Friday, January 06, 2023
Victims of the Anschluss, Part 5
The convention of final group games at the World Cup (and other FIFA competitions) being played at the same time has its origin in the disgraceful stitch-up between West Germany and Austria in Gijón, which ensured the Algerians' elimination from the event. But in truth, the Algerians had a good chance to ensure their participation in the second round after their first half against Chile in Oviedo. But a certain inexperience - and perhaps the giddiness of success - denied them.
Chile came into the final game with virtually nothing to play for; it was still mathematically possible for them to qualify, but in football terms it would have been a miracle. Lively at times against Austria, they had looked frail and disjointed against the Germans. For the game against Algeria, the veteran Carlos Caszely - a hero of 1974, when he had caused Australia plenty of problems - was restored to the attack. But he was a much less threatening figure now, carrying a fair few extra pounds, and it was only when he was substituted that Chile really came to life. Elias Figueroa, in the centre of defence, was another survivor of 1974; still a force in the air, he was by now easily mastered on the ground.
The Algerians made three changes. Surprisingly, both Lakhdar Belloumi and Djamel Zidane were omitted, despite showing plenty of class in the earlier games. Still, it was hard to gainsay the personnel choices of Rachid Mekhloufi, given that Algeria shot to a 3-0 lead in just over half an hour!
From the very start, Chile's defence looked pitifully vulnerable. Tedj Bensaoula, Zidane's replacement in attack, had a chance in the very first minute, and in the eighth minute he cleverly set up the opening goal, wrong-footing the Chilean defence with a neat cutback which left Salah Assad, frequently switching between the left wing and the centre, with an open goal.
The movement and adroitness of Algeria's front three was impressive, and too much for the Chileans; Rabah Madjer, drifting over to the left, hit the post with a curling shot on 14 minutes. Mehdi Cerbah saved a good long shot from Miguel Neira at the other end, and then it was Bensaoula's turn again, crashing a shot against the woodwork. On the half-hour, Algeria went further in front when Abdelmajid Bourebbou, another new addition to the team, received a long ball from the left and pushed it aside for Assad, completely unmarked, to score the second via a deflection off Figueroa.
The inept Chilean defence conceded a third soon after. Bensaoula, played in nicely by the captain Ali Fergani, had an eternity to take a touch, pick his shot and score. In the final minute of the half, the Chilean defence presented the ball to Bensaoula in front of goal once more, but this time he shot straight at the keeper Mario Osben.
3-0 at the break. If it had stayed that way, it would have been next to impossible for Algeria to miss out on the second round. And if they had scored another, it would have been genuinely impossible.
It was, in a way, an awkward dilemma. Should they sit on the lead, or go for more? In the end, they tried to choose a middle ground, which only resulted in a disjointed second-half performance...and an unexpected Chilean comeback.
At the beginning of the second half, Algeria looked as if they weren't sure what to do now they were three goals ahead, while Chile just looked as if they wanted to go home. But the game changed when the completely ineffectual Caszely was withdrawn in favour of Juan Carlos Letelier, a younger and quicker forward. With the Algerians now playing lazy football, dinking hopeful long balls forward and letting some slackness creep into their defensive play, Chile worked their way back into the game.
Chaabane Merzekane was still a dominating figure on the Algerian right, so Chile sensibly directed their attacks to the other flank, where Letelier and the young Patricio Yanez, by far Chile's best player throughout the event, started posing the flat-footed Algerian central defenders problems. Sure enough, just before the hour they won a penalty when Yanez, on the edge of the box, swept easily past Noureddine Kourichi and was fouled by the stand-in left-back, Salah Larbes. Neira put the spot-kick away without ado.
A second goal for Chile followed fifteen minutes later. Connecting with a long ball from the right, Letelier touched the ball neatly past the other centre-back, Mahmoud Guendouz, rounded Cerbah and picked a shot past the defenders scuttling back to the line.
Belatedly, the Algerians realised that their chances of qualification were slipping away, and they started attacking once more. Bensaoula forced a save from Osben, and Assad, on a hat trick, crashed a shot against the right-hand post. At the other end, Yanez could well have had another penalty when his pace again proved too much for Kourichi, forcing the Algerian defender into a sly trip.
It finished 3-2, but the winners had their heads down at the final whistle. Somehow, even if they couldn't predict the scandalous fix that was to occur the next day, the Algerians seemed to know that they'd blown it.
But they had proven a great deal. The first African team to defeat European opposition at the World Cup, the first African team to win twice at the World Cup, and, to this day, the only team not to have qualified for the second round after two first-phase wins. Not to forget, the team which, by its plainly righteous protests after the Anschluss, forced FIFA to bring their first-round schedule in line with fairness and common sense.
It was a good World Cup for Africa in general. Elsewhere, Cameroon became the first African side to go through the event undefeated, even though they were edged out of a second-round berth by the smallest of margins by the eventual champions, Italy. At the next World Cup, an African side would progress to the knockout stage, and in 1990, there was an African quarter-finalist. It would not be until 2022, however, that an African side would make it into the final four.
All of these distinguished successors owed something to the efforts of Algeria in 1982. And in a sense, a certain magisterial player of Algerian descent, whose two goals in the 1998 final led the former colonial power to its first World Cup triumph, was also the heir of Belloumi, Madjer, Merzekane and co. Not to mention Djamel Zidane.
