villa4europe Posted April 20, 2014 Share Posted April 20, 2014 and then he did vs leicester on the other side, and neither of them beat his newcastle goal... still my favourite premier league non villa player Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wainy316 Posted April 23, 2014 Share Posted April 23, 2014 Was looking forward to this one, developed an interest in the Austrian Wunderteam after reading 'Inverting the Pyramid'. Former (or future in this time frame) Villa man Jimmy Hogan was inispirational in their rise. Matthias Sindelar will always be a true legend of the game. World Cup: 25 stunning moments … No11: Austria's Wunderteam go close In 1934 a revolutionary Austrian side reached the World Cup semi-finals on the back of a storming run. History beckoned. And then turned its back Share78 inShare1 Email Matthias Sindelar, the Austrian centre-forward, during training at Highbury prior to their match against England in 1932. Photograph: Popperfoto/Getty Images On the morning of 23 January 1939 Gustav Hartmann burst through the door of a Vienna apartment in search of an old friend. He found him, lying naked alongside his unconscious lover. Matthias Sindelar, Der Papierene, the greatest footballer in Austrian history, shining star of theWunderteam, the forward fulcrum around whom a ground-breaking new style of play wowed Europe in the early 1930s, was dead. He was 36. The most prosaic explanation is the most likely – carbon monoxide poisoning due to a blocked chimney flue was the cause of death recorded on the police report both for Sindelar and, a few hours later, his partner Camilla Castagnola. But conspiracy theories still abound. The Gestapo had a file on him and had kept his cafe under surveillance. He had celebrated rather too wildly in front of a batch of furious Nazi top brass after scoring against Germany in a game to celebrate the Anschluss (a fixture that was "supposed" to end in a draw) then refused to play for the unified team. Was it murder? A state killing? Suicide? No one will ever truly know for certain, but Castagnola's neighbours had complained about the chimney problems earlier in the month. Sindelar's passing serves as a tragic epilogue to the golden days of Austrian football, one that begins with old English gents and Scottish tourists and ends with Nazis, conspiracy, misery and death. In between there came something magical: the Wunderteam, pioneers of the flexible, passing style that inspired Hungary in the 1950s and was taken to its apotheosis by Holland in the 1970s and Spain in the past six years. They were, at their peak, probably the best in the world. But as far as the 1934World Cup was concerned that peak came just too soon. Even if they weren't quite at the heights they reached in 1932, they still stormed into the semi-finals on the back of a breathtaking run that had seen themscore 101 goals in 31 games over three years. Only Italy, who had been dispatched 4-2 in a Gero Cup match prior to the tournament, stood between them and a place in the final. History beckoned. And then cruelly turned its back. The story of football in Austria goes back to the late 19th century and the European expansion of British trade. As Willy Meisl, whose brother Hugo was the managerial mastermind behind the Wunderteam, points out in his seminal Soccer Revolution, the Austrian public took to the game with gusto and five years after the first match between two Vienna sides in 1894, the first British touring team turned up at the Westbahnhof. It didn't go particularly well for the hosts – Oxford University beat a combined Vienna XI 15-0 on Easter Sunday 1899. Another game on Easter Monday finished 13-0. A year later the first professional side visited – Southampton again took on a combined team, this time winning only 6-0. But the key visit came in 1905. Rangers hammered teams just as the Saints and the students had done a few years before, but they did it in such style that Austrian football would be moulded in their image over the next three decades (in turn Rangers were so impressed with the young goalkeeper Karl Pekarna that they gave him a contract and took him back to Glasgow). Pass and move became the Austrian groove. In 1926 the 23-year-old Sindelar, darling of the intelligentsia, made his debut for the national side under Hugo Meisl, who had taken control of the team in 1919. The centre-forward was the embodiment of the Austrian style – the triumph of mind over muscle, the pen that was mightier than the sword. The bohemian bourgeoise had taken the game to their hearts in Vienna and in Der Papierene, the Paper Man, they saw a player whose artistry matched their own. And Paper Man is no exaggeration. Footage of Sindelar is limited to a few seconds of scratchy black and white newsreel, but there is no mistaking his startlingly slight, almost gaunt, frame. As builds go he brings no one to mind more than C Montgomery Burns in an era where centre-forwards were supposed to be Rainier Wolfcastles. Sindelar scored on his debut, a 2-1 win over the Czechs in Prague, bagged two more in a 7-1 demolition of Switzerland, and then a fourth in three games against Sweden. But Meisl then hesitated to go on breaking the mould, and turned back to the more traditional centre-forward strengths of Josef Uridil. Sindelar was The Paper Man, Uridil was The Tank. Sindelar was restricted to a bit-part role for the rest of the 20s. He played in the 2-0 win over Switzerland in October 1928, had to wait nearly 18 months for his next taste of action in Prague in a 2-2 draw with Czechoslovakia and then spent a year watching from the stands as the national side stuttered over the course of seven matches, only two of which they won. After that set of indifferent results, Meisl could ignore the clamour for his inclusion no longer and Sindelar was thrown back into the fray when Scotland visited Vienna in May 1931. Der Papierene scored his first international goal since 1926, Scotland were hammered 5-0 and theWunderteam was born. Over the next two years Sindelar, playing as a kind of 1930s prototype false nine, would score 16 goals in 16 games as the Austrians battered allcomers. Germany were belted 6-0 in Berlin, then taken apart 5-0 in Austria. The Swiss were beaten 8-1 in Basle, the Italians 2-1 in Vienna, the Hungarians 8-2, the Swedes 4-3. "He was truly symbolical of Austrian soccer at its peak period: no brawn but any amount of brain," writes Willy Meisl of Sindelar. "Technique bordering on virtuosity, precision