From Franco's fretting to Scandinavian pacts, via Piers Morgan v Germany, Clive Thomas v Holland and more
NB: This list is not definitive
1) Franco refuses to let Spain play the USSR, Euro 60
So at the time of writing, Spain are two in the hole, three games away from bagging an unprecedented third international tournament on the bounce. Unquestionably, by any definition, they're the greatest Spanish side of all time. By any definition other than star quality, that is. A pool of talent including Xavi, Iniesta, Villa and Torres is none too shabby, but during the late Fifties and early Sixties, the Red Fury teamsheets, at one time or another, included names such as Francisco Gento, Luis Suarez, Laszlo Kubala, Alfredo di Stefano and Ferenc Puskas. Another level.
Trouble is, while those names looked good on paper, the teams they were in weren't much cop on the pitch. Spain failed to qualify for the 1958 World Cup, as a side built around Barcelona and Real Madrid's best managed to get themselves knocked out by a Scotland team containing players from second-division outfits like Clyde and Liverpool. Then they made it to the 1962 finals, though they didn't really bother turning up, failing to get through the groups.
So whether they'd have done anything in the 1960 European Nations Cup is a moot point. Suarez, Gento and di Stefano were all on the scoresheet as Spain thrashed Poland over two legs in the tournament's opening round – a 7-2 aggregate spanking – but Franco had been fretting, concerned over potential humiliation at the hands of a country behind the Iron Curtain. So when Spain drew more Communist opposition in the quarter-finals – 1958 World Cup quarter-finalists and reigning Olympic champions USSR – the pinch-faced despot touched cloth. Spain were refused permission to travel to Moscow for the first leg and withdrawn from the tournament. The Soviets were granted a walkover, en route to winning the tournament.
The decision meant di Stefano never played in the finals of a major international tournament for Spain (though he did win a medal at the 1947 South American Championship with Argentina). By the time the 1964 finals came round – held in Spain, with Franco this time deciding he couldn't shy away from cold-war opponents in Hungary and the USSR – it was too late for him. Spain – under the managerial yoke of Jose Villalonga, the first coach to win the European Cup back in 1956 – did it anyway, Marcelino planting a header past Lev Yashin in the final, to the purse-faced dictator's unfettered glee. SM
2) Euro 68: take your pick
A tournament brimming with controversies. In the first semi-final, Yugoslavia and England kicked seven bells out of each other. In the third minute of the game, Dobrivoje Trivic tackled Alan Ball so hard a severe bruise ran from his big toe to his heel. "I said to Alf at half time, by George this is sore!" squeaked Bally after the game. "He wanted me to take the boot off so they could have a look at it, but I said no, it would swell up and I wouldn't get the boot back on. If I tried to sidefoot the ball it was murder." As the legendary Hugh McIlvanney said in the following Sunday's Observer, "the significance of this testimony was that it came from a man whose courage is out of all proportion to the slightness of his body".
The tone was set. On five minutes, Norman Hunter crunched Yugoslavian playmaker Ivica Osim. Sir Alf Ramsey, disdainfully referring to Osim as "a clown", opined that he was "sure Alan Ball was at least as badly hurt as Osim. The difference is, Alan Ball has more courage than Osim." Osim didn't play football again for several months.
England went on to lose 1-0, finishing the game with 10 men, Alan Mullery prodding the tip of his boot on to the business end of Trivic's tig. "They say we're hard, and we are at times," blasted Bobby Moore afterwards, "but at least it's a fairly open sort of hardness, man to man … After Mullery was sent off, the next thing I saw was Martin Peters running past me like a crazy man. I could only see the whites of his eyes. I thought someone had kicked him, but he was just mad at what the Yugoslav was up to. And Martin is a composed fellow!" Although quite what England were expecting from a midfield pairing of Hunter and Mullery is anyone's guess.
In the other semi-final between hosts Italy and the USSR, the game was decided by the toss of a coin, penalty shootouts yet to become the norm. Italy's win – captain Giacinto Facchetti called tails – is commonly cited as an affront to sport. Which of course a win by the flick of a coin obviously is. But it had to fall one way or the other, and it's often forgotten that Italy had played most of the game with 10 men after Gianni Rivera was injured, and had hit the post through Angelo Domenghini during extra-time.
The final brouhaha came in the final, with Domenghini's late equaliser – a rasping free-kick from the edge of the area – being described in many contemporary reports as coming while Swiss referee Gottfried Dienst was ordering the Yugoslav wall back. But watch the video: the wall is static as Domenghini scores. It's a myth that's since been erroneously repeated in various textbooks.
Dienst was also accused of favouring the home side throughout the match. (The referee of the 1966 World Cup final, a shameless homer? Surely not.) But even if mud sticks there, Yugoslavia can't feel too hard done by: they missed two open goals while leading and enjoying the ascendency, while Domenghini had earlier shaved the post. And Italy, having got out of jail in the first game, sauntered their way through the replay, winning 2-0. Still, controversies have a life of their own, whether confections or not. SM
3) Holland take on Clive Thomas, Euro 76
The romantic story of Holland's failure to win the World Cup in 1974 and 1978 is one of the first things they teach on the Football History curriculum in these parts. Yet nobody really talks about why they failed to win the tournament in between, Euro 76. Unlike in 1978, their team included Johan Cruyff and Wim van Hanegem, yet they were beaten 3-1 by the eventual winners Czechoslovakia in a nasty semi-final in Zagreb, a match played in fierce wind and rain on a pitch that the Times described as "a paddyfield". If the match is barely remembered over here, then it will never be forgotten in Holland. In 2008, it was the subject of a half-hour documentary.
