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Part four is out :)

 

 
World Cup: 25 stunning moments … No4: The battle of Santiago
'This match is universally agreed by observers as the ugliest, most vicious and disgraceful in soccer history'
chile-italy-battle-of-san-011.jpg
Referee Ken Aston sends off Italian Mario David, while an injured Chilean lies on the ground, during 'the Battle of Santiago'. Photograph: Keystone/Getty Images

It took two days for highlights of the match that was christened, even during the commentary, the Battle of Santiago, to be flown from South America and broadcast in Britain. Two days in which the game became, in its own brutal way, legendary, spoken of in ways which must have sent anyone with a combined interest in football and mild gore into a frenzy of excitement. "The match is universally agreed by observers as the ugliest, most vicious and disgraceful in soccer history," wrote Frank McGhee in the Mirror. "If you think that is exaggerating, watch the film on TV. But send the kids to bed first – it deserves a horror certificate!"

David Coleman's introduction to the BBC's broadcast is rightly legendary. "Good evening," he said. "The game you are about to see is the most stupid, appalling, disgusting and disgraceful exhibition of football in the history of the game. This is the first time these countries have met; we hope it will be the last. The national motto of Chile reads, By Reason or By Force. Today, the Chileans weren't prepared to be reasonable, the Italians only used force, and the result was a disaster for the World Cup. If the World Cup is going to survive in its present form something has got to be done about teams that play like this. Indeed, after seeing the film tonight, you at home may well think that teams that play in this manner ought to be expelled immediately from the competition."

But though the Battle of Santiago is remembered as a uniquely lawless encounter, in fact it was one of many in a particularly violent tournament. Before the match had even been played the Chilean newspaper Clarin had declared it less a World Cup and more a World War. "The tournament shows every sign of developing into a violent bloodbath," wrote the Express on the morning of the match. "Reports read like battlefront despatches. Italy v Germany was described as 'wrestling and warfare". Players were compelled to leap away from the ball to survive. Football was forgotten as players sought to destroy each other."

The eight games played over the first two days of the tournament featured four red cards, three broken legs, a fractured ankle and some cracked ribs. The first match in England's group, between Argentina and Bulgaria, was won by the south Americans thanks to what was described as a display of "hacking, tripping, pushing and any other dirty tricks". After the game, in which the Spanish referee Juan Gardeazabal awarded 69 free-kicks at the rate of one every 78 seconds, the Bulgarian Todor Diev displayed a cut nose and legs decorated with stud marks and said Argentina were "like boxers".

In Russia's opening game, against Yugoslavia, Eduard Dubinski's leg was broken in a challenge with Muhamed Mujic. The Yugoslav was not sent off, but his association was sufficiently dismayed by the foul to voluntarily suspend him for an entire year. "It is lamentable that Fifa are not equally honest," wrote the Express. "They have ignored their own ruling that any offenders be dealt with immediately after the offence. With no action against the few out-and-out villains the ugly situation has been encouraged to spread."

"It became clear after only two days that most teams were so anxious to avoid an early return home that they had forgotten football was only a game, and the World Cup its greatest shop window," wrote the Telegraph's football correspondent, Donald Saunders, in his book on the tournament published later that year. "From all four centres came reports of violence, ill temper, serious injury, and precious little of the artistic soccer to be expected of the world's leading professionals."

Italy had behaved badly enough in their first match, but now the stakes were even higher: they would have to deal with the host nation and their fanatical support in a game they could not afford to lose. As for Chile, the Observer had declared that "the patriotism here for the national team is astonishing", and their fervour had risen a couple of notches when word reached Santiago of a series of articles written in the Italian newspapers La Nazione and Corriere della Sera shortly before the World Cup began, which variously described the idea of their hosting it as "pure madness", their capital as a backwater where "the phones don't work, taxis are as rare as faithful husbands, a cable to Europe costs an arm and a leg and a letter takes five days to turn up", and its population as prone to "malnutrition, illiteracy, alcoholism and poverty". "Santiago is terrible," Corrado Pizzinelli wrote in La Nazione. "Entire neighbourhoods are given over to open prostitution." The journalists involved were forced to flee the country, while an Argentinian scribe mistaken for one of them in a Santiago bar was beaten up and hospitalised.

Worried about the potential for violence at the game, and with the Italian FA having complained about the original appointment of a Spanish official for a match involving fellow hispanophones, Fifa parachuted in the experienced English referee Ken Aston. The Italians weren't enormously impressed by that, either – Aston had already taken charge of Chile's first game of the tournament - but they were clean out of appeals.

Ken-Aston-sends-off-Italy-008.jpgKen Aston sends off Italy's Giorgio Ferrini, escorting him from the pitch, after he had retaliated by kicking Chile players. Photograph: Popperfoto/Getty Images

From the start Chileans spat in the faces of Italians, they poked and kicked and provoked, but when the Italians retaliated it was they who were punished. The first foul was awarded after 12 seconds, the first sending-off after four minutes. Giorgio Ferrini, the Italian involved, refused to leave the field and play was held up for 10 minutes until armed policemen frogmarched him to the dressing-rooms. "The pitch quickly became a battlefield as players forgot the ball and concentrated on kicking the nearest opponent," wrote the Mirror. Highlights included Leonel Sánchez, son of a professional boxer, breaking the nose of Italy's captain Humberto Maschio with a left hook and getting away with it, and then landing another blow on the Italian right-half Mario David, who was sent off for retaliating. To add insult to, well, more insults, Sánchez took the free-kick from which Jaime Ramírez gave Chile a 73rd-minute lead, against nine men, and Jorge Toro added a late second.

"I had my back to the incident at the time," Aston insisted of Sánchez's nosebreaking punch. "If the referee or linesman sees nothing, nothing can be done. I'm sure the linesman did see it, but he refused to tell me." The man patrolling the nearest touchline was Leo Goldstein, who many felt had been given the chance to officiate at a World Cup only because of his unique backstory – he was a Holocaust survivor who had literally been marching towards the gas chambers when one of the guards asked if anyone was able to referee a football match. Despite a complete lack of experience he volunteered, survived the remainder of the war, emigrated to America and continued refereeing thereafter. "I was stuck with a Mexican and a little American," said Aston of his assistants. "They weren't very good, so it became almost me against the 22 players."

"We weren't throwing the punches, we were taking them. We Italians were the victims, not the aggressors," said David, many year later. "Sánchez broke Maschio's nose and the referee said nothing, but instead sent off Ferrini who was trying to take revenge on Sánchez but didn't even touch him. Then their goalkeeper passed the ball to Sánchez, who sat on it and held it between his legs. In order to kick the ball I had to kick him a little bit too, and when he got up he punched me, but the referee pretended nothing had happened. Then I challenged Sánchez with an outstretched leg and caught him in the shoulder, and the shameless Aston sent me off too. I stood at the entrance to the tunnel to watch the rest of the game, and I can assure you that even with nine men we fought to the end."

"The Italians could not understand – and neither can I – why Sánchez had been allowed to remain on the field despite a passable imitation of Rocky Marciano, when one of their number had been banished for a less serious and far less obvious offence," wrote Jimmy Hill in the Observer. "From that moment the last semblance of control left both players and officials. It was an appalling decision to allow a player to remain on the field after such a blatant disregard for the laws. The players will have to shoulder most of the blame, but the officials must face up to their responsibility for making this grotesque decision."

"I expected a difficult match, but not an impossible one," Aston said. "I just had to do the best I could. It did cross my mind to abandon the match, but I couldn't be responsible for the safety of the Italian players if I did. I thought that then and I still think it now. I tell you one thing: I didn't add on any stoppage time."

The hatred between the nations boiled over. In Chile, Italians found themselves banned from bars, restaurants and even supermarkets, and the squad's training camp was placed under armed guard. Jorge Pica, a senior member of the Chilean FA, launched further controversy by alleging that the Italians were drugged. "They seemed to go on the field only with the intention of injuring the Chileans," he said. "It was like a rodeo. Frankly, I think they were doped. Now I can see the necessity for laboratory tests on players after matches." Meanwhile the Italians submitted an official complaint against Aston's biased officiating, described the Chileans as "cannibals" and in Rome the army was sent in to protect the Chilean consulate.

Ken-Aston-seems-to-be-tak-008.jpgKen Aston seems to be taking cover as the Battle of Santiago goes on around the English refereee. Photograph: Popperfoto/Getty Images

Criticism of Aston's handling of the match was, inevitably, most extreme in Italy – "I remember that one journalist called him 'an unmentionable English vermin,' and I totally agree with him," said David – but it was not confined there. The former referee and honorary president of the German FA, Peco Bauwens, said "I have never seen an English referee so weak". "I have self-respect," insisted the Englishman. "Otherwise I would have taken the easy way out and abandoned the game."

With the World Cup still bedevilled by violence – even while the Battle of Santiago was being played Yugoslavia were contesting "another ugly brawl" against Uruguay in Arica, featuring two sendings-off of its own – Aston and Bob Davidson, the Scottish official who had refereed Italy's first match, went to see the Fifa president, Sir Stanley Rous. "All referees who saw this game and who have seen the general vicious malice in most matches want to tell Rous they haven't come all these miles for all this time to handle this sort of stuff," said Davidson.

"The World Cup competition is heading for ruin and disgrace unless Sir Stanley Rous and his committee act quickly and ruthlessly to clean it up," wrote the Mirror. "Chile today is a country of rumour and threats." Rous heard the referees' demand that miscreants be dealt with in the strongest possible way, and assured them that was his intention. They left happy, but then Fifa suspended Ferrini for just one match and gave David and Sánchez nothing by reprimands. Still, representatives of all 16 teams were called to the Carrera Hotel in Santiago, also the site of the draw and later of the gala celebration in honour of the victors, where Rous demanded an improvement in standards. "What will the children think when they see the abominable way the top players behave? We have to save the reputation of this tournament," he said. "This is not about victory at all costs."

But Fifa's crackdown was laughably half-hearted. Four years later Pelé, having been injured in Brazil's second match in Chile, was brutally kicked out of the 1966 World Cup. "I have heard it said since, and I firmly believe it, that Sir Stanley Rous instructed referees to go easy on the 'virile' game played by the European teams," he wrote in his autobiography, "with the result that [they] did everything they could to physically cripple me."

Even in Chile there was little improvement. In the semi-final between Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia the Swiss referee was forced to call the captains together with the game, according to the Express, "developing into a brawl", and "warn them to cut out the rough stuff". In the other semi-final, between Chile and Brazil, two men were sent off. The outstanding player of the tournament, Brazil's Garrincha, was one of them, his head cut open by one of the many missiles thrown in his direction as he left the field. After the game he wept in the dressing-room. "OK, I was sent off," he said, "but all afternoon I am kicked. There is a limit to the time when a man must be a man. When I was kicked I struck back. Maybe I was wrong but I am prepared to face what may come."

The Brazilian FA, however, were not. His availability for the final lay in the hands of a Fifa disciplinary committee, at which the match officials would give evidence. But first the referee, the Peruvian Arturo Yamazaki, received a phone call from his country's president requesting that he tone down his testimony, and made Garrincha's offence sound positively trifling. Then the linesman, Uruguay's Esteban Marino, on whose say-so Yamazaki had acted in the first place and whose evidence was to be crucial, failed to turn up at all.

Ken-Aston-tries-to-bring--008.jpgKen Aston tries to bring order after fighting breaks out. Chile's Sánchez, 11, lies injured after an Italy foul. Photograph: Haynes Archive/Popperfoto/Getty Images

"He just disappeared. It was like something out of an Agatha Christie novel," wrote the Brazilian journalist Argeu Affonso, who was covering the tournament. "It was Agatha Christie football. He just disappeared, and nobody knew where he'd gone." It turned out that the Brazilian World Cup referee John Etzel had been given $10,000 in cash by his FA to pass on to his colleague in return for his disappearance. Without him Fifa found that they had insufficient evidence to ban Garrincha, who played as Brazil beat Czechoslovakia 3-1 in the final. "It was me who won the World Cup," Etzel later claimed, and he got more than that: it later transpired that he had given Marino only half of the cash, and kept the rest for himself. A fitting end to a remarkably lawless occasion.

What the Observer wrote: Coping with the rough stuff

COPING WITH THE ROUGH STUFF by JIMMY HILL (Manager of Coventry City)

By Jimmy Hill, the Coventry City manager, June 10, 1962

Some say Ken Aston should be given the V.C. for his heroic efforts to stem the battle between Chile and Italy last Saturday, others that the countries concerned should be banned for ever from world competition. Can we, 9,000 miles away and well informed through television's magic, yet less hysterical than those whose judgement is obscured by the smoke from the battlefield, drive a wedge of reason through the week's events?

The game was rough enough to make Wilf Copping raise an eyebrow, punches were thrown frequently and boots were flying faster and more wildly than hooves in a cavalry charge. One cannot minimise the appalling lack of sportsmanship shown by the players, but this should not be taken as a license to denigrate soccer in this country.

On the contrary a few days ago the English players were described by the Press as "too gentlemanly" to succeed in the World Cup. A fault suddenly becomes a virtue and the friendly handshakes exchanged with the Hungarians after their wonderful display is no longer a sign of weakness but strength.

When one considers the merciless criticism that has to be endured by players and officials for failure at national level, there is some provocation for a "win at all costs" approach.

The World Cup is a tough competition for men. Football is a physical game demanding great skill and artistry. Bodies were meant to clash and hacking was a cornerstone on which the game was built. It was also meant that tempers should be held and tactics should never be vicious or violent.

The Italians started vigorously but became hysterical. No professional player, Latin-American or European, losers all sense of fair play and caution without a reason. The Italians had to win this match to stay in the competition. Ferrini had already been sent off. David, Italy's right-back, faced with Sanchez, the outside-left of Chile, who was shielding the ball beneath his backside, hacked the ball clear at the fourth attempt. This was rugged, but only a shade away from legality – he did play the ball.

Sanchez leaped from the floor with only his dignity injured and felled David with a smart left hook. Once the resultant melee had subsided, the Italians could not understand – and neither can I – why Sanchez had been allowed to remain on the field despite a passable imitation of Rocky Marciano, when one of their number had been banished for a less serious and far less obvious offence.

From that moment the last semblance of control left both players and officials. It was an appalling decision to allow a player to remain on the field after such a blatant disregard for the laws. It is possible that Mr. Ashton's gaze had followed the ball as it rolled clear, but the linesman was standing within a few yards of the incident and could not have been unsighted.

The players will have to shoulder most of the blame, but the officials must face up to their responsibility for making this grotesque decision. To make matters worse David himself was later sent off for an interception made with his boot, head high, a dangerous manoeuvre when all's said and done, but he did lunge at the ball and make contact with it.

Mr. Ashton showed commendable restraint and determination to see the game through, but one wonders whether this game was worth such care and attention. His courage cannot be doubted but on this score the coup de grace would have been to have sent off a Chilean.

Normally a referee can add strength to a decision by delivering a few well chosen words to an offending player. When both speak different languages this aid to control is lost. It is only the whistle that communicates the referee's personality and ability.

Soon we must legislate for the use of filmed evidence in resultant inquiries and commissions, as is done in racing. If the magic eye of the camera can thus make the vicious and underhand player's task more difficult, the sooner film is used the better.

My own view is that the guilty individuals concerned in Saturday's match should be made to sit silently and watch the film of their own antics a dozen times over. If this doesn't shame them – nothing will.

• This article was amended on 5 March 2014 as Brazil beat Czechoslovakia, not Yugoslavia, in the final.

 

 

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zaire player booting the brazil freekick up the field >>>>> everything else in world cup history

I loved that on Fantasy Football "How come no ones ever thought of this".

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The crowd are whistling. Something has happened. Marco Materazzi is on the ground. The match commentators are confused. They think David Trezeguet has had something to do with it but they are just guessing. Their eyes, and the eyes of hundreds of millions of people around the world, were on the other end of the pitch. They did not see it.

Gianluigi Buffon did. He races to the officials on the sideline, remonstrates and points fingers. By now the rest of the players have cottoned on. On the sidelines, Marcello Lippi has to be restrained. In the midst of it all one man is calm. Zinedine Zidane just stares ahead. Having talked with his assistants, the referee, Horacio Elizondo, approaches the French captain. A red card is waved. Zidane, with an arm around his shoulder, tries to explain that he had been provoked. It is all to no avail.

What many people forget is that Zidane was not supposed to be there in the first place. The shock exit at the hands of Greece in Portugal at Euro 2004 had signalled what he called "the end of a cycle" and had convinced him that he should retire from international football. It was no longer for him. On 12 August 2004 he released a statement on his website. "I have thought long and hard over this decision. I think that at a given moment you must say 'stop' … There have been some great players who retired in 2000 and 2002, other players are doing it and now I'm doing it."

Almost exactly a year later Zidane would use that very same website to announce his return. There had been rumours that he would do so but Zidane had publicly denied them. When asked by L'Equipe for his reaction to the news, Christophe Dugarry, a former World Cup-winning team-mate of Zidane's, instructed the paper not to run the story as he thought somebody must have hacked the website. There had been no piracy involved, however, Zidane was back. "For the very first time in my life I have decided to go back on my word which is very important for me," read his statement. "When I made the decision to retire I was very serious – today I have made the same decision but in reverse." Zidane had listened to the voice.

"One night, at 3am, I suddenly woke up and I then spoke with someone," he said, explaining his reason for coming out of international retirement. "Until I die I will never tell [who that person was], this is just too crazy. This is someone that you will probably never meet. During the hours that followed I was on my own with that person, at home, and I took the decision to come back. I had never experienced that before, I felt pushed by this force which dictated my behaviour. It was a revelation for me, I had to obey that voice that was advising me."

The manager of France, Raymond Domenech, publicly declared himself to be "extremely happy" that Zidane – as well as Claude Makélélé and Lilian Thuram – had decided to come out of retirement and so he should have been. Domenech had done very little to persuade the three players, who had a combined age of 98, to stay on when he took over from Jacques Santini in 2004 but his France side were struggling through World Cup qualification and in need of experienced professionals. The manager looked out of his depth. Writing about France and Zidane's return for the Observer a year before the tournament, Darren Tullett quoted one French World Cup winner as saying: "Domenech is a prat and we haven't got a clue what he's going on about half the time."

The results at that stage in the qualification process backed up the player's claim. France may have been undefeated but there had been too many unconvincing displays in a weak enough group. That was especially true at home where they had racked up scoreless stalemates against Israel, Ireland and Switzerland (Cyprus and the Faroe Islands made up the rest of the group). That left Domenech's side in fourth place, three points behind the group leaders, Ireland, with just four games to go. Their hopes of making Germany looked set to be dashed. However, with Makélélé, Thuram and Zidane restored to the squad France won three matches, drew the other, finished top of their group and the country could let out a sigh of relief.

Three weeks before the end of La Liga's 2005-06 season, it was time for another announcement from Zidane. This was it for him. He was done with club and international football for good. "I have to listen to my body and I cannot carry on for another year. I think it is better to clarify the situation now. I have been thinking about it for a long time. It's been three years since we [Madrid] won anything and in two of those, I've not played as I've wanted. I am not going to play any better than I have done in the past. I don't want to just play for Real Madrid for the sake of it." There would be no more jaw-dropping volleys and there would be more balletic pirouettes, his signature move that left defenders rooted to the ground like an old tree. There would, however, be one last chance of glory on the biggest stage football has to offer.