work and an inexhaustible repertoire of tricks and ideas. He had a boyish delight in soccer exploits, above all in unexpected twists and moves which were quickly understood and shared by his partners brought up on the same wavelength, but were baffling to an opposition only a fraction of a second slower." In December 1932, with the Wunderteam perhaps at their peak, they became the third overseas side to be invited to England. Previous visitors from the continent had gone home with their tails between their legs – Belgium had been beaten 6-1 in 1923 and 4-0 a year later, while Spain had lost 7-1 at Highbury in 1931. With his team slightly off-colour in the matches leading up to the game at Stamford Bridge Meisl invited his old friend Jimmy Hogan, an Englishman and proponent of the passing style who had long been coaching in central Europe and would later be credited as the inspiration behind Hungary's victory at Wembley in 1953, back into the coaching set-up having first introduced the Scotsman to Viennese football as far back as 1912. England raced into a 2-0 lead early on and though the visitors dominated after the break they could only pull the score back to 4-3. "It was in that first half-hour that Austria lost her chance of bringing off a sensation compared with which Hungary's victory at Wembley in 1953 would seem unimportant," Willy Meisl mourned. For the English the result was seen as a triumph for physicality over finesse and an object lesson in the limitations of the passing game. They would have to wait another 21 years for their wake-up call and the Mighty Magyars. Austria got that setback out of their collective system four days later with a 6-1 win in Belgium and normal service was resumed, the cream of the continent left mesmerised by the revolutionary – in more ways than one – movement of Sindelar and co. Der Papierene was far from alone – Josef Smistik was hugely influential in the centre-half role in Meisl's 2-3-5. Josef Bican was only 21 at the time of the 1934 World Cup but would go on to be one of the greatest goalscorers of all time. Johann Horvath was a dervish at inside-left, Rudi Hiden one of the great pre-second world war goalkeepers. By the time the tournament rolled around the Wunderteam were indeed past their peak but not by much – their four matches prior to the tournament had been that 4-2 win over Italy in Turin, a 3-2 away win against Switzerland, a 5-2 win over Hungary and a 6-1 win over Bulgaria in a qualifier. They began the tournament – then in a straight knockout format – with an unconvincing 3-2 extra-time win over France. Then came the quarter-final tussle with the old enemy – Hungary. It was a full-blown battle in Bologna but Austria prevailed, with Horvath and Karl Zischek scoring in a 2-1 win. While Austria had grown increasingly cerebral in their football, Italy, under Vittorio Pozzo, had become more and more combative. "In Luisito Monti, a naturalised Argentinian who had played in the 1930 World Cup final, Pozzo found the perfect man for the [método] role – a hard, ruthless tackler who could also read the game and pass the ball," wrote Jonathan Wilson in 2012. "Pozzo was an early devotee of man-marking and there was a steeliness and nationalistic fervour about his sides that was not to all tastes, but their effectiveness is beyond doubt." Their own quarter-final with Spain was a slugfest to make the battle in Bologna look tame. Ricardo Zamora, the Spanish goalkeeper, was so battered and bruised that he was unable to play in the replay the following day, a replay that Italy won 1-0 thanks to Giuseppe Meazza's early goal. That set up a classic clash of styles – Pozzo's man-marking, bruising, steamroller versus Hugo Meisl's "Danubian waltz". The dark arts versus the passing purists. Athletes against aesthetes. Pozzo's athletes won out. On a San Siro pitch that was a bobbly bog patched with sand and with rain teaming down Italy took an early lead. Peter Platzer, in goal for the injured Rudi Hiden, collected a low cross, felt the full force of Meazza's challenge and Enrique Guaita poked home what would prove, with Sindelar marked out of the game by Monti, to be the only goal of the game. In the final Czechoslovakia, also proponents of the Meisl passing philosophy, took the lead with 19 minutes left but Raimundo Orsi equalised and Angelo Schiavio scored the winner for Italy in extra time. The triumph was not without controversy – the referee who had allowed Italy's goal to stand in the semi-final, Ivan Eklind of Sweden, was conveniently enough appointed once more for the final. Spain had complained vehemently about a foul in the buildup to the Italy goal in the quarter-final replay. The shadow of Benito Mussolini lies across the tournament. The Wunderteam's chance of World Cup glory had gone, they failed to rouse themselves for the third-place play-off, losing to Germany, and though they reached the final of the 1936 Olympic football tournament (where they again lost to Italy), the Anschluss meant there would be no Austrian team at the 1938 World Cup, although several members of the 1934 squad turned out for the German team. Sindelar was not among them. And less than five years after what could, maybe should, have been a crowning glory for Meisl and Austria'sWunderteam, Der Papierene was dead, leaving behind a legacy of football genius and a sense of mystery that had not dissipated when, six months after the events on the Annagasse in Vienna in January 1939, the Nazi regime ordered the public prosecutor to close the as yet unresolved investigation into Sindelar's death. "The good Sindelar followed the city, whose child and pride he was, to its death," wrote the writer Alfred Polgar, who was very much in the conspiracy camp. "He was so inextricably entwined with it that he had to die when it did. All the evidence points to suicide prompted by loyalty to his homeland. For to live and play football in the downtrodden, broken, tormented city meant deceiving Vienna with a repulsive spectre of itself. But how can one play football like that? And live, when a life without football is nothing?" Romanticism aside, Austria's Wunderteam deserve to be remembered – along with the Total Footballing Dutch, the Hungarians of 1954 and the Brazil teams of 1950 and 1982 – as one of the greatest sides never to lift the World Cup. The Wunderteam: May 1931 to June 1934 16 May 1931 Austria 5-0 Scotland 24 May 1931 Germany 0-6 Austria 16 June 1931 Austria 2-0 Switzerland 13 