The focus of the documentary was one incident in extra-time. Both sides were down to 10 men by that stage, with Johan Neeskens sent off for a savage hack at Zdenek Nehoda. (Some people associate the purity of the Dutch football with pacifism, but they were a team who had velvet boots with a steel toecap. Exhibit A: this tackle, and the yelp, against Italy at the 1978 World Cup.)
With the score at 1-1, there were six minutes of extra-time remaining when Johan Cruyff was fouled badly by Antonin Panenka. The Welsh referee Clive Thomas gave nothing and the Czechs broke to take the lead a few seconds later. For a Dutch team who had been moaning at Thomas all game, this was the final straw. They were already in a foul mood before the game because of the usual infighting, and Cruyff had earlier been booked for again trying to become football's first player-referee. "Cruyff sadly is now inclined to put himself above the game," said Geoffrey Green in The Times. "My friend Johan," said Clive Thomas as he watched the video 32 years later, "trying to tell me what the laws of the game are."
Van Hanegem was booked for dissent on the way back to the halfway line after the goal and sent off before the game had kicked off again. He already distrusted Thomas because of an incident in a match between Feyenoord and Benfica four years earlier, when he says he called Thomas a "thief". Thomas said he didn't hear this, and that had he done so he'd have "tried to get him a 10-game ban, in fact maybe for life. No one says that to me."
Precisely what Van Hanegem said and did when he met Thomas again at Euro 76 is not entirely clear, because his and Thomas's versions of the story are different. This is not just a controversy; it's an unsolved mystery. Thomas says, both in his autobiography By The Book and David Winner's Brilliant Orange, that he told Van Hanegem he would send him off for dissent if he stepped over the halfway line before the kick-off was taken. When Van Hanegem did that, he was off.
Van Hanegem's version is that Thomas ordered him to take the kick-off. "I said 'Why? I'm a midfield player. Ruud Geels is the striker – he should take it,'" says Van Hanegem in Brilliant Orange. "Thomas said: 'Come over here.' Normally the referee comes to the player, so I stayed where I was. He said again: 'Come here.' I stayed where I was. Then he sent me off."
The video (after 18 minutes of this link) apparently supports Van Hanegem's version. There are two other players waiting to take the kick-off, and Thomas seems to point for van Hanegem to come towards him. When he doesn't, Thomas pulls out the red card. And Thomas's accounts aren't entirely consistent. In Brilliant Orange (released in 2000), he says, "I've looked at that tape and I know I was right." In the Dutch TV documentary, eight years later, he says it is the first time he has seen the incident since it happened.
This is not to say Thomas was wrong to produce a red card, because Van Hanegem was behaving like a Total Slapped Arse. Thomas was insistent that players should come to him – "I am not prepared to run around the field to seek out a recalcitrant footballer" – whereas Holland thought the referee should come to them. There had been a similar incident earlier in the game, when, after a long stand-off, Cruyff eventually relented and walked towards Thomas to receive his yellow card. What Van Hanegem failed to realise is that Holland were up against the only referee in the world who was even more stubborn and self-righteous than they were. Thomas was never, ever, going to back down. "At the time," says Van Hanegem, "I wanted to kill him."
At first Van Hanegem refused to leave the field, and Thomas was in the process of walking off and abandoning the game when Van Hanegem finally shuffled off. With Holland down to nine men, Czechoslovakia scored a third to go through to the final.
In that Dutch TV documentary, Thomas accepts it was a foul on Cruyff. "I apologise," he says. "It was the wrong decision." This does not vindicate Holland's behaviour; these mistakes happen all the time, and Holland would not have played at the 1974 World Cup without a serious refereeing error (see here). Nobody covered themselves in much glory, but Thomas surely had more right on his side.
The Dutch players are content to forgive now, with one exception. "He needn't take 32 years to do that [acknowledge his mistake]," says van Hanegem. "That strikes me as a little long. [Narrator: it was the first time in 32 years he'd seen the images.] I can't imagine that, don't try to convince me of that. He's just incredibly vain, when you see that little man walk, so pedantic, an annoying little fella, always saying, 'Come here'. You don't think he has [those images]? You don't think he has that. That he sends Neeskens off? That he calls Cruyff over to give him a yellow card? He had it enlarged. He was the first to have one of those [holds hands far apart] plasma screens, believe me, to watch that. That's the sort of little man he is." RS
4) Graham Taylor substitutes Gary Lineker, Euro 92
Poor Graham Taylor. A gentleman, but never a popular one. Never popular enough to win a beauty contest with Gary Lineker, at any rate. Lineker had stored up plenty of moral credit in the public bank with his exploits at the 1986 and 1990 World Cups. All Taylor had managed, by the time England faced hosts Sweden at Euro 92, was to lead his country to the brink of early elimination from a tournament at which they'd been expected to reach at least the semis.