While Spain, Brazil and Portugal all qualified from the group stages with three wins, nine points and the utmost of ease, France recreated their poor form from qualification. Their first match was against Switzerland. Kobi Kuhn's limited team knew the French only too well and they were able to frustrate their foes at every turn. From little material, Zidane, captaining the team, fashioned his side's only real opportunities but both were spurned by team-mates. Fires burned, nostrils flared and tempers bubbled. Thuram and William Gallas felt the lash of their captain's tongue. The match ended in a goalless draw.

Zinedine-Zidane-and-Lilia-011.jpg France's Zinedine Zidane, left, and Lilian Thuram during the group stage match between France and Switzerland at the 2006 World Cup. Photograph: Cristof Stache/AP

France's next match failed to offer little improvement in terms of result or, indeed, performance. A Thierry Henry goal after nine minutes gave them the lead but South Korea took the game by the scruff of the neck and deserved their point in the 1-1 draw, if not all three.

In the eyes of the French this was a humiliating result that was made worse by the form of Zidane. "The way the France captain played," wrote Michael Walker in the Guardian, "he is in danger of being referred to as the once-great Zidane … this was not the Zidane we will recall or want to recall." Playing as part of a trio behind Henry, he was "slow and sloppy", a mere shadow of his former majesty.

Domenech agreed. With three minutes of injury time left and France in search of a winning goal, he took off the three-time winner of the Fifa World Player of the Year award and replaced him with Trezeguet. Unless France beat Togo in their next match that would be the last time that the world would glimpse Zidane at work, a most ignominious exit for a glorious player. He had picked up two yellow cards and was suspended for the next game.

Togo were poor, but it took 55 minutes for France to break them down. Patrick Vieira celebrated his 30th birthday with his fifth goal in 90 appearances before Henry got his second of the tournament to seal the victory. France could have won by more but they were held back by Trezeguet's lack of confidence and Franck Ribéry's errant finishing. Nonetheless, they were through to the next round, qualifying in second place just ahead of South Korea. They had won their first World Cup match since beating Brazil in the final eight years earlier and they had done it all without Zidane in their side.

Such had been the midfielder's wayward performances by that stage of the competition that ahead of the last-16 match against Spain, the Guardian ran a referendum questioning whether Zidane should start. "The powers of the once imperious midfielder looked to have deserted him … would Domenech be better to stick to a winning formula to generate much needed momentum?" it asked.

Few who had seen him play would have argued that Zidane deserved to be anything other than a spectator but Domenech disagreed. Zidane would start. Eric Abidal backed his manager's choice: "Zidane will be the difference," he said. Abidal could never have known how prophetic his words would be but he surely knew how little say his manager had at that point of the tournament.

"Domenech had come into the 2006 World Cup with a masterplan that quickly looked more like a botched strategy devised by someone who didn't master much, least of all his own players," wrote Philippe Auclair of L'Equipe in his biography of Thierry Henry, Lonely at the Top. "Frustrated by their incapacity to overcome modest opponents in the group phase, senior members of Domenech's squad … decided to take the matter into their own hands and impose self-governance within the French camp. That, at least, is the way in which France's resurgence from the round of 16 onwards is almost universally explained in my home country." Zidane, of course, was the most senior of those senior members and he was about to take total control.

With just seven minutes remaining on the clock and sides drawing 1-1, France won a free kick outside the box. Spain had been very impressive in the group stages and many expected them to finally come good in major tournament (their starting 11 contained eight players who would go on to win Euro 2008 and the 2010 World Cup, and afterwards Henry admitted that "people ... thought we were going to get killed against Spain").

By this stage in the game, the momentum had seemed to be swinging towards them – just minutes before Joaquín had rifled a shot wide of the post after making a mockery of the France defence. Then up stepped Zidane. His free kick was converted by the head of Vieira. Nine minutes later and two minutes into injury time, with Spain still in search of an equaliser, he picked the ball up wide on the left. Marauding into Spanish territory, he quickly cut inside Carlos Puyol and fired inside Iker Casillas' near post. He was back and with a bang that could be heard from Paris to Pamplona.

Next up was a date with tournament favourites Brazil. Fifty-six minutes into the game France were awarded a free kick wide on the left when Cafu fouled Florent Malouda. Zidane stood over the ball once again. He spotted that the Brazilian defence had gone to sleep at the back post and aimed for that area. Within moments Henry had put France into the lead and the striker was celebrating with his team-mates.

Zidane, however, stood apart from the rest, smiling to himself. Just as with the match against Spain, it was he who separated the two sides. At one stage he held off Kaká while juggling the ball and later he would knock it over Ronaldo's head, making the World Cup winner look like a lost schoolboy searching for his mother. "He ran the game," wrote Amy Lawrence for The Observer. "From the first moment, when he signalled his intent by carving through the yellow shirts, to the last, when he pushed up front in search of the killer goal. And in between he delivered the most memorable touches, the sweetest moves." Henry's goal was enough to win the game for France. They were through to the semi-finals where they would face Portugal.

Zinedine-Zidane-against-B-008.jpg Brazil's Ze Roberto, Kaka and Juninho surround Zinedine Zidane of France during the 2006 World Cup quarter-final. Photograph: Matthias Schrader/EPA

Those who fail to learn from history are bound to repeat it and Portugal failed to learn. In Euro 2000 they gave away a penalty to lose 2-1 to France in the semi-finals and it happened again in Germany. Henry needed no invitation to hit the ground in the box but an experienced defender such as Ricardo Carvalho should really have known better than to be putting in such a challenge in such a situation. The Portuguese keeper, Ricardo, may have been able to halt England but he could not do the same to Zidane, whose two-step run up and crisp finish had too much power for him to keep out. Zidane's goal was enough to win the game for France and set up a final with Italy.

The statue that commemorates that moment stands around 16 feet tall, almost three times as high as the two men its story centres on. And yet it could have been all so different. Zidane had given France the lead in the final in the most audacious fashion. There cannot be too many players who would have the confidence and audacity to successfully execute a Panenka in a World Cup final but Zidane did. Deep in extra-time he almost doubled his goal count for the game. Just outside the Italian area, he played the ball to Willy Sagnol out on the right-hand side, before moving through the opposition defence with all the silence and stealth of a spy on a secret mission. Sagnol's cross was met with a powerful header from his captain that forced Buffon to tip the ball over the bar with a most magnificent save.

The various videos and angles of the build-up to the headbutt show Materazzi's mouth moving but his words can only be heard by one person, the one person who matters, the one person Materazzi wants to hear. Despite the scurrilous and evidence-free accusations printed by some newspapers, the defender's words were not about his opponent's religion or ethnicity. "I prefer the whore that is your sister," Materazzi would later admit to saying. It was the sort of schoolboy insult that Zidane, and thousands of other professional footballers, must have heard from fans, and indeed fellow players, on a regular basis. Something, however, snapped that evening in Berlin and in Zidane. All the beauty and brilliance of his play in the knockout stages melted away and what was left was his anger and aggression. "I tried not to listen to him but he repeated them several times," said Zidane. "Sometimes words are harder than blows. When he said it for the third time, I reacted."

Zidane had already taken some steps past the Italian defender when the red mist descended like a fog on Dickensian London. He lent forward, lowered his head and rutted like a deer in mating season. Afterwards, his opponent clutched the ground and his chest like a drunk their last bottle. Zidane's stare communicates his sheer contempt for Materazzi and his words. "I would have rather been knocked down than hear that," he said. Pandemonium then took hold on and off the pitch and within moments Zidane was gone. Perhaps the most iconic image of 2006 World Cup is not the dark-eyed Zidane standing over a stricken Materazzi but the picture of the solitary Zidane walking past the glistening World Cup trophy on his way back to the dressing room. So near and yet so far.

Frances-Zinedine-Zidane-d-008.jpg France's Zinedine Zidane looks up during the 2006 World Cup final against Italy. Photograph: Jerry Lampen/Reuters

After his goodbye speech in the dressing-room to his retiring captain was done, Domenech began the applause, but "there was only the grinding of teeth" the French manager said. "Certain players really hated their captain." They were not the only ones who were dismayed and disappointed by Zidane's actions. Le Figaro called his head-butt "odious" while L'Equipe's front page asked: "What should we tell our children, for whom you have become an example for ever? ... How could that happen to a man like you?" Frank Leboeuf, meanwhile, described himself as "ashamed" by the actions of his former team-mate.

Zidane could have been forgiven for feeling a sense of trepidation upon his return to France. He would have been aware of the reception that greeted his Real Madrid team-mate David Beckham after he arrived back in England in 1998 following his sending-off against Argentina. France, however, was different. There was no need for armed guards and there was burning of Zidane effigies. Instead, the Place de la Concorde was filled with thousands of fans waving flags and rhythmically chanting "Zizou! Zizou!" like monks in a monastery worshipping a higher power.

Jacques Chirac, the president of France, led the tributes. "The match you played last night was full of talent and professionalism," he said. "I know that you are sad and disappointed but what I want to tell you is that the whole country is extremely proud of you. You have honoured the country with your exceptional qualities and your fantastic fighting spirit, which was your strength in difficult times, but also in winning times."

Chirac's words may have seemed to be a touch excessive but they reflected what the people wanted to hear. Polls done in the immediate wake of the incident backed up the public shows of support for Zidane: 61% of French people said they had already forgiven him for his actions while 52% said they understood them.

His bones had ached, his form had dipped but Zidane managed to conjure up a final, extended piece of magic to woo the world. His performances after the group stages, according to Auclair, "ranked among his finest in a blue shirt". Not many would argue against that.

Before the tournament, few in France could have hoped that the team would come within a penalty shoot-out of winning but Zidane had given them hope. "For a month, France was dreaming with Zidane" wrote Libération but that dream was dashed the moment Materazzi opened his mouth and Zidane turned to face him. And yet the people of France would not let that moment of madness tarnish all that he had given them throughout his career. As one French writer said at the time: "It's good for us to see our national hero is fallible."

 

What the Guardian wrote: Italy strike gold as Zidane sees red

By Kevin McCarra, Berlin, 10 July 2006

Italy are world champions, with a flawless set of penalties in the shoot-out securing football's ultimate prize. They had never been undisputed masters in any other aspect of the final, yet the honour is theirs for the fourth time in their history. The veterans of France, tapping unimaginable reserves of stamina, had been more potent from the opening of the second-half onwards but are now submerged in the miseries of their leader.

A red card rather than a greetings card ushered Zinedine Zidane into retirement 19 minutes into extra-time. The captain was sent off for reacting to a dispute with Marco Materazzi by turning and butting the scorer of Italy's goal in the chest. He had surely been provoked - there were suggestions last night that Materazzi had called him "a terrorist" - but Zidane will be right to curse his stupid reaction.

This World Cup had come to mean too much to him and the dismissal followed three bookings in his six matches here. The 34-year-old was as overwrought as any testosterone-maddened youngster but could still have contrived a triumph. Five minutes before his expulsion he was unmarked to connect with Willy Sagnol's cross 12 yards out but his header was tipped over by Gianluigi Buffon.

Goalkeepers had little to do, even if the final was diverting and often classy. Buffon might as well have been a bystander in the shoot-out, since a Juventus team-mate David Trezeguet bashed his penalty against the bar. The left-back Fabio Grosso secured victory for Italy from the spot.

One of the worst aspects of the sudden-death system is that it leaves the losers tormenting themselves over each detail that might have been different. Thierry Henry, affected for a while by a first-minute head knock, had a splendid, free-running spell after the interval and compelled Buffon to an important stop. The coach Raymond Domenech, though, was eventually to substitute him.

By then Henry was exhausted but his removal meant that neither he nor Zidane could face Buffon in the shoot-out. The veteran, in a rather erratic fashion, had illustrated at the very start of the night that he could beat the goalkeeper. After six minutes Henry headed into the area from the left and Florent Malouda went down as Materazzi closed on him.

There had seemed to be a slight contact, enough to meet the referee Horacio Elizondo's criteria. Plotting the penalty, Zidane almost baffled himself in the battle of wits. He had scored the single goal of the semi-final against Portugal from the spot by hitting a sharp, low finish to the goalkeeper's right. Here, confronted by his former Juventus colleague Buffon, he opted for the opposite.

The ball was floated the other way, where it caught the underside of the crossbar and dropped over the line. There was a suspicion then that luck would rally to Zidane 's aid with the total fulfilment of his life as a footballer. Minds turned to the symmetry of his impact, considering that he had delivered an opener, too, when France took the 1998 World Cup in Paris.

The harmonies of history were, in practice, to take another shape entirely. Italy had never before conquered on penalties in the World Cup finals and were even vanquished by France in that fashion at the quarter-final stage eight years ago. A nation famed for its icy efficiency was bound to put that right sooner or later.

France had made Italy turn into a former incarnation of themselves. The manager Marcello Lippi has been encouraging a more expressive style but that had been of sporadic worth. Not even the loss of Patrick Vieira in the second half, to a hamstring injury, halted the rising assertiveness of Domenech's players.

Lippi would be driven to bolster his midfield with the introduction of Daniele de Rossi, who came fresh from a four-game ban for elbowing the United States forward Brian McBride in the face. The manager was reacting to circumstances then, but had evidently conducted a measured examination of the France back four beforehand.

Materazzi equalised by overpowering Vieira to meet an Andrea Pirlo corner on 19 minutes and smash a header into the net. France's discomfort at set pieces was never eased and, when Francesco Totti released Luca Toni for an effort that was blocked, Domenech's team faced another corner. Pirlo flighted it once more and, on this occasion, it was Toni who won the header but hit the crossbar.

The long-serving France players did understand how to regroup and not long after the interval the Italy right-back Gianluca Zambrotta ran a serious risk with his challenge on Malouda. The argument for a penalty was stronger than it had been at the opening of the evening, yet the ref eree was reluctant to grant a second for an offence on the same player.

The changes of personnel made by a perturbed Lippi were nearly followed by a breakthrough. The dead-ball expert Pirlo piloted one more free-kick and Toni can have been off-side by only a fraction as he headed the ball past Barthez.

There will be no regrets for any Italian in the return to supremacy of their national team, following the ignominy of early exits at the 2002 World Cup and Euro 2004, but this was not exactly the culmination that had been anticipated. Lippi's team, overall, has been the best in this tournament but recognition of that is muddled by admiration for the pluck that France showed and sadness that Zidane should have left the stage in such a dismal manner.

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It was quite a magnificent way to go out.

 

I mean, in a sort of "it shouldn't be brilliant but it is" kind of way.

 

Yeah, winning the world cup in his final game would have been better, but it's sort of brilliant that someone so good went out like that.

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yeah i know what you mean, even if he'd have punched him it wouldnt have been as amazing at it was, it was the whole what the **** has he just done element that made it what it was, for 3/4 minutes watching it live no one knew, then you saw the headbutt and instantly thought what was that?! then it was the what was said

 

then came the gifs...

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Part 6.  Scotland 1978.

 

World Cup: 25 stunning moments … No6: Scotland's 1978 rollercoaster
Scotland flew to the 1978 finals on a wave of hype before reality hit but the win over Holland will be remembered for generations
Denis-Law-011.jpg
Denis Law shares a beer with Scotland fans at the 1978 World Cup. Photograph: Colorsport/Corbis

"My name is Ally MacLeod, and I am a born winner!" And we all know how this story pans out.

Let's cut the man some slack, though, for he wasn't quite the congenital loser he's usually painted as. True, the high-water mark of his playing career as a willowy, crowd-pleasing left winger – a man-of-the-match performance for Blackburn Rovers in the 1960 FA Cup final described as "magnificent" by this paper – earned him nothing more than personal plaudits and a runners-up medal after a comprehensive 3-0 defeat by Wolverhampton Wanderers. But there were notable achievements when he hung up his boots and clambered into the dugout. First, a couple of promotions with Ayr United, a club he very nearly took into Europe in the early 1970s. Then tangible success at last: a Scottish League Cup with Aberdeen in 1976, the club's first triumph in the competition for two decades and only their second major trophy in an otherwise barren 20-year stretch. Dons' supporters currently singing their hosannas to Derek McInnes will know how good a League Cup can make you feel.

MacLeod did a fine job in his short time at Pittodrie. Not quite Fergusonesque, granted, but it's hardly fair to measure ordinary humanfolk using that particular metric. He joined Aberdeen in November 1975 with a first-ever relegation for the club looming. MacLeod's side avoided humiliation by the skin of their teeth, goal difference sending Dundee down instead. At which point the club's fortunes turned round abruptly and spectacularly. Aberdeen spent the next season on the fringes of the Premier Division title race, finishing third, a highly creditable outcome given what had gone before. Then there was that League Cup win, a perfect way to celebrate MacLeod's first anniversary in the granite city, and a personal triumph to boot: the Dons beat Celtic 2-1 after the manager took off Drew Jarvie, who had equalised Kenny Dalglish's opener in the first half, and replaced him with Davie Robb. No prizes for guessing who scored Aberdeen's winner. "There couldn't be a more likeable man in the game," purred the BBC's Archie Macpherson as MacLeod gambolled across the pitch after the final whistle, bear-hugging whoever happened to cross his path. "I have a suspicion that Mr MacLeod's ribs will be broken before the night is out."

With his team playing exciting, chest-cavity-bothering football – en route to that League Cup win, they had scintillatingly skelped the league champions, Rangers, 5-1 – average crowds at Pittodrie had shot up from 5,000 to 20,000. The Guardian described MacLeod as the "Pied Piper of the Scottish game". Newcastle United tried to tempt him south in February 1977 but MacLeod opted to stay put. Though not for long.Scotland parted company with Willie Ormond three months later and the once perennial first choice, Jock Stein, confirmed with the SFA that he would remain at Celtic, MacLeod was offered the national job. Concerned that the chance had arrived too early in his career, but fearing he would never be asked again, he seized the opportunity with both hands. "Concorde has arrived!" he announced with a grin at the big unveil, theatrically tapping the side of his aerodynamically designed nose.

The Jarvie-Robb switcheroo at the 1976 League Cup final was not representative of MacLeod's managerial skillset. He was a talker, not a chalker, eschewing the tactics board in favour of flamboyant motivational speeches, which were delivered with both players and fans in mind. Mainly fans, actually, and his blustering approach to PR had mixed results from the get-go. Before his first match in charge of Scotland, a Home International against Wales at Wrexham's Racecourse Ground, he announced to the press that, of a home XI which featured players from Everton, Liverpool, Aston Villa, Stoke City and PSV Eindhoven, he had heard only of Derby County's Leighton James. "Perhaps he will know some of our names now, and not be so ignorant," seethed the Welsh captain, Terry Yorath, of Coventry City, after his unfancied side held Scotland to a hard-fought 0-0 draw. MacLeod's mouth then got him into a wee bit of bother before Scotland's visit to Wembley, when he cracked the following gag: "I don't dislike the English, I hate their guts!" It was a deliberate joke, a pantomime rallying cry, and devoid of any genuine ill-feeling. But cheap cracks delivered with a twinkle in the eye read flat on the page, and understandably the bon mot played rather better in papers published north of the border than those sold down south.

But initial results more than made up for it. In between the Wales and England games, Northern Ireland were dispatched 3-0. Then at Wembley, England were claymored in a 2-1 victory more comprehensive than it sounds. Perhaps fuelled by MacLeod's air-punching exuberance on the touchline, the goalposts came crashing down. A gleeful MacLeod said that if he wasn't the manager, he would have travelled to London as a punter and been "down there on the pitch with the boys". ("He didn't say if he would have brought down his turf-cutting kit, as the others seem to have," quipped Frank Keating.)

Scotland, having proved themselves the dominant team in British football by landing the Home Championship, went off to South America for a summer tour. Results were mixed. Scotland went 3-0 up against Chile after 37 minutes in a match which saw them flop over the line 4-2. César Luis Menotti's Argentina were up next, and the Scots were the better team in a feisty match in Buenos Aires in which Willie Johnston was sent off for being thrown around like an old sock by Vicente Pernía. The winger left the pitch in tears over the injustice of it all, and later claimed he was approached that night by the striker Leopoldo Luque who told him that he was a "very good player … but be warned, do not return to Argentina for the World Cup because things will not be nice for you".

Next up was Brazil in Rio, which gave MacLeod another opportunity to showcase his showman. "Brazil are the No1 team in the world," he announced, "but we're pretty good too. We're looking forward to playing them on their own ground and beating them. I've told the lads this is a rehearsal for next year's World Cup final." Oh Ally! Sure enough, Scotland didn't turn up, and were easily swatted aside, 2-0 in a nondescript affair.

Looking back, though optimism abounded at the time, MacLeod's Scotland were already tottering unsteadily on the brow of the hill. If that preposterous day at Wembley wasn't MacLeod's signature success as Scotland boss, then is the 3-1 World Cup qualification win over the European champions, Czechoslovakia, at Hampden in September 1977 the one? Admittedly the Czechs had misplaced their form since winning the Euros 15 months earlier, and their preparation for the game was disrupted when they were forced to travel to Glasgow from London by train after missing a connecting flight at Heathrow. But that shouldn't take away from a Scottish performance that David Lacey described as aggressive, well-coordinated, remorseless and hard to resist. Scotland wrapped up the group in Liverpool, the Welsh opting to play their home game at Anfield and going down 2-0. The match is remembered for an infamous penalty decision 12 minutes from time –was it Joe Jordan who handled Johnston's cross, or David Jones? – but few remember two other penalty shouts, a legitimate handball appeal in the area against Joey Jones, and a more questionable one when Jones upended Dalglish. The luck probably evened itself out, though successfully floating that idea anywhere in Wales is a difficult proposition even to this day. "All I know is that a hand punched the ball, and it's up to the referee to make the decision," shrugged MacLeod. "I think we should have had a penalty earlier. You lose some, you win some. I am just glad to have reached the finals."

The big buildup Scotlands-Football-Captai-008.jpgScotland's captain Bruce Rioch and other members of the 1978 World Cup Squad wave goodbye to fans at Hampden Park. Photograph: REX

The Guardian had been in no two minds about Scotland's chances at the World Cup. "There can be little doubt that Scotland will be a force in Argentina," we reported after the Wales game. "There is really no reason why they should not distinguish themselves in South America." Laugh it up, but this wasn't a contrary view at the time. And so the hype machine went into overdrive. MacLeod starred in an advertisement for a carpet company, sat on a rug dressed as a pistol-wielding gaucho. His wife, Faye, was the face of a World Cup ticket competition run by the Daily Record and the Co-op. "With a little bit of luck I'll soon be on my way to Argentina," she twinkled, "just to keep my eye on Ally!" The team gave the thumbs up to Chrysler cars – "If there were a World Cup for value, Avenger would win it!" – and Polaroid cameras. On billboards across the land, Joe Jordan's gappy smile was filled with teeth after drinking restorative Heineken, a popular non-isotonic hop-based sports beverage. The team were also offered money by the British American Tobacco Company to shill fags, a move which quickly descended into controversy and farce. ("Several of our players smoke, so it would be untruthful to back an anti-smoking campaign," explained MacLeod in response to criticism from Scottish health education executives, genuinely believing the baroque logic.) Rod Stewart and club comic Andy Cameron recorded celebratory top-10 singles, the execrable Ole Ola and the execrable Ally's Tartan Army. Everyone was in on the act. The battle fever was on.

Problem was, Scotland's form had taken something of a dip. 1978 began with an unconvincing 2-1 victory over Bulgaria, after which the Home Internationals proved something of a downer. A miserable 1-1 draw with Northern Ireland was followed by a farcical 1-1 draw against Wales, Willie Donachie throwing away victory by sweeping a backpass into an empty net, having declined to check the position of his keeper, Jim Blyth. England then came to Hampden, and though Scotland were the better team, the visitors won thanks to a late goal, Steve Coppell converting a Peter Barnes cross, thus nicking off with Scotland's Home Championship title. "The worst player scored from a cross by the second worst," sniffed MacLeod as the Tartan Army gave their team a rapturous reception despite the result. The boss added that he was sad to be handing over the Home Championship trophy to England, but fully intended to wrest it back in 1979, although "it could be dwarfed by the World Cup". Oh Ally!

Scotland departed for Argentina in a manner which redefined hubris, sweeping out of Hampden in front of 30,000 delirious well-wishers, the sort of jamboree usually held when teams come back holding something tangible, metallic and shiny in their hands to boot. Stein, who harboured private doubts over MacLeod's chops at the highest level, noted that it was all well and good "turning handstands" at qualifying for a World Cup that England had failed to reach, but "there's a big world out there and the English aren't the only people who live in it". And if Scotland had indeed been getting ahead of themselves with their fancy farewell, the final leg of the long journey to the 1978 World Cup should have given them pause. On the hill up to their hotel in Alta Gracia, the clutch on the old team bus burnt out and the clapped-out charabanc had to be nudged from behind along the final 200 yards by a friendly truck. Having already redefined hubris, MacLeod and his men were now inadvertently penning a new meaning to harbinger. Dr Johnson would have been proud.

Peru were first up. And there were two problems here. Firstly, it was abundantly clear that the Scottish midfield pairing of Don Masson and Bruce Rioch had shot their bolt. Lacey's analysis after the defeat by England hit the nail firmly on the head. "When Rioch and Masson, neither of whom had played badly, to be fair, left the field together 15 minutes from the end, there was a strong feeling of symbolism in the change, hammer and sickle giving way to mallet and plane in the shape of Archie Gemmill and Graeme Souness. This pair, with the ever-consistent Asa Hartford, are surely better equipped now to give Scotland the variations of pace, the greater choice of angle and wider range of movements that will be needed in Argentina." However, MacLeod opted to retain his old faithfuls for the opening match.

Perhaps more worryingly, MacLeod had given a television interview in which he stressed the importance of Martin Buchan's ability to keep a hold of flying winger Juan Carlos Oblitas. All well and good, except that Oblitas was a left-winger, and Buchan was being posted at left-back. A few months earlier, MacLeod had been conspicuous in his absence as the managers of several World Cup finalists visited Lima to watch the Peruvians play Argentina in a friendly. A BBC crew was there waiting to film his arrival, sure that the manager would have wanted to run the rule over potentially dangerous opponents. MacLeod didn't turn up, citing a must-attend social engagement. There was a strong sense that Ally had not finished his homework before going out to play.

A slow start Scotland-team-training-in-008.jpgThe Scotland squad limbers up in Argentina before the start of the tournament. Photograph: Colorsport/REX

Sure enough, after a slow start, Peru proved themselves the bosses of Scotland, Teófilo Cubillas conducting the orchestra, Rioch dancing to his tune. Even the Observer's television critic could see this wasn't a very clever state of affairs, though admittedly this was the brilliant Clive James we're talking about. James noted archly that the Peruvians had "revealed an ability to run faster with the ball than the Scots could run without it". Scotland's undressing inspired other utterances of tinder-dry brilliance. "I would like to congratulate Scotland and Mr MacLeod on the team they presented to us," deadpanned the Peru manager, Marcos Calderón,after his side's 3-1 win. "Our main fault lay in not marking Cubillas," sighed MacLeod, which led our man Lacey to remark that the Scotland manager's observation was made "much as a man might reflect, on falling out of an aircraft, that on second thoughts he should have worn a parachute". Meanwhile an unnamed Dutch journalist, upon hearing that Kenny Burns was the current player of the year in England, spluttered: "You are pulling my trousers!"

Scotland, 9-1 dark horses to win the title, were suddenly 33-1 outsiders. There's no need to forensically pore over what happened next. Johnston was sent home for taking pep pills, despite playing as though he was hooked on Mogadon; there were rows in the camp over bonus money; and the team drew 1-1 with Iran, completing a trifecta of wondrous dictionary rewrites, following up the hubris and harbinger updates with a free-jazz reinterpretation of nadir.

Back home, Chrysler withdrew their sponsorship. "It was time to call a halt as the team just did not live up to the copywriters' claims," smarmed a company spokesperson, his voice barely audible over the furious soaping and rinsing of hands. At least Chrysler hadn't manufactured the team bus. A more trenchant statement was made by one punter who lobbed a brick through the window of the Scottish FA, presumably to bring symbolic attention to the architectural aperture through which Scotland's dignity had long since departed.