Sept 1931 Austria 5-0 Germany 4 Oct 1931 Hungary 2-2 Austria 29 Nov 1931 Switzerland 1-8 Austria 20 Mar 1932 Austria 2-1 Italy 24 April 1932 Austria 8-2 Hungary 22 May 1932 Czechoslovakia 1-1 Austria 17 July 1932 Sweden 3-4 Austria 2 Oct 1932 Hungary 2-3 Austria 23 Oct 1932 Austria 3-1 Switzerland 7 Dec 1932 England 4-3 Austria 11 Dec 1932 Belgium 1-6 Austria 12 Feb 1933 France 0-4 Austria 9 Apr 1933 Austria 1-2 Czechoslovakia 30 Apr 1933 Hungary 1-1 Austria 11 Jun 1933 Austria 4-1 Belgium 17 Sep 1933 Czechoslovakia 3-3 Austria 1 Oct 1933 Austria 2-2 Hungary 29 Nov 1933 Scotland 2-2 Austria 10 Dec 1933 Holland 0-1 Austria 11 Feb 1934 Italy 2-4 Austria 25 Mar 1934 Switzerland 2-3 Austria 15 Apr 1934 Austria 5-2 Hungary 25 Apr 1934 Austria 6-1 Bulgaria 27 May 1934 Austria 3-2 France 31 May 1934 Austria 2-1 Bologna 3 Jun 1934 Italy 1-0 Austria 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wainy316 Posted April 29, 2014 Share Posted April 29, 2014 Nice to read one that I don't really know anything about... World Cup: 25 stunning moments ... No12: Haiti stun Dino Zoff's Italy Italy should have seen off Haiti with ease in 1974 but the group game burst into life through the unheralded Emmanuel Sanon … Share21 inShare0 Email Luigi Riva, right, jumps over Arsène Auguste during Italy's group game match against Haiti in the 1974 World Cup. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images The win-or-bust, tension-ratcheting final rounds of the World Cup allow memorable moments and dramatic sub-plots to breed like bacteria on a soggy handkerchief. Italy v Haiti, however, was the opening game of Group Four, a match which the heavy favourites won by a two-goal margin. And yet it was a day when one man rose into legend and another crashed into infamy; an afternoon knitted with spectacular yarns and statistical curiosities and embellished with one of the sport's most controversial substitutions. We should start, though, with qualification, a process through which one side sailed with record-breaking ease, while the other relied on officiating so blatantly biased it would leave the Eurovision Song Contest with a frog in its throat. Haiti should really have qualified in 1970, when in a final two-legged play-off for Concacaf's single place they lost 2-1 at home to El Salvador and then won 3-0 away. Aggregate scores were puzzlingly out of favour at the time, meaning the teams were tied on one win apiece – and El Salvador,having helped to start a war while seeing off Honduras in the previous round, won a decisive third meeting on neutral territory. Four years later Concacaf's qualifying system had totally changed. Now the region's footballing powers played each other over three weeks in a single group, with just the winners progressing – and Haiti would host every game. The nation was governed at the time by the dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier and his ferocious militia, the Tonton Macoutes, who badly wanted their team to win and were willing to do all they could to guarantee it. The key game turned out to be between Haiti and Trinidad and Tobago, who had perhaps the best team in their history: the top scorer in qualifying, Steve David, was joined by the man widely seen as the mini-tournament's best player in Everald Cummings, and its finest goalkeeper, Kelvin Barclay. They were beaten 2-1, but only after Trinidad had four goals inexplicably disallowed and a couple of very decent penalty claims bizarrely snubbed. "It was as though we were in a trance", said David, later. "We felt we could score at will so we didn't argue, we just continued playing every time they disallowed one of our goals. We were so sure that we could not lose." Oliver Camps, a Trinidadian official, reported that "big men were crying like babies" after the game. "I don't know which match the referee and linesman were seeing but it certainly wasn't the one between Haiti and Trinidad and Tobago," he sniffed. The Soca Warriors waited to hear of their association's inevitable appeal against the result, but bizarrely it did not come. Somehow, something had convinced the general secretary of Trinidad and Tobago's FA – a certain Jack Warner – to turn a blind eye to the controversy, and though Mexico gamely protested, the result stood (the referee, however, did not – he and one of his linesmen were banned from the sport for life). Trinidad then did Haiti a favour by beating Mexico 4-0, which meant the hosts could lose their final match against the Mexicans and still win the tournament, with a wronged Trinidad and Tobago finishing two points behind in second place. If Haiti's progress to Germany was memorable for a surfeit of controversy and incident, Italy's is remembered for precisely the opposite reason. They sauntered through a straightforward group, also including Turkey, Switzerland and Luxembourg, without conceding a goal. Indeed from the 53rd minute of a friendly against Yugoslavia played in Turin in September 1972 until the World Cup nearly two years later – a total of 12 games – the Italy defence remained unbreached, with Brazil failing to find a way past them in a friendly and England frustrated twice. That wasn't Zoff's only record run over the period – he had also been part of a Juventus defence who went 903 minutes without conceding, and had come second to Johan Cruyff in the voting for the 1973 Ballon d'Or. Ahead of the finals, Zoff appeared on the cover of Newsweek, whose headline read simply: "The world's best." Italy's starting XI v Haiti. Top row, from left: Giorgio Chinaglia, Francesco Morini, Gianni Rivera, Luciano Spinosi, Dino Zoff, Luigi Riva. Bottom row, from left : Fabio Capello, Romeo Benetti, Tarcisio Burgnich, Giacinto Facchetti, Alessandro Mazzola. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images Pre-tournament coverage of Haiti concentrated more on unconventional local customs than sporting ability. "We voodoo very nicely!" read the Mirror's headline, as they reported that the team's matches would be shown on big screens in "the slum-lined streets of Port-au-Prince" and that "the country folk will postpone the weekly cock fights and come in by donkey". The Observer's Hugh McIlvanney witnessed the team – given fully six months to prepare for the tournament – in training. "The marking by defenders is so haphazard as to suggest a fundamental weakness. It is easy to imagine hefty scores being piled up against them in the World Cup. The Haitians do have impressive ball skills … but their coach is concerned about the lack of the physical drive usually found in Europe." One player, speaking on condition of anonymity, admitted that Haiti had "no chance" of reaching the second stage. "For us to take on the countries we are facing is like Haiti declaring war on the US. We have 11 good players. Poland, Italy and Argentina have maybe 4,000. It is all very well to say the game is played with 11 players but no one is fooled by such thoughts." That the opening match remained goalless until half-time was largely down to what the Observer described as "the supernatural brilliance" of Haiti's goalkeeper, Henry Francillon, as Italy piled forwards. But a minute after the break the midfielder Philippe Vorbe slid a pass into space and Emmanuel Sanon – who predicted that he would score because "the Italian defence is too slow for me" and turned out to be absolutely right –raced past Luciano Spinosi, drew the goalkeeper, dodged past him and slid the ball into an empty net. After 1,143 minutes, and having frustrated many of the greatest forwards in the sport, Zoff's record had been broken by an unheralded 22-year-old who earned $200 a month playing for Don Bosco of Pétionville. Emmanuel Sanon turns in celebration after skipping past Dino Zoff to give Haiti a surprise lead over Italy. Photograph: AP "Everybody was asking who would beat Dino Zoff," Sanon recalled. "The newspapers mentioned European and South American players but nobody thought a Haitian could do it. That upset me because I knew I could do it." After the game Zoff insisted he was happy to have conceded. "Such a record never bothered me," he said. "Why should it? I am doing my job, yes? But I hoped that somebody would score against me either in Vienna in our pre-cup international against Austria [a dismal goalless draw], or in our opening match here. Now, perhaps people will stop asking me how I feel about such a record, because it is no more." Haiti's advantage lasted for six minutes before Gianni Rivera equalised for Italy, who took the lead in the 66th minute when Romeo Benetti's shot deflected in off Arsène Auguste. Then Rivera released Giorgio Chinaglia, who took the ball past Francillon, glanced up and had to decide between two options: either he shot from what was now a very acute angle, or he squared for the unmarked Luigi Riva, who would have a tap-in. He shot, missed, and was promptly hauled off by Ferruccio Valcareggi. "At half-time he said he was going to take me off after a few minutes," Chinaglia later explained. "Then we scored two goals and we're winning 2-1 and the son of a bitch took me off. If I stayed on I would probably have scored two or three goals." On his way from the field Chinaglia dismissed his manager with a flick of the hand and headed straight down the tunnel to the dressing room, where he smashed eight bottles of mineral water and attacked a shower and a hairdryer. "My problem is I don't know how to be diplomatic," he admitted. "I can't help it. I'm an impulsive person who says what's on his mind and thinks about it afterwards." Many amateur lip-readers also deciphered what he told Valcareggi on his way past, and as a result the incident is known in Italy as Il Vaffanculo – the ****-off – or Le Chinagliate. "There are four players in this Italian squad that the rest of us call 'The Untouchables'," Chinaglia told the press that afternoon. "They are Fachetti, Mazzola, Rivera and Riva. When someone has to come off the field it is never one of them. Yet against Haiti, Rivera hardly touched the ball. He should have been taken off, not me." Italy's Fabio Capello (8) lies in a heap after a strong challenge from Haiti's Ernst Jean-Joseph (12). Photograph: AP After the game Chinaglia spent three hours walking alone around the grounds of Italy's hotel, and then retired to the bar for a drink. Most of his team-mates refused to talk to him, further adding to the sense of exclusion experienced by a player who had been born in Tuscany but raised in Wales. There were few people there he knew and trusted – despite winning the league that season, Lazio had only three players in the World Cup squad (also including Giuseppe Wilson, a defender who had been born in Darlington). "I felt betrayed and abandoned," he said. "Nobody understood the psychology of the emigrant, who idealises his country, the flag, the shirt, but who feels isolated and as a result reacts angrily to any sleight he feels he has suffered. I never thought of leaving the team, I just wanted to be alone with my disappointment and my anger." "Everyone knows what he did," said Valcareggi. "He did it, the television showed it. It wasn't a nice thing. If he wanted to tell me something he could have told me in the dressing room. That gesture he made to me is something you can't wipe out. He knows that, I know that. He didn't like being taken off and he won't forget it. I won't forget it either." With one gesture the thin veneer of Italy squad unity crumbled, and they were lucky to draw 1-1 with Argentina in their next game, before losing 2-1 to Poland in their third, which ended with Enrico Albertosi, the substitute goalkeeper, fighting with a fan. Eliminated in the group stage, they told the press they were to fly in to Milan the following day and at the last minute diverted to Rome, a cunning ruse intended to avoid a repeat of the vicious egg-and-tomato welcome endured by the Italy side eliminated by North Korea in 1966. Even then, they found so many unhappy Italians in Rome that 300 policemen were needed to keep them at bay. "Those allowed on to the terrace of the main airport building were searched for blunt objects and tomatoes," we reported. "None of the spectators got close enough to throw anything and they had to be content with shouting 'buffoons, buffoons!' and nastier expletives." Chinaglia was booed at every game the following season, and in 1976 left the country to see out his career in America. Haiti's World Cup started to go downhill as soon as the match ended, when two players – Sanon and the defender Ernst Jean-Joseph – were summoned for routine drug tests. Sanon passed, but Jean-Joseph tested positive for phenmetrazine, a banned stimulant. "I have asthma and my doctor in Port-au-Prince gave me a lot of pills to take," he insisted. "I had no idea that anything was illegal. Our team doctor didn't warn me about anything." It was a decent excuse and it looked for a while like he might escape censure – until the team doctor informed the media that