Lineker went into the must-win game having failed to score in his previous five matches for England, a run which included a risible effort to Panenka a penalty past Brazilian keeper Carlos in a friendly at Wembley, the chance to equal Bobby Charlton's English record of 49 international goals spurned. "Not scoring doesn't worry me," insisted Lineker before the game. "I don't get uptight about it."
Sure you don't, Gary. After 61 minutes of huffing and puffing to no effect whatsoever – and missing a half-decent chance to convert a Tony Daley cross and give England a surely unassailable 2-0 lead – Lineker saw his number go up. He stomped off the field in a gargantuan funk, refusing to acknowledge Taylor, his international career over should England fail to go through.
But there had been method in Taylor's apparent madness. England had by this point been pegged back to 1-1, and were being over-run in midfield. Lineker had been totally isolated and his replacement, Alan Smith, was better at holding the ball up. Taylor had refused to let sentiment, especially the fact Lineker was stranded on 48 international goals, cloud his judgement. That the substitution didn't pay off – Smith also spent his time in not-so-splendid isolation, albeit with plenty of time to admire the midfield dynamism of Jonas Thern and Stefan Schwarz – should have mattered not one jot.
These days, with tactics pored over in post-match analysis to the nth degree, there would probably be some recognition of Taylor's thought processes, and at least a little reasoned debate. Back in the day, the climate was not quite the same. The Sun superimposed Taylor's face on to a root vegetable – Swedes 2, Turnips 1 – and a decent man spent the next few years getting abuse flung at him in the street. Well done, journalism! SM
5) Piers Morgan mentions the war, Euro 96
Piers Stefan Pughe-Morgan loves Twitter – 2.3m followers and counting – but he must be glad it wasn't around in 1996. If it had been, he'd have been hounded out of his job as Daily Mirror editor faster than you could type #fauxoutrage.
When England got through to meet Germany in the Euro 96 semi-final, Morgan – or "Guten" Morgan, as he became known – mistook himself for Basil Fawlty. Two days before the match, the front page had a picture of Stuart Pearce and Paul Gascoigne wearing tin hats and the headline 'ACHTUNG!' SURRENDER' followed by the subhead 'For you Fritz, ze Euro 96 Championship is over'. To the right was an editor's column from Morgan, a parody of Neville Chamberlain's declaration of war in 1939, this time declaring "football war" on Germany.
It was stunningly unfunny, although most concentrated on its more obviously offensive aspects. Morgan was forced to apologise as the Mirror's share price dropped and Vauxhall became one of a number of advertisers to pull its ads from the paper. Jo Brand even dropped her Mirror column, reportedly in protest. It could have been worse: the New York Times reported that Morgan had shelved plans to drop leaflets from a Spitfire all over Berlin, and drive a tank to the German Embassy. "Rarely," said Roy Greenslade in this paper, "has an editor so drastically misjudged the public mood."
Morgan had been warming up throughout the tournament. Before the Spain game, the Mirror published a list of "Ten Nasties Spain's Given Europe", including syphilis, paella and carpet bombing. A few days later, the Times diary reported that Morgan was "still trying to live down an editorial conference he chaired on Monday after England beat Spain on Saturday. Guten demanded that descendants of famous Spaniards from history be traced and asked how they felt about being trounced by the England. 'Who did you have in mind?' a newsman asked. 'Well,' he replied. 'Mussolini for a start.'"
One publicity seeker – whose name we have to withhold for fear of justifying his existence – reported Morgan and the Mirror to West Midlands police for inciting racial hatred with his declaration of football war on Germany, while Lord Healey announced that "The grubby little men who write this sort of trash should remember that our monarchy are krauts and that our defence minister is a dago".
The Mirror weren't alone in mentioning the war. "Herr we go, bring on the Krauts" was the Star's headline - alongside, of course, a picture of Claudia Schiffer searching for her clothes. The Sun settled for "Let's Blitz Fritz", tucked away on Page 4. Deliciously, this relative restraint allowed them to claim the moral high ground. On Channel 4 news, their editor Stuart Higgins proudly announced that "The Sun has maintained a jingoistic approach, rather than a xenophobic one." RS
6) Sweden 2-2 Denmark, Euro 2004
You might have heard about this one in the week: the 2-2 draw between Sweden and Denmark that conveniently eliminated Italy in 2004 and was seen in some quarters as a bit of a Scando scandal.
The shame is that it has totally overshadowed a memorably absurd Italian campaign. There were two particular highlights: Christian Panucci justfiying the 0-0 draw against Denmark by saying "The thread that [our] socks are made with is too rough", and Christian Vieri asserting his masculinity in front of the Italian press after the 1-1 draw with Sweden. "I'm not talking to you people ever again," he bantered. "None of you may judge me as a man because I am more of a man than all of you put together. You have no idea how much of a man I am." RS
• With thanks to Leander Schaerlaeckens Read More
انسخ الكود التالى و ضعه فى موقعك او مدونتك.
