Sunday, August 01, 2021
Li-Bu-Da, Part 2
Around the mid-sixties, attitudes towards specialist wingers were changing. True, the 1962 World Cup had been dominated by the ultimate wing specialist, Garrincha, a purveyor of endless entertaining tricks. In the Nations Cup final in 1964, Real Madrid's outside-right Amancio played a pivotal role in Spain's victory. Last but not least, on the eve of the World Cup in England, Amancio's venerable Real Madrid team-mate Paco Gento had made the most of his Indian summer by helping the Madrileños to their first European Cup crown since 1960. Gento, of course, was another old-fashioned wing wizard par excellence.
But there were other trends emerging. On Brazil's other flank in 1962 was Mario Zagallo, who played much more like a modern wide man, dropping inside, linking with the defence, even daring to put in the odd tackle. Recent European Cups had been dominated by teams who scorned the old-fashioned expansive football of the WM era, with its twin wingers, focusing instead on deep defence and counter-attack.
Gento and Garrincha both played at the 1966 World Cup, and were both found wanting (although age as much as the changing nature of the game played a role in that). Garrincha looked commanding enough against the slow, supine Bulgarians in Brazil's opening match, with all his old trickery on show. But in the vibrant encounter with Hungary, he was hopelessly off the pace. Gento found the going hard against Argentina's tough defence in Spain's opening game; the European champions were defeated, and the celebrated veteran was dropped for the final, decisive group match against West Germany.
England, whose manager Alf Ramsey had previously been a great supporter of wingers, ultimately won the tournament without using a single one in the knockout rounds. But this was largely because no fewer than three of them had been used in the group stage, and had made little impact.
And Helmut Schoen's West Germany? Well...it's complicated.
Schoen, unlike many of his contemporaries, rarely went into a major tournament with a settled first eleven. Instead, he would use the initial matches to tinker around the edges until a working combination emerged. To this end, he tried out a few different right-sided players at the start of the World Cup. But Reinhard Libuda, the hero of Borussia Dortmund's recent Cup-Winners' Cup triumph, was not among them.
Yet Libuda's club-mate Siegfried Held, a center-forward at the Stadion Rote Erde, was used on the left wing by Schoen initially (Zagallo, significantly, also deployed two players who were not really wingers in wide roles in Brazil's glorious 1970 campaign). The reason for this had much to do with the direction that football, and German football in particular, was heading at the time. And Borussia's final two matches in the Cup-Winners' Cup were telling in this respect.
In their semi-final second leg against the defending champions West Ham, Borussia's stars were the representatives of the modern trend towards speed and physicality: the forwards Held and Lothar Emmerich. The dark-haired Emmerich had a rousing game, scoring an early goal from a rebound and then thumping in a second from a free kick. Held, once bullocking his way through the entire West Ham defence with tremendous power, was a torment to the Hammers throughout.
Meanwhile, on the right wing, the frail-looking Libuda was producing moments of delightful skill, dropping the shoulder regularly, occasionally getting to the line, but looking a bit-part player by comparison with the two imposing forwards. In the second half he went on a brilliant jinking run into the box, but a weak shot spoiled what might have been a fine, romantic individual goal.
West Ham manager Ron Greenwood later compared Libuda to the great English winger Tom Finney (rather than Stanley Matthews, despite Libuda's nickname), but his limitations had been quite apparent, as well as his talent. But despite the excellence of Held and Emmerich, it was clear who the sentimental crowd favourite was. Every time their right-winger pulled off one of his trademark swerves, the Borussia contingent broke into a chant which would be repeated in Mexico four years later: "Li-bu-DA! Li-bu-DA!".
In the final against Liverpool, the downside of Libuda's style was even more starkly apparent. It was a tough, disjointed, over-physical game, and although Libuda was to produce the eventual deciding goal, he was a passenger for much of the game, especially in the second half. Already, the sensitive youngster was getting a reputation as a Heimspieler, a home-player, someone who needed the comfort of the adoring home support to produce his best.
Instead, it was the two big forwards who combined to put Borussia ahead just after the hour, with Emmerich dropping deep to put the ball through to Held, who charged through a gap in the Liverpool defence and struck home. That should, in fact, have been the winner, since Liverpool's equalising goal was a chimera, Peter Thompson pulling the ball back from well over the goal-line for Roger Hunt to score.
So Held and Emmerich went to the World Cup in England, and Libuda did not. But, logical as this may have seemed at the time, it could well have been a mistake on Schoen's part. More in Part 3.