Jean-Joseph hadn't told him of the medication, or even of the asthma. "What he told journalists about a case of asthma involves an entirely imaginary ailment," said the 27-year-old physician, Patrick Hugeux. "We don't know exactly what dose was taken but it is certain the amount he took was sufficient to have a doping effect. It had nothing to do with a pretended case of asthma but was taken precisely for the match … the boy was not of a sufficient intellectual level to realise what he did or what he said." As it happened, the vice-president of the Haitian FA, major Acedius St Louis, was also the commander of the Leopards, a notorious elite battalion of the Haitian army under Duvalier's personal command. Jean-Joseph was forcibly and publicly taken from the team hotel, beaten up by St Louis and flown back to Haiti, his fate uncertain. Until 1974, the only Haitian to have excelled at a World Cup was Joe Gaetjens, who was picked by the United States in 1950 and scored the winning goal in their infamous 1-0 first-round victory over England. In 1964, because his exiled brothers Jean and Freddie had been attempting to overthrow the Haitian regime, he was arrested and murdered by the Tonton Macoutes, then working at the behest of François 'Papa Doc' Duvalier. His body has never been found. This is history that every member of that Haitian team would have known. They feared the younger Duvalier would react badly to the perceived disgrace of a team whose success, owing in no small part to his personal largesse, had previously been a source of great pride. "He made it clear that it was his team, and his money which got us to where we were," said Sanon. "He'd show up to training, and regularly phoned me and several of the other players to check that we were OK. Some of the guys felt it was dangerous to have Jean-Claude too close to the team. Although he was young, he was like an old-fashioned father, who gave us life, but could also punish us if he wished." "I remember the look of venom in one official who'd always been all smiles previously," the defender Fritz Plantin told John Spurling in his book Death or Glory, of the moment Jean-Joseph was taken from the team. "As successful footballers, we'd been protected from that side of the regime but now we saw the dark side. We had a sleepless night before the game against Poland, and to be honest, I was only thinking about Ernst, not the game." They lost 7-0, and then – Jean-Joseph having telephoned to reassure his team-mates that he was not dead – 3-1 to Argentina in their final match, Sanon again on the scoresheet. Fans arrive to pay their respects at Emmanuel Sanon's funeral ceremony at the Sylvio Cator Stadium in Port-au-Prince in 2008. Photograph: Ariana Cubillos/AP Though neither side ended the tournament basking in glory, Haiti had at least been touched by it. Sanon's goal remains legendary and when he died of pancreatic cancer in 2008, aged 56, his funeral was held at the Sylvio Cator Stadium, where the team had secured their World Cup place 35 years earlier. The ceremony was attended by 20,000 and televised nationwide. "For us Haitians it is still the best result we have ever achieved," Vorbe said. "We matched the Italians for a while, and more than that, we managed to make a fool out of Zoff." What The Guardian said: Hugh McIlvanney, 16 June 1974 The Footballers of Haiti, who came from the Caribbean for this World Cup knowing that at best they would be patronised, at worst dismissed as imposters, gave the competition one of its genuinely electric moments here tonight when they took the lead against Italy – by beating Dino Zoff, a goalkeeper who had not conceded a goal in an international match since September 1972. Emmanuel Sanon, a powerfully built and spiritedly aggressive black forward from Port-au-Prince, did what some of the greatest players in the world had failed to do in Zoff's 12 previous games for Italy. Sanon thus goes straight into the folklore of his country along with Francillon, a goalkeeper of supernatural brilliance on the night, and Vorbe, the one white man in the Haitian team and the source of the magnificent pass that made Sanon's goal and of much else that was excellent. Italy moved Facchetti inside to smother the dangerous Sanon, tired out Vorbe and his helpers and finally broke down Francillon's resistance. So Haiti lost clearly enough in the end but anyone who calls them imposters from now had better have the decency to blush. There is nothing like an inspired goalkeeper for winning the affections of a neutral crowd and Francillon, dark, handsome and theatrically defiant, had turned the German spectators into fervent supporters of Haiti long before the first half was over. Even the Italians, who had started to assemble with their red-white-and-green flags and their horns before breakfast, intent on spending the whole sunless day in delicious anticipation of a slaughter, were reduced to a muted buzz of respect as Francillon reached shot after shot, header after header. Sometimes he hurled himself about his goal with an almost frenzied agility, happy to make violent contact with the ball and beat it coarsely away from his line. In other moments, and more frequently as his confidence was fed by his own successes, he leapt gracefully to make solid, clutching saves. Mazzola and Riva and Chinaglia shook their heads and trhew their arms wide in exasperation as the minutes oozed away and Haiti refused to surrender. The Italians had begun, naturally enough, in a mood of leisurely assurance, with Capello, Benetti and Mazzola building from the deep, and the designated front men, Riva and Chinaglia, regularly supported for once by Mazzola and the overlapping Facchetti. They were soon contriving openings without too much difficulty, and even after the first few of Francillon's interventions –a brave, lunging save from Mazzola's volley, a straining deflection of Facchetti's shot, the dramatic blocking of another from Chinaglia – we were still obliged to believe that the deluge was imminent. Francillon felt under no such obligation, and as his small miracles accumulated, optimism spread through his defenders, and they, too, began to challenge the Italians as equals. For several this meant playing above their natural standards, but that was not the case with Nazaire, a tall, mobile centre-back who plays his club football in France and has the quality to make problems for any forwards. His was the disciplining presence that made an effective barricade