionary and executed superbly, and their use of the team press upon losing the ball was formidably effective.

An interesting case in point was Ajax's exciting quarter-final tie against Celtic in 1971: the Scottish side were in no way technically inferior (and in the elusive winger Jimmy Johnstone they had a player comparable to Cruyff in that respect, if not others), but they came up short - pun intended there - against the tall, powerful, Ajax men whose reserves of energy and incessant pressing meant that the Bhoys could never get properly into their rhythm.

Now, off the soapbox and on with the main story.

On that night in Rotterdam in November 1974, Italy again went into an early lead: a cross from Giancarlo Antognoni was met by a powerful header from Boninsegna, and the veteran keeper Jan Jongbloed, whose handling was never as good as his positioning, fumbled the ball over the line.

Once again, Italy quickly retreated into their shell. This time it was Boninsegna who was left alone up front, and the Dutch took over the midfield, with the experienced Wim van Hanegem directing the traffic. It was not a surprise when the Dutch equalised; Ruud Krol's cross from the left was met by the outstretched leg of Rob Rensenbrink, and it was 1-1.

Then something interesting, and perhaps surprising, happened. 

The Dutch seemed to have realised that in the technical department, the Italians were probably their equals or even their betters. Certainly, in the early stages of the match, when the likes of Franco Causio - who will be an important figure in this tale - were given sufficient time on the ball, they showed themselves capable of posing considerable danger. Perhaps aware of the Italian tendency to "wake up" after conceding a goal, the men in orange decided to stop such a revival before it started.

In short, for the next twenty minutes, they fouled the living daylights out of the Italians. The Dutch, you say? The total football artists, the long-haired revolutionaries of the beautiful game? Yes. And they were largely given licence to do so by the weak Russian referee, Pavel Kazakov.

It was the Italians, too, who came closest to breaking the deadlock prior to the break. Following an incident in which van Hanegem was lucky to stay on the field after elbowing Francesco Rocca in the face, Boninsegna nearly scored a second with a powerful shot; Pietro Anastasi also had a chance towards the close.

After the break, it was a different game - a grim foreshadowing of the encounter at the World Cup four years later.

The Dutch completely dominated the second half. The whistle had barely been blown when Johan Neeskens had a shot saved by Dino Zoff, and Willy van der Kuylen hit the post a minute later. This set the tone for the rest of the half, and the Dutch this time were able to dominate without recourse to constant fouling. Ironically, when a second Dutch goal did arrive, it was probably offside, but it was surely only a matter of time. The third Dutch goal, ten minutes from the end, saw them at their very best: in a flowing move, Wim Suurbier crisply exchanged passes with Neeskens before cutting the ball back for Cruyff to beat Zoff from close range.

Two salient features about the Italian side emerged from the game. One was that in a situation where a sole striker is left to forage for scraps up front, a quicker, more flexible player like Boninsegna was actually much more effective than a traditional big front-man like Riva. Despite being well marked by the very able Wim Rijsbergen, Boninsegna had managed to make something out of nothing quite often. The other was that the Italian fitness levels were shown up in the second half. "The Italian team only had 45 minutes' worth of legs and heart," observed the shrewd Italian commentator Nando Martellini near the close.

One other little thing to notice from the game, which was to be an even more important factor in 1978: the Dutch, unlike the Swedes in 1970, posed plenty of danger when shooting from distance. During the game, Zoff had to make a couple of smart saves when Suurbier and Neeskens shot accurately from outside the area.

Continued in Part 3.

# posted by Mike Salter @ 5:27 PM 0 comments