And then came Holland Joe-Jordan-Scotland-Jan-J-009.jpgScotland's Joe Jordan, left, challenges for a high ball with Holland's goalkeeper, Jan Jongbloed, and Jan Poortvliet. Photograph: Colorsport/REX

Scotland had to beat the 1974 finalists by three clear goals if they were to clamber out of the hole they had dug for themselves and slip into the second round. Johan Cruyff might have gone, and the Oranje hadn't been that great against Iran and Peru themselves, unconvincingly beating the former, creating nothing in a draw with the latter. But a team boasting Ruud Krol, Johnny Rep, Johan Neeskens and Rob Rensenbrink were still the real deal. Scotland might have been relying on the fact that they had to click at some point, but then so were the Dutch. It didn't look promising. The Observer doyen Hugh McIlvanney noted that MacLeod was "the most grimly beleaguered manager even the Scots had known", and concluded that "Scotland had every right to pessimism".

There remained one hope. MacLeod had finally seen some bloody sense, and refashioned his midfield to contain Souness, who in his last competitive game had set up the winning goal in the European Cup final. MacLeod's folly in not picking him in the first place was evident from the off, with Scotland wheeching out of the traps. After five minutes, Souness glided down the right wing, paused awhile to consider his options in that haughty manner which would become so familiar to Liverpool fans, and sand-wedged a cross into the centre. Rioch battered a header on to the crossbar. Unlucky? Naw, he should have scored.

Two minutes later, Scotland had the ball in the net, the Dutch stepping up for offside, Tom Forsyth staying put on the penalty spot and popping the ball off the left-hand post and in. The goal would stand today. Forsyth was onside, just, but Stuart Kennedy, miles out of the road on the right, was half a yard off. But this was 1978, a foreign country where linesmen are still called linesmen and do things very differently.

Another seven minutes had passed when Scotland had the ball in the Dutch net again. And for a second time, the goal was chalked off. Alan Rough, his baseball cap wedged atop a springy perm and threatening to skyrocket towards the evening sun at any given point, launched a long ball forward. Krol sent an uncertain header back towards his own box. Dalglish beat Wim Rijsbergen to it, stuck his right boot out, and guided past the advancing Jan Jongbloed. But Dalglish was adjudged to have clipped Rijsbergen's heels, another generous decision, so that was that. A minute later, Dalglish sent a low shot whistling just past the post. This was turning into a stunning Scottish performance. If your auntie had baws, and a' that, but these had been fine margins: on another day, Scotland could easily have been three or four goals to the good before 15 minutes had elapsed.

Predictably, then, it was Holland who would take the lead, and in highly farcical circumstances. The Scots had a decent spot-kick shout around the 20-minute mark, Jordan hacked from behind by Jan Poortvliet, but the big man had clearly used up all his penalty-box luck at Anfield, and it was karmic payback time. Instead it was the Dutch who opened the scoring from 12 yards. On 35 minutes, Rough rolled the ball out to right-back Kennedy, who froze on the spot – how Scotland missed the injured Danny McGrain in this tournament – and let Rensenbrink steal off towards the area. Kennedy finally thawed out, chasing back after the striker and bowling him over in the box. Rensenbrink got up and slotted the penalty kick away.

But something wondrous, and very strange, was about to happen. Scotland drew level on the stroke of half-time, Dalglish roofing a ludicrous no-backlift half-volley, then won a penalty through Souness two minutes after the restart, Gemmill threading his team into the lead. MacLeod's men had 43 minutes to find the two goals they required to make the second round, and their collective determination and belief was best illustrated by Souness's reaction upon being bundled over by Willy van der Kerkhof for the penalty: he sprung to his feet and, with a deadpan expression on his coupon, save for a slight quiver of the nostril as he exhaled with steely purpose, slowly raised his right arm into the air. Few declarations of intent have been made so calmly, so menacingly.

Gemmil's masterpiece

Holland were rocking, and Scotland would nearly make it. With their fans singing You'll Never Walk Alone – either to express their eternal love for their team, acknowledge the Liverpudlian influence of Scotland's two-goal comeback, or sympathise with a squad recently divested of the keys to their Chrysler Avengers – the national team was about to experience its greatest moment. Dalglish tried to diddle his way past Poortvliet and Wim Jansen down the right, and the ball broke to Gemmill. At which point the Nottingham Forest midfielder took six of the most famous touches in World Cup history. One: he took the ball away from Jansen. Two: he turned to face the goal. Three: he nudged the ball past Krol. Four: he entered the area past the hapless Poortvliet. Five: he set himself. Six: Mark Renton wouldn't feel this good again until he met Diane.

The greatest moment in Scottish football history. And the most bittersweet one, too. Seconds after the restart, Kennedy nearly planted a header into his own net while doing his best to make a royal balls of clearing a dangerous cross out for a corner. Scotland cleared the set piece but the tide refused to be dammed, and 202 seconds after Gemmill's masterpiece, the old Dutch master Rep launched a 30-yard worldie into the top left. "I just shut my eyes and hit out," admitted Rep later. There were still 18 minutes left, but it was all over. Forsyth missed a point-blank header in injury time, but it mattered not. Scotland had beaten arguably the best team at both the 1974 and 1978 World Cup finals, but as usual they had fallen at the first hurdle. This was – never mind Wembley '77 or the Czechs – MacLeod's signature match.

Scotland, who had left for Argentina amid a carnival atmosphere, came HOME BY THE BACK DOOR, as famously recorded by the Daily Record. "Ssh," the paper whispered, camping it up for yuks alongside a picture of MacLeod's low-slung forehead scraping the tarmac at Glasgow Airport, "you know who slips in quietly." Some contrast to the arrival of Concorde. MacLeod lasted one more game as Scotland manager– a 3-2 defeat against Austria in the Euro 80 qualifiers – before resigning and returning to Ayr rather than taking up an offer from another old club, Blackburn Rovers. His days of flirting with serious success, however, were over. He died in 2004, seemingly fated to be forever the face of Scotland's most chastening humiliation.

And yet there's a sense that time will be extremely kind to MacLeod. As the years tick by, fewer generations remain who are old enough to remember the disappointment, disillusion and despair of 1978. To many, all that's left are the jaunty tales of the daftest romp. Scotland didn't win the World Cup when they had a smidgen of a chance, it's true, and now probably never will. But while MacLeod ended up accidentally piloting Scotland into the gutter, at least he'd set the controls for the stars. Laugh at the adverts and the hubristic pronouncements all you like, but thanks to his vaulting ambition, the Scots at least embarked on a journey, and will always be able to tell the story of one of the most jaw-droppingly memorable campaigns the World Cup has ever seen. A farcical implosion of nuclear intensity, yet one which climaxed in, just maybe, the greatest goal of all time. A remarkable and singular combination, and they couldn't have done it like this without him. No World Cup, but only 18 managers in 84 years have won one, and how many of the unsuccessful others left an indelible mark on the memory quite like this? It's not a bad consolation prize.

His name was Ally MacLeod. And, yes, he was a born winner. Ole ola!

What the Guardian wrote: Scotland's parting is such sweet sorrow Scotland-fans-celebrate-009.jpgScotland fans celebrate Archie Gemmil's goal against Holland. Photograph: Colorsport/REX

By David Lacey, Buenos Aires, 13 June 1978

Once again nothing has become Scotland so much in the World Cup as their leaving of it.Tomorrow Ally MacLeod and his players fly home from Buenos Aires having succeeded, against most expectations, in giving the impression that the tournament will be poorer for their departure.

Scotland's performance in Mendoza on Sunday when they defeated Holland 3-2 in their final match in Group Four and for eight minutes in the second half were on the point of taking the three-goal lead which, if held, would have kept them in the competition proved that the optimism beforehand was not ill-founded and not, as some have suggested, purely a fightment of newspaper imagination.

The Scots did have the players to make progress in the World Cup which so far has produced no outstanding team, except, perhaps, Italy. When one looks at the eight who have survived – Italy, West Germany, Austria, Holland, Argentina, Poland, Brazil and Peru – it is not difficult to imagine a situation in which Scotland, fielding the right team and playing to form, might have squeezed into the third place play-off.

Then again, the loss of Danny McGrain was a handicap that the side never really overcame and, when all is said and done, this World Cup squad never had players of the quality of Billy Bremner and David Hay, so important to their performances in 1974.

Fielding the right team... easy to say, less easily achieved. MacLeod's dilemma since Scotland qualified for the World Cup proper by beating Wales last October has been that he could not make up his mind whether to remain loyal to those players who had taken him to Argentina or disrupt the team created by his predecessor as Scottish manager, Willie Ormond, and introduce men who were giving more impressive performances at the club level.

MacLeod's problem, and whether or not it was self-created it remained a problem, could be said to save crystallised in Souness who, as he had already demonstrated on joining Liverpool from Middlesbrough in the new year, had the skill and the confidence to change a team's pattern, alter their tempo, give them a wider range of vision and open up hitherto undisclosed options in attack.

On Sunday, it was like watching Liverpool play Borussia Moenchengladbach in the European Cup semi-finals all over again. The man-to-man marking of experienced Continental players did not seem to affect Souness, who glided about the midfield in his own private cocoon of space. Rioch, Gemmill, Hartford and Daglish all seemed much happier in the presence of so steady and accurate an influence on the game.

Managers who make right decisions at the wrong time are usually only slightly less vilified than those who make wrong decisions all the time. After the Dutch game, an English journalist congratulated MacLeod on taking the mountains of criticism so well but added that he still felt that Scotland manager had been "native in global terms." MacLeod thought for a moment then said: " Well yes, I suppose I did have a lot to learn."