out of the mass of red shirts that swirled eagerly in front of Francillon. But still the goalkeeper had to deal in the extraordinary to keep his charge intact. A powerful 20-yard shot from Mazzola was held with insulting ease, and other attempts by the Italians gave him no more obvious alarm. By now his own players were brash enough to take the fight to Zoff. Presumably they had not heard of his dozen matches without the loss of a goal, for now and then they tried to beat him from a range that would have taxed a .303 rifle. Maybe they had seen the frayed edge of his invincibility. Certainly their hopes of beating him were raised shortly before the interval when a strong right-foot drive from Vorbe forced the great man to spring sideways to thrust the ball for a corner. Vorbe did infinitely better almost as soon as the second half was under way when he struck a beautifully judged pass to Sanon, and before the Italians could rectify the disorder in their defence, that muscular and driving black forward was free. Efforts by Burgnich to slow him down manually had no effect, and he swerved to his left and wide of Zoff before carefully placing the ball in the net to register the first defeat that goalkeeper has suffered in a thousand minutes of football. The scenes that followed were understandably wild, both in the crowd – where the Germans accepted the small Haitian celebrations as a fuse for their own explosion of pleasure – and on the field, where the players from the Caribbean did everything but hold a party on the spot. Francillon, who had resisted congratulations as he went to the dressing-room at half-time, now danced towards the centre circle like a man in a trance. Sadly, he was awoken from his dream within five minutes when Mazzola centred firmly from the right, and the ball went beyond Chinaglia, and three groping defenders to reach Rivera. His shot on the half-turn was simple and hard and too far wide of the goelkeeper's right shoulder to brook interference. If Italy assumed that their worries were about to dissolve, and a great header by Riva and an equally menacing shot from Rivera justified the thought, the marvellously aggressive Sanon brought them back to frightening reality again when he worked a space for Jean-Claude Desir and the resulting shot brought a save of the highest class from Zoff. When Haiti did go behind it was to a sickeningly untidy goal. Benetti's shot from 20 yards was a fine one, but the remarkable Francillon was favourite to stop it until a deflection off Auguste paralysed him with its suddenness. Anastasi was substituted for Chinaglia with slightly more than 20 minutes left, and Chinaglia's objections to the change were invalidated when Anastasi scored 10 minutes after his arrival. The Haitian defenders were weary by then, and could offer no worthwhile resistance as the ball was moved patiently across the face of their penalty area. Ultimately it travelled to Riva on the left, and his flick to Anastasi was the gesture of a man loading a gun. Anastasi, despite an uncomfortable angle to the near post, fired efficiently and Haiti's cause was irretrievably lost. But all of them will carry bright and enduring memories of this exciting night in Munich. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zatman Posted April 30, 2014 Author Share Posted April 30, 2014 id like to see these 4 disallowed goals that Trinidad and Tobago had. also good to see Warner was a creep back then even against his own country Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zatman Posted May 1, 2014 Author Share Posted May 1, 2014 He came. He saw. He went home." So ran the tag-line of the Irish box office smash hit comedy I, Keano, an epic musical melodrama about a Roman legion preparing for war. It was inspired by a real-life melodrama of even more epic proportions: arguably the most fractious falling-out in the history of Irish sport, a gripping and often amusing controversy prompted by Roy Keane's contentious departure from the Republic of Ireland World Cup squad in 2002. The captain's headline-grabbing exit from the squad briefly transformed the tiny western Pacific island of Saipan into the most famous places on Earth. It made a cute and goofy Labrador puppy named Triggs into a household name. It was the source of more pompous pontification in the bars of the British Isles than any number of budgets, general elections and scandals. It practically sundered a nation, driving it to the brink of something approaching civil war and prompted the Taoiseach (prime minister) of the day to offer his services as a mediator. It became the subject of more hand-wringing sanctimony and general tomfoolery than almost any incident before or since in modern Irish life. It was all about standards. Roy's standards. Depending on your point of view they were either too high or not high enough. Was Roy the perfectionist who wanted the best for his country or the traitor who abandoned it? In Ireland, 12 years on, the jury remains out. Roy Keane was the only subject that mattered in Ireland in the summer of 2002. Photograph: Haydn West/PA Everybody and nobody seems to know exactly what happened. The definitive version remains unconfirmed and even now, those who were privy to events as they unravelled remain understandably reluctant to talk about them in too much depth. Keane's detractors claim he walked. His supporters insist he was sent home. The truth seems to lie somewhere in between: he made his position untenable and forced his manager's hand. This much we know: Ireland's captain, then a 30-year-old volatile driving force who had almost single-handedly dragged his country through qualification for Japan and South Korea 2002 out of a group containing Portugal and Holland, decided to leave the camp out of frustration at poor preparation but then changed his mind. However, a newspaper interview he'd given to the Irish Times rolled off the presses like a grenade and exploded, prompting the famous showdown at which Keane embarked on a character assassination of his manager, Mick McCarthy, that was so brutal, the object of his scorn felt compelled to say he could no longer work with his captain. In a chat with me for the Irish magazine Hot Press a few months after the event, the former Republic of Ireland international Niall Quinn insisted that "Roy walked out". Later in the same interview he stressed that Keane had walked out "twice in three days". He could not have been more clear: "You must remember