If Coaches Can’t Be Straight Shooters, Maybe Players Can in Soccer Final
Even the winners made excuses after the first round of the Marlboro Cup soccer tournament Thursday night at the Coliseum.
Juventus Coