The World Cup industry is a multi-billion dollar operation that continues to grow. After its founding in 1928 by Jules Rimet, its first venture was to Uruguay in 1930 where the cream of South America took on the European B-teams and thrashed them. In Italy in 1934 it was the same scenario in reverse as Uruguay, the world champions, declined to travel and, again, the host nation won.
By 1974, when Joao Havelange took charge of FIFA, the top teams of Europe and South America were slugging it out. In contrast to baseball, where the authorities killed the competition by looking inward, Havelange forced open the doors to the players and teams of Africa and Asia and made football the global game it is today. In Rome it was merely bread and circuses, though today those living in poverty are more likely to get the match than the meal.
In this book Jon Spurling reveals the ugly face of the beautiful game: a catalogue of cheating and graft, collusion and cowardice by governments, teams and players. Mussolini fixed the referees to ensure Italy won in 1934, while Brazil’s dictator General Medici did the same in 1970, as did his Argentinian counterpart General Videla eight years later. For some dictators, the option was to try to fix the teams. The Haiti and Zaire teams of 1974 were afraid for their lives as Jean-Claude Duvalier and President Mobotu made it clear that they were watching very closely. Zaire’s players were told if they lost by more than three goals to Brazil they would never see their families again, which explains and lends darkness to Mwepu Ilunga’s apparently comic?kick downfield to waste time, delaying Rivellino’s?free kick.
There have been some brutal political head to head encounters. In 1974, East Germany beat West Germany 1-0. In 1998, Iran beat the US by the same score, while the qualifying matches for 1970 between El Salvador and Honduras triggered a full scale war between the two countries, killing 6,000, as land reform and illegal immigration became tied up with success on the football field. El Salvador, incidentally, won 3-2. Austria laid down to let Germany beat them 1-0, eliminating Algeria in 1982. No one can say the Chinese don’t have a sense of humour, pairing the USA and North Korea in the 2007 Women’s World Cup on 9/11. The result? A 2-2 draw. England do not come out of the book unscathed, either: a match in 1966 against Argentina was marred by racism red in tooth and claw: Alf Ramsey described the Argentinians as “animals”, though in fact England committed more fouls.
Only two players come out of Death or Glory well. The first is Matthias Sindelar, an Austrian striker, who protested the sacking of Jews working for his club Austria Vienna and refused to play for Hitler’s German team after the anschluss. He died in mysterious circumstances a year later.
The second was German defender Paul Breitner, the only footballer to refuse to play in Argentina in 1978 in the middle of the Dirty War in which the regime arrested, tortured and killed thousands of its opponents. He returned to the German team to score in the 1982 World Cup final against Italy, having scored eight years earlier against the Netherlands. Breitner remains one of only three players who have scored in two World Cup finals.