that," he said. "We're not talking about a happy bunny here, who suddenly said the wrong things for a few seconds. I think it built up and up in him. While the rest of us were prepared to get on with things, knowing how ramshackle things are, he allowed it to get in the way of his World Cup." Roy Keane speaks to reporters before leaving Saipan on a flight home. Photograph: Kieran Doherty / Reuters/Reuters Keane tells it differently, stating in his autobiography that having originally become so exasperated by a rock-hard training pitch, the FAI's failure to get their squad's training kit to Saipan and a row about five-a-side goalkeeping arrangements, he decided to throw his hat at the whole jamboree and go home. A short time later, having been given time to cool down and review his position, he subsequently changed his mind only to be, in his opinion, ambushed at a team meeting called by McCarthy, who accused him of having faked an injury to avoid having to play the second leg of Ireland's successful qualifying play-off against Iran. That, according to Keane, was the straw that broke the camel's back and the cue for his outburst, which Quinn described as "the most surgical slaughtering anyone has ever got". "You're a **** rocket polisher. I didn't rate you as a player, I don't rate you as a manager and I don't rate you as a person. You're a **** rocket polisher and you can stick your World Cup up your arse. I've got no respect for you. The only reason I have any dealings with you is that somehow you are the manager of my country! You can stick it up your bollocks." Roy Keane keeps busy by walking his dog Triggs. Photograph: Reuters "Humiliation in front of the whole party was the result he was seeking," wrote Keane of McCarthy in his autobiography, stating that the meeting had been a set-up. Not too long after that, Keane received a phone call from his representative, the Irish solicitor Michael Kennedy. "You've been kicked out," he was told. At 6pm the next day, with the rest of the Republic of Ireland squad en route to Japan, Keane was on the next plane home. How had it come to this? Since his days as a youth footballer making a name for himself in Cork, Keane had never had much time for the FAI, an organisation that favoured players from Dublin clubs to those from elsewhere in the country. Upon becoming a senior international, he was increasingly perplexed by its amateurish approach to match preparation and was not alone, as a cursory flick through the autobiographies of any Republic of Ireland international who played through the Jack Charlton and Mick McCarthy eras will prove. Things began to go pear-shaped at the airport on the way to Saipan. Already annoyed that he had been criticised in some newspapers for missing Quinn's famously generous fundraising testimonial in Sunderland in favour of remaining in Manchester for treatment on a number of injuries that were threatening to rule him out of the World Cup, Keane was in understandably grumpy mood at Dublin airport and immediately buttonholed a couple of the journalists who had portrayed his non-attendance as a "snub". The journey to Saipan had started badly and went quickly downhill. "The trip is a shambles from the beginning," recalls Keane in his book. "Dublin airport is packed, you can't move. We hump a month's luggage through the main concourse. Check ourselves in. We're travelling KLM, going the scenic route, via Amsterdam and Tokyo. Fans, journalists, players, officials all mingle together. The package tour image comes to mind again. Amid the chaos, the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, arrives to give us a send-off." With Keane already seething, it was left to Hollywood actor Will Smith to make things worse. On the flight to Tokyo, Ireland's captain killed time watching Smith's portrayal of Muhammad Ali and was transfixed by the scene in which the boxer resists the urgings of his family, friends and advisers to accept the draft for the Vietnam war. "They're all urging him to give in," recalls Keane. "Take the draft. You won't have to fight. Just go through the motions, play the game, screw the things you believe in. Ali resists them all. I'm doing what I think is right. It matters. You don't compromise on your principles. Watching this is very moving. I hadn't known this about Ali. Something in this scene strikes a chord with me. Don't put up with shit. I'm not fighting a white man's war. It's an inspiring notion, a demonstration of conviction that I understand very clearly and I relate to my own life. Don't compromise the things you believe in." Nice one, Will. Emboldened by what he had seen on his flight to Tokyo, Keane was unimpressed when Ireland's squad eventually arrived in Saipan for what was ostensibly a week of pre-World Cup relaxation with some light training, only to discover their hampers of training kit, footballs and medical supplies had not arrived on the island. It was his nightmare scenario: Ireland preparing for a tournament in what he described as "happy-camper mode with no real ambition, settling for second best". Visiting McCarthy in his hotel room, he voiced his disquiet and told his manager the team's gear should have arrived the previous week. The following morning, Monday, Ireland's players arrived at their training ground for a run to discover the surface was too hard. "We could have watered it," Fifa's liaison officer told Keane. "If anyone had told us you were coming down." Fail to prepare, prepare to fail. Things went from bad to worse. The missing equipment arrived that night and the following day the squad had a full training session on a pitch that was still too hard, apart from one section, which had been flooded by those responsible for watering the pitch. When the training session finished with a game, Keane was outraged to discover the squad's goalkeepers were unwilling to play on the grounds that they were too tired, having begun training half an hour before everyone else. In front of a couple of journalists, he got in a heated argument with the reserve goalkeeper Alan Kelly, one of the players in the squad he rubbed along with better than most. With Lee Carsley and Steve Finnan having picked up injuries on the training pitch, Keane decided he'd had enough of Ireland's "third world approach to the game" and upon returning to the team hotel, he took McCarthy to one side and announced he wanted to go home. The way Keane tells it, he subsequently apologised to Kelly for the row they'd