So far as the midfielder is concerned, the positions in which the Scots seemed so strong but failed so consistently, it could be said that MacLeod refused to believe the evidence of his own eyes. In the Home Internationals, after Rioch and Masson had proved so ineffective against Northern Ireland, Gemmill and Souness were introduced against Wales and for a spell after half-time inspired the team to some marvellously fluent football.

When MacLeod recalled Rioch and Masson and against England, substituting them with the alternative pair in the second half it really seem that he did made up his mind to drop captain and vice-captain for the World Cup. But, fatefully, they were retained for the opening game against Peru, when Masson missed that crucial penalty, and, while MacLeod reintroduced Gemmill against Iran, he still failed to renew the partnership with Souness.

The Iran game was the nadir of Scotland's performances in Argentina, but was the direct result of the defeat by Peru and its unhappy aftermath, with Johnston sent home after failing a dope test. The players were suffering from a hangover physical or psychological, perhaps both. Against Holland, with all apparently lost, everybody relaxed and simply played his natural game.

Relegated teams will often turn in a performance that has the audience wondering why they have found themselves in such a plight and so it was at Mendoza on Sunday. The pro – Scottish crowd, thrilled by Scotland's recovery after Rensenbrink's penalty (the 1000th goal in World Cup matches) and roaring their delight as Gemmill's wonderful dribble and shot made by score 3-1 must have found it hard to understand the results in Cordoba.

It will be interesting to see if the criticism awaiting Scotland, or more particularly MacLeod, on their arrival home has been softened by Sunday's saving grace.

Even now, one has a modicum of sympathy for MacLeod, a likeable enough man whose main fault was that he paid too much attention to saying the right things – or what he thought were the right things – when he should have been examining the details of the task facing him. Then again, how seriously did the Scottish FA examine MacLeod's credentials before appointing him?

As a football manager he had had one trip abroad, to Yugoslavia with Aberdeen. And to think that one phone call might at the right time have brought them Jock Stein.

 

 

Edited by Wainy316
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Colombia's captain, Andrés Escobar, lies on the ground after scoring an own goal at USA 94. The following month, he was shot dead. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

"Life doesn't end here. We have to go on. Life cannot end here. No matter how difficult, we must stand back up. We only have two options: either allow anger to paralyse us and the violence continues, or we overcome and try our best to help others. It's our choice. Let us please maintain respect. My warmest regards to everyone. It's been a most amazing and rare experience. We'll see each other again soon because life does not end here"

Colombia captain Andrés Escobar writes in Bogota's El Tiempe newspaper following his country's elimination from USA 1994.

Despite what cynics blessed with the gift of twenty-twenty hindsight might have you believe, Pele's suggestion that Colombia would at least make the semi-finals of USA 94 wasn't a crazy shot in the dark. Those would come later, six of them; bullets fired in a Medellín nightclub car park during a row that occurred in the early hours of 2 July, 1994. They would ring around the world, rendering millions incredulous that the captain of Colombia had been murdered, shot six times in the back, apparently as revenge for his contribution to his own team's elimination from a World Cup that was not yet over. It seemed that for no crime more heinous than accidentally scoring an own goal during a football match, Andrés Escobar had been gunned down in cold blood.

Fans-pay-tribute-to-Andr--009.jpg Fans pay tribute to Andrés Escobar at the Holland v Ireland game at USA '94. Photograph: Shaun Botterill/Getty Images

Escobar should have turned 47 earlier this month. El Caballero del Futbol, the gentleman of football, was a quiet, disciplined and much-loved leader of a golden generation of Colombian footballers who travelled to USA 94 having conceded only two goals in qualifying. Pele wasn't delusional: they were genuine contenders. In a final qualifier against Argentina which their hosts needed to win to ensure qualification, Colombia won 5-0 in Buenos Aires, earning a standing ovation from shocked home fans whose team was eventually forced to creep through the back door courtesy of a play-off win over Australia.

In 26 matches leading up to USA 94, Colombia lost just once. Their coach Francisco Maturana insisted his players express themselves and their natural flamboyance yielded rich on-field dividends courtesy of splendidly gifted individuals such as Carlos Valderrama, Freddy Rincón, Alexis García and Faustino Asprilla, to name just a quartet from a squad that, at the time, remained largely unknown outside of South America. This was the mid-90s, when the notion of blanket football coverage courtesy of niche blogs, satellite TV channels and internet streaming was as hopelessly exotic as the names of Colombia's many wonderfully talented players.

The other Escobar

Socially, it was also a time of terrible devastation and misery for Colombia. Medellín was in a state of emergency following the murder of Pablo Escobar, a namesake but no relation to Andrés and head of the multi-billion dollar Medellín drug cartel. Despite his status as bloodthirsty gang lord, Escobar was beloved of his country's many poor, for whom he provided employment and housing. He also built football pitches, lots of them, on which many of the stars who qualified so effortlessly for USA 94 honed their skills as young boys.

Escobar also owned the Medellín football team Atlético Nacional, where the sale of tickets for cash and decidedly creative book-keeping when it came to player transfers enabled him to launder hundreds of millions of dollars. Other cartels followed his lead and in the 1980s, their investment in various clubs led to a resurgence in Colombian football, which had hitherto been on its uppers. The wages paid encouraged Colombia's finest players to remain at home, enabling Nacional to become South American club champions by winning the 1989 Copa Libertadores. Their team featured Andrés Escobar in its lineup, among other home-based internationals who would go on to qualify for USA 94 with such distinction.

Responsible for the murder of assorted judges, politicians, over 500 policemen, at least one referee and thousands of rival cartel members who displeased him, Pablo Escobar had surrendered himself to Colombian authorities in the early 1990s, having first avoided attempts to extradite him to the USA. Holed up in Catedral Prison on the outskirts of Medellín, which became his own personal fiefdom, he had been promised a reduced sentence if he agreed to cease trafficking drugs. There he was visited by members of the Colombia football team, who would travel there in secret for kickabouts on the pitch Escobar had ordered to be built as a condition of his surrender.

On one occasion in late 1993, the famously flamboyant Colombian goalkeeper René Higuita foolishly stopped to chat with journalists on his way into the prison to visit Escobar. It caused a scandal and was an excursion that would cost him his place at the following summer's World Cup. Higuita was subsequently arrested and imprisoned on what were rumoured to be trumped-up charges of mediating in the ransom negotiation of a kidnapping. Most believed the real reason for his incarceration was government embarrassment that such a famous figure had been fraternising so publicly with one of Colombian officialdom's most despised and America's most wanted.

drug-lord-Pablo-Escobar-008.jpg Pablo Escobar. Photograph: Reuters/Corbis

According to The Two Escobars, the ESPN documentary that chronicles the intertwined lives of Pablo and Andrés, Higuita could see "the good and bad" in Pablo. Andrés Escobar was less ambivalent and was always uncomfortable at being invited to socialise with such a high profile criminal, however furtively. "Maria, I don't want to go but I have no choice," he told his sister, Maria Ester. He would not have to concern himself with visiting orders, metaphorical or otherwise, for much longer. Having escaped from prison and gone on the run after hearing the authorities were planning to move him to a stricter regime, on 2 December 1993, one day after his 44th birthday, Pablo Escobar was murdered.

The group responsible was a bunch of vigilantes known as The Pepes (Los Perseguidos por Pablo Escobar – People Persecuted by Pablo Escobar) and was ostensibly comprised of the rival Cali cartel, right wing paramilitaries led by Carlos Castano and backed by police, the special forces of both Colombia and the USA, and countless members of Escobar's own Medellín cartel, who had been ordered to turn against their boss or be killed. With his empire in ruins, unable to trust anybody and with contracts on the heads of his nearest and dearest, Escobar was finally hunted down and shot dead by police, although speculation abounds that the shot that killed him was self-inflicted. If the Colombian government thought the death of their bête noire would signal an end to the gang violence in Medellín, they could not have been more wrong. In Colombia's capital, anarchy ensued.

The capital of chaos

"When Pablo died, the city spun out of control," his cousin, Jaime Gavira, explained on The Two Escobars. "The boss was dead, so everyone became their own boss. Pablo had prohibited kidnappings. He ran the underworld with complete order. Anything illegal, you asked for Pablo's permission." With Escobar gone, permission was no longer required. Gavira's was a view endorsed by Colombia's manager, who had previously overseen Nacional's Copa Libertadores triumph and knew Escobar well. "The law of the boss is the law of the land," said Maturana. "When Pablo Escobar died, the earth shook and the wind cried 'Pablo Escobar!' As of that moment, you had to be on guard at all times. You couldn't trust anyone. Even a policeman could be good or evil." It was against this backdrop, with frequent bombings and shootings reducing the nation's capital to a state of complete emergency, that Colombia's footballers set off to USA 94.

"It's difficult to stay focused, but I find motivation in the good things to come," said Andrés Escobar, who was 27 at the time, had recently got engaged to his girlfriend, Pamela Cascardo, and had accepted an offer to play for Milan the following season. "I try to read a bit of the bible each day. My bookmarks are two photos, one of my late mother and the other of my fiancée." Somewhat ironically and perhaps rather naively, considering how Colombian football's resurgence was bankrolled, Escobar firmly believed the sport could help put a stop to the violence that was destroying the country he loved. "He saw soccer as a school of life to teach values and tolerance," said his friend, the journalist-turned-diplomat César Mauricio Velásquez. "To learn to win, to lose, to embrace sport as a sanctuary of unity. Andrés always stayed true to that belief."

