Friday, April 22, 2022
The Maybe Men, Part 8
Valery Lobanovskyi's USSR side qualified for the 1990 World Cup, their third in succession, with little trouble. Theirs was a fairly weak qualifying group, and their toughest opponents, Austria, were dispatched without undue fuss in Kyiv early in the campaign.
Comparing the Soviet squads from their two World Cups under Lobanovskyi's charge is instructive; in 1986, they were all based at home, mostly in Kyiv. In 1990, several key players were already playing abroad - along with many others who didn't make the cut, including the veteran Oleg Blokhin and the unfortunate Igor Belanov, whose injury troubles prevented his participation. He would be much missed.
Placed in a group which included the defending champions Argentina, Romania and Cameroon, the Soviets were expected to progress; it was still the era of the 24-team tournament with a Round of 16, in which an indifferent first round performance didn't always prevent a team from moving on to the knockout phase. The group was thrown wide open by the shock of Argentina's first-up defeat by Cameroon. On the following day, in the space-age stadium in Bari, the USSR faced Romania.
The broader significance of the match was palpable. The Romanians had only just emerged from the ghastly rule of Niculae Ceausescu, who represented everything that was hateful about the Communist regimes in eastern Europe - the puppets, of course, of the USSR. The more voluble members of the Romanian squad had attested to their newfound sense of freedom prior to the tournament, and they too would have half an eye on the European club scouts.
Nevertheless, Lobanovskyi's men went into the match as strong favourites, although the core of his team, barely changed since 1986, was aging. The celebrated Romanian playmaker Gheorghe Hagi was suspended for the opening game, and the Romanians fielded several youngsters with scant international experience.
The Soviets began the game in controlled fashion, and the Romanians initially showed them great respect. Chances did eventually arrive after some shadow-boxing, but the Juventus pair of Sergey Aleinikov and Alexander Zavarov both found the Romanian keeper Silviu Lung on his mettle.
The Romanians were gradually shaking off their awe, and late in the first half, they went ahead. Oleg Kuznetsov, hero of the Euro semi-final, slid into a tackle in midfield but lost the ball. The Romanian midfielder Ioan Sabau spotted that Marius Lacatus was free on the right, and played him through on goal. In came the shot, and Rinat Dasaev was beaten at his near post, diving the wrong way almost before Lacatus had made contact with the ball.
Early in the second period, avos' had its say once more. When Lacatus again found space on the right - Vasily Rats, now playing at left-back, was frequently caught upfield - he played the ball back into the centre, and the sweeper Vagiz Khidiatullin handled. It was a good couple of yards outside the box, but the Uruguayan referee Juan Cardellino pointed to the penalty spot.
It was an appalling decision, and once again, after Lacatus confidently dispatched the spot-kick, the Soviets completely wilted. "[Winger Igor] Dobrovolski and Zavarov faded softly and silently away," was Brian Glanville's comment in his History of the World Cup, and although this was a little harsh on the young Dobrovolski, who tried to keep the fight going, it was entirely accurate in the case of Zavarov. Once again, the little playmaker showed himself to be a fatalist at heart, for he was simply not himself after the second goal. First pitifully throwing himself down in the hope of a penalty when he could have had a chance in the Romanian box, he then lost the ball limply in midfield and lunged into a petulant foul on his tackler, Iosif Rotariu. It was a sad sight.
But even more significant was the way the Romanians played, once they knew that a very sweet victory was on the way.
Although there was a certain amount of showboating, especially from Lacatus, the broader message was very clear. The Romanians were enjoying their football. Watching Lobanovskyi's teams, one was always aware that they were serious and devoted to their task. The Romanians were now playing in a way that would have delighted Loba's old rival Eduard Malofeev.
Not only that, but there were impressive displays of individual skill and enterprise. The Soviets prided themselves on their teamwork; here, it seemed that the Romanians were more interested in expressing themselves. And not only in attack: one player who caught everyone's eye was a certain young defender named Gica Popescu, strolling confidently and stylishly out of defence on many occasions. He was a player of whom we would see a good deal more in years to come.
And the Romanians might have gone further ahead; in fact, it was probably because they were enjoying rubbing it in so much that they didn't. Daniel Timofte, Hagi's replacement, forced a save from Dasaev, Lacatus missed a sitter when played in by a young Florin Raducioiu, and then Timofte strolled unhindered through a totally passive Soviet defence, but failed to score. Four minutes from the close, following another save from Lacatus, a magnificent team move by the Romanians ended with Sabau shooting wide.
It was, in its own way, a humiliation as great as the Soviets' heavy defeat of Hungary in the opening game of the previous World Cup.
And like the Hungarians, they were never going to recover. Argentina, still smarting from their loss to Cameroon, defeated the Soviets comfortably in the next game. "Loba" tried his old tactic of flooding the midfield to stifle Diego Maradona, but this left the defence badly thinned out, and just after half-time it cost them dearly. When the midfield block was breached and the lightning-quick Claudio Caniggia, well onside, was all set for a dash at goal, Vladimir Bessonov desperately pulled him back and was, justifiably, sent off. The defending champions cruised to a 2-0 win. Lobanovskyi's team restored some pride with a 4-0 win over an already-qualified Cameroon in their last game, but it barely mattered. They were out.
The game against Romania was an interesting allegory of the fortunes of many of the individual players from the eastern bloc in the 1990s. The USSR players, however much they had impressed in the late eighties, generally found the adjustment to western club football difficult. Did the team ethic, championed by Lobanovskyi and generally copied by other Soviet coaches, militate against the sort of individual qualities which mattered more in the west? Such a suggestion is perhaps glib, but the fact remains that while players such as Popescu, Hagi, Hristo Stoichkov, Dejan Savicevic and others scaled the heights of the European game, the former Soviet players did not.
It was not until the next decade that a player from the former Soviet Union became a superstar at a western European club. Perhaps fittingly, perhaps ironically, this player - Andrey Shevchenko - had as his mentor and coach a certain Valery Lobanovskyi.