had, went for a walk and was persuaded to stay on by team physio, concierge and agony uncle Mick Byrne. Upon being informed of the U-turn, McCarthy told Keane he'd already asked the Celtic midfielder Colin Healy to come out as his replacement. Feeling bad for Healy, Keane left it up to McCarthy to decide what should happen next. "I was indecisive," recalls Keane. "I desperately wanted to play. Yet I couldn't stand the ****-ups. There is no hero here." The indecision continued: Keane told Byrne he was definitely going, secretly hoping he'd be invited to stay. With the news of his imminent departure breaking in Ireland, he spoke on the phone to his adviser Kennedy, then Alex Ferguson. His Manchester United manager told him he had earned the right to change his mind and remain in Saipan. With mere minutes to go before the Republic of Ireland were due to fax their World Cup squad to Fifa, Keane decided to stay and a potential crisis appeared to have been nipped in the bud. Determined to keep his head down and his mouth shut until the squad moved to their proper training camp on the mainland, Keane did exactly that … apart from honouring promises to give a couple of interviews to favoured journalists, one of which appeared in the Irish Times the day before the Irish squad were due to leave the island.. What could possibly go wrong? "It expressed exactly what I felt," said Keane of the interview in his book. "I believed the people at home had a right to know the truth. The Irish fans are celebrated for the support they give the team. Thousands of them were flying out on expensive packages to support us in the World Cup. My own brothers and cousin were coming. It was the trip of a lifetime for them. Millions more would be watching the matches at home, as I'd done in 1998 and 1990. Were the people to be treated like mugs? They spent their hard-earned money, paid our wages and then we insult them with PR crap about all they've done for us. Maybe we should do something for them to repay the debt we owed them. Like get our act together. And tell them the score now and then." The end was nigh. The interview caused a sensation in both Ireland and Saipan, prompting the team meeting which resulted in Keane's exile from the squad. At a hastily convened press conference, McCarthy confirmed the news of Keane's departure flanked by his new captain Steve Staunton, along with Kelly and Quinn in a show of solidarity. Upstairs in his room, Keane bade farewell to a procession of largely sympathetic team-mates at the door of his hotel room. His World Cup jig was very much up. Months later, Quinn expressed his regret at the manner in which events had unfolded. "When Roy exploded like he did, we needed to have a 24-hour cooling off period," he told me. "Looking back, I think the events of history would have been a lot different if we had done that. Roy walked out, Mick called a press conference and it seems like minutes later myself, Stan and Alan Kelly are in there with Stan [steve Staunton] as the new captain. Obviously, at the time we were shocked by what Roy had done, but Mick had asked us to stick up for him because he knew there'd be a hostile reception waiting for him. We knew we were putting ourselves in a dreadful position but we walked in with no other choice at the time. There was no way Roy was going to walk in and apologise a minute later, it was too intense for that. But at the same time, we might have prepared ourselves and structured ourselves for what was going to happen a little bit better. After that, I could give you a list of 20 other mistakes we made, all horrendous stuff. I'm almost apologetic for the mistakes we made. I'm certainly apologetic for the mistakes I made." Appearing at the press conference alongside McCarthy, Kelly and Staunton appears to have been Quinn's biggest mistake, as Keane saw it as an outright act of betrayal. Wounded at having been accused of disloyalty by McCarthy for feigning injury, he was outraged that none of his team-mates, particularly the more senior ones for whom Japan and South Korea represented a last international hurrah, had not spoken out on his behalf when McCarthy rounded on him. Having made his own travel arrangements with help from staff at Manchester United, he went home to a house under siege from reporters. Several daily dog-walks with Triggs around Cheshire later, with Ireland's World Cup opener against Cameroon looming, he granted an interview to RTE news reporter Tommie Gorman, who spoke of Keane's role model status, all but berated him for his use of industrial language at a private team meeting attended by grown men, pleaded with him to think of Ireland's children and urged him to reconsider his position. With the Irish football press pack listening in from Japan, courtesy of one of their relatives holding a phone up against a television in Dublin, the entire fiasco had officially entered the realms of high farce. "If for one second I thought 'Maybe Roy, you were a little bit out of order, maybe there's a way back', I'd be back on that flight," said Keane to Gorman. "No doubts in my mind about that. But I went to my room and we had three players in a press conference within 20 minutes or half an hour of [the team meeting] saying they were behind Mick. People look at them as role models; they're cowards. If I went back I couldn't give 100% for my country. When they had their chance to speak up they didn't." Clearly bemused by a decidedly melodramatic interrogatory style in which Gorman pointed out that people in Ireland would be "absolutely haunted" by his departure from the squad, Keane was typically blunt. "That'll pass," he said. "People will get on with their lives. It's a football tournament." He was spot on. It did pass and most people did get on with their lives, but at the time in Ireland, such steely-eyed pragmatism went strangely unappreciated. not a famous incident. FWIW everybody involved was to blame for it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corcaigh Posted May 1, 2014 Share Posted May 1, 2014 Still convinced Ireland would have made it to at least the 2002 WC Semi Final if Keano had stayed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zatman Posted May 2, 2014 Author Share Posted May 2, 2014 we should have beat ten man Spain in extra time and was shocking McCarthy didn't know they were down to ten until after the game Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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