Swept Stateside on a wave of genuine hope amid the despair back home, Colombia's World Cup campaign could scarcely have got off to a more inauspicious start. At the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, they lost their opening match 3-1 against a largely unheralded Romania side content to defend in depth and attack on the break. Florin Raducioiu scored two for the Romanians, but the pick of their goals was a breath-taking effort by Gheorghe Hagi, with the Maradona of the Carpathians spotting Óscar Córdoba, in Colombia's team for the banged-up Higuita, off his line and scoring with a shot from the sideline that was as preposterous as it was audacious. In the opposite goal, Bogdan Stelea enjoyed one of the games of his career, pulling off one sublime save after another to maintain his team's advantage. At 2-0 Adolfo Valencia scored to inspire hopes of a Colombian comeback, hopes that were eventually dashed by Radociou's second and his team's third in the 89th minute.

"That marked the beginning of a psychological crisis for which the team wasn't prepared," said Velásquez. "Many gamblers lost big money and there appeared a sort of 'dark hand' that was very upset with the team's performance." The 'dark hand' in question manifested itself on the TV screens in the players' hotel rooms, where the customary welcome messages awaiting returning guests were replaced with unpleasant threats by enterprising hackers. Following the death of Pablo Escobar, the infant son of the Colombia defender Luis 'Chonto' Herrera had been kidnapped and subsequently returned in Medellín. Following his side's defeat at the hands of Romania, Chonto received word from home that his brother had been killed in a car crash. What should have been the time of these exciting young footballers' lives was rapidly becoming the stuff of nightmares. An unassuming leader, Escobar did his utmost to help his best friend and team to hold things together. "That night Andrés kept me company," said Herrera. "I wanted to give up and go home, but Andrés said 'The country depends on you. This is our one shot at the World Cup'."

Colombia's preparations for their second group match, also at the Rose Bowl and against the tournament hosts, were less than ideal but the team remained confident. "We'd played hundreds of friendlies against the USA and won them all," recalled the midfielder Leonel Álvarez. At home, Medellín remained in meltdown, the streets habitually littered with burnt-out cars, bricks, bodies and blood. In Florida, team manager Maturana cried as he arrived for a pre-match meeting with his players. They had received more death threats, while Maturana had been warned that if veteran midfielder Gabriel 'Barrabas' Gómez was selected the entire squad would be murdered. "Barrabas was a key player, but they had me beat," said Maturana, who reluctantly pandered to club owners prepared to jeopardise their own national team's chances if it meant getting their players in the global spotlight to increase their value.

A squad paralysed by fear

A frightened shadow of the fur coat-wearing maverick who would later pitch up at Newcastle United, Faustino Asprilla remembered everyone at the meeting being "really tense", paralysed by fear and with nobody saying a word. "And that," recalls Maturana "is how we entered the field." Despite, or perhaps because of their terror, Colombia threw the kitchen sink at the USA from the get-go. "We attacked from all angles, but the ball wouldn't go in," remembers Adolfo Valencia. "We kept attacking but we couldn't score," confirmed Álvarez. "A moment came when you start to remember what happened, bad thoughts flood your mind." In the 22nd minute, the psychological floodgates opened.

At full stretch in an effort to cut out a low, curling John Harkes cross into the penalty area from the inside left, Escobar made contact with the ball and sent it rolling past the hopelessly wrong-footed Córdoba and into his own goal. Following a few seconds of quiet reflection as he lay flat on his back with his head in his hands contemplating the first own goal of his professional career, the stony-faced Escobar rose to his feet, glanced to his right and walked slowly towards the halfway line. If he was mulling over the seriousness of the possible consequences, he hid it fairly well. Watching the match on TV in Medellín, his nephew was in no doubt. "In that moment, my nine-year-old son said to me 'Mommy, they're going to kill Andrés," Escobar's sister told the makers of The Two Escobars. "I replied: 'No sweetheart, people aren't killed for mistakes. Everyone in Colombia loves Andrés'."

Andr-s-Escobar-in-action--008.jpg Andrés Escobar in action for Colombia v USA. Photograph: Shaun Botterill/Allsport

He was certainly well-liked by his team-mates, who considered him blameless. "He had to make a play on the ball and unfortunately it went in," said midfielder Alexis Garcìa. "I saw Andrés's face and felt deep pain. It was like a premonition." The jig was all but up for Colombia: Earnie Stewart doubled the USA's lead in with a 52nd minute tap-in and that's how it stayed until the final minute, when Valencia scored his second consolation goal of the tournament. In the final round of group games, Colombia beat Switzerland 2-0 at the Stanford Stadium in Palo Alto, but the USA's defeat at the hands of Romania meant their fate was sealed. "It's a very trying moment," said Escobar. "Not only because of the error I committed, but also because in these games, our team could not fulfil our expectations."

Escobar was devastated by Colombia's World Cup exit and his very public contribution to it, a contribution he would never watch on television. Upon his return to Medellín, his friends and family rallied around in a bid to lift his spirits, while his friend César Mauricio Velásquez convinced him to write his cathartic "life doesn't end here" column for El Tiempe. "He forgot his worries," said his girlfriend. "There was warnings but Andrés was young and alive. He wanted to live his life. Had I known I'd have kept him home that night."

Killed by football or society?

That night. His last. Escobar decided to go out with friends for the first time since his return from the World Cup and called Chonto Herrera to invite him along. Herrera told him to stay in, advising Escobar it would probably be best if they laid low. His manager shared Herrera's concerns and told his player to be careful. "I said 'the streets are dangerous," Maturana recalled. "Here conflicts aren't resolved with fists. Andrés, stay at home. But Andrés said 'No, I must show my face to my people'."

According to eye-witness reports, Escobar showed his face to the wrong people. Upon arriving at Medellín's El Indio Bar with friends, the footballer enjoyed a few drinks and was happily talking to fellow revellers when a few people began insulting him, sarcastically cheering his error against the USA. Escobar left the premises, but the four-strong group hurling abuse followed him, continued their tirade and loudly labelled him a "faggot". Upset, Escobar drove his car across the car park in order to reason with his detractors, insisting his own goal had been "an honest mistake". An already tense situation escalated and at least one gun was produced and fired. Six bullets tore through the flesh and bone of Escobar's back as he sat at the wheel of his car. An ambulance was called, but it was too late. Less than 30 minutes later, Andrés Escobar was declared dead.

In the wake of the shooting, which was and remains widely assumed to be a revenge slaying perpetrated by gangsters who had shipped heavy losses betting on Colombia at the World Cup, two people gave the licence plate number of one of the vehicles in which the group responsible for the murder made their escape. It was registered to the Gallón brothers, Pedro and Juan, drug traffickers who had left Pablo Escobar's Medellín cartel to join the Pepes. According to Jhon Jairo Velásquez Vásquez, an enforcer for Pablo Escobar currently in prison for 300 murders, immediately after the shooting, the Gallóns approached Carlos Castano and paid him $3m to buy off the prosecutor's office and get them to focus their investigation on one of their bodyguards who had been present at the scene. Whether or not he actually pulled the trigger remains unknown, but Humberto Castro Muñoz confessed to Escobar's murder and was later sentenced to 43 years in prison, only to be released for good behaviour after serving just 11. His employers, the Gallóns, were cleared of any wrongdoing.

Despite ongoing speculation to the contrary, Vásquez insists Escobar's murder was not a revenge attack by disgruntled gamblers. "Andrés's mistake was talking back to those guys," he would later surmise in an interview from the prison in which he is held. "The Gallóns' egos were so inflated after taking down [Pablo] Escobar, they weren't going to allow someone to talk back, not even Andrés. It had nothing to do with betting; it was a fight, that's all."

More than 100,000 Colombians filed past Escobar's body as it lay in a wooden casket, draped with a green and white Nacional club flag, in a Medellín basketball arena. At his funeral, Colombia president Cesar Gaviria said the footballer was a victim of the "absurd violence" affecting the country. There were chants of "Justice! Justice!" from the thousands of mourners lining the streets as Escobar was taken to his final resting place. According to Escobar's friend César Mauricio Velásquez, the cries came from people "united in our pain, sending our prayers to the heavens for the soul of Andrés Escobar and for the soul of sport in Colombia". Weeping fans threw flowers in the path of the hearse as it passed with a police escort, while at the cemetery Colombia flags were waved by many of the 15,000 present to see Escobar's coffin lowered into the ground.

The-funeral-of-Andr-s-Esc-009.jpg The funeral of Andrés Escobar in Medellín. Photograph: Sipa Press/Rex

Twenty years on, Andrés Escobar remains known around the world as the tragic Colombian footballer who was brutally "killed for scoring an own goal". It's a rather simplistic conclusion which his former manager feels does events of the time little justice. "Our society believed that soccer killed Andrés," Francisco Maturana has since opined, going on to suggest that in fact "Andrés was a soccer player killed by society."

Life doesn't end here, wrote Escobar in what turned out to be his valedictory address to the people of Colombia. Instead, it ended somewhere else just a few days later. Violently and senselessly in the seedy confines of a Medellín night club car park.

 

its a brilliant documentary on ESPN about this. when football went too far :(

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I think the most interesting world cup player was the Brazillian Garrincha, the king of dribbling, who is often overshadowed by Pele but he won two world cups in 58 and 62 and in 62 Pele was injured and he won it on his own. 

 

Sorry this has nothing to do with the title of the thread but he might figure in one of them.

Edited by PaulC
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I think the most interesting world cup player was the Brazillian Garrincha, the king of dribbling, who is often overshadowed by Pele but he won two world cups in 58 and 62 and in 62 Pele was injured and he won it on his own. 

 

Sorry this has nothing to do with the title of the thread but he might figure in one of them.

 

yeah im one of i guess many who had never heard of him before unlocking him on pro evo and seeing that he had crazy stats

 

theres a good documentary about him but i cant remember what its called, i can remember the scenes at his funeral with thousands lining the road, might be this one, if its not then i might watch this one tonight anyway...

 

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