Pele :The World Cup could never get better than this, but I had no way of knowing it in 1982, my first time. The wicked sense of humor of a higher power assembled the greatest talent in one place: Brazil, with three past championships; Italy, with two previous titles; and Argentina, the defending champion. Only one team would advance to the semifinals. Every World Cup has a so- called Group of Death – the most competitive cluster in round-robin play – but that tournament included a second round of group play. This was not a Group of Death; this was a Group of Mass Extinction. Recently appointed a sports columnist, I had suggested to my editors at The New York Times that I cover a chunk of the World Cup. They knew little about this strange sport and its emotional crowds, but they approved my proposal. Because the United States was not in it, they told me to go for the second round and stay through the end. I followed the first round on the Spanish International Network, watching tiny figures flitting across the screen as I twisted the antenna for more clarity. I gleaned a few basics from rudimentary wire service reports. Some days, I would wander over to the Hotalings news stand in Times Square and pick up European papers and clip snippets on soccer. In other words, I was unprepared. By the time I flew into sunny Barcelona, Spain, everybody in the world knew that FIFA was stuck with a mammoth miscalculation. It had placed two second-round groups in the magnificent city that nurtured Dali and Miró, the city transformed by Gaudí, but one group would play its matches at Camp Nou, with its capacity of 115,000, while the other group was in Sarrià, a funky little arena nicknamed La Bombonera (The Candy Box), which held only 44,000. Because Argentina and Italy had performed below expectations in the first round, they were matched with Brazil in the little stadium while that stolid collection of Belgium, Poland and the Soviet Union had qualified for Camp Nou. The schedules were set in stone, with no room for flexibility. The first World Cup match I saw in person was June 28 at Camp Nou, with Poland beating Belgium, as Polish fans waved Solidarnosc (Solidarity) banners, supporting the labor uprising going on at home. Even with this nationalistic fervor, Camp Nou was tepid. The next day, Sarrià quivered with life. The stadium is long gone now, but I remember it as crammed into an urban neighborhood, a version of Boston’s Fenway Park, at least before it was yuppified. On three mad days, it was home to the greatest group ever assembled. The first match was between Argentina, the defending champion, and Italy, which had been racked by a recent gambling scandal. Paolo Rossi, a fleet forward, had been suspended for almost two seasons but was conveniently reinstated in time to compete in Spain. The Italian players were smarting over criticism from their three lackluster draws in the first round. Rossi had failed to score, and there were calls for him to be benched. The news media seats at Sarrià were close to the field, the 10th row or so. After watching from up high at cavernous Camp Nou the night before, I was thrilled to be able to see the features of the players, like the long hair of the Argentines, as they stood for their nearly four- minute-long national anthem. It is often a mistake to judge teams on their national stereotypes, but the World Cup is an international event, with players representing their homelands, and carrying all the baggage of whatever is in the news. The nasty skirmish between Argentina and Britain over islands off the Argentina coast, alternately known as Las Malvinas or the Falklands, had begun on April 2 and ended with Argentina’s surrender June 14. Who really knew how the battles, the sinking of ships, the deaths of countrymen, affected the players? As the anthem played, I watched Diego Armando Maradona, Argentina’s tempestuous prodigy. He was famous for having cried when he was left off the 1978 Argentina team at age 17 because the coach, César Luis Menotti, had thought Maradona was not ready. Host Argentina then won the World Cup without him. Now Maradona was standing in Sarrià, all 5 feet 5 inches of him, with thick curly locks. The hope of Argentina, a marked man in every sense. Shortly before this World Cup, Maradona signed a lucrative contract with Barcelona, the powerhouse that played at Camp Nou, and he was under intense pressure to justify his cost. Barça shareholders had already seen him play in his new home in the first round in a foreboding 1-0 loss to Belgium. Sarrià was enemy turf, the home of Barça’s Catalan rival, Espanyol.
Posted on: Sat, 17 May 2014 13:50:12 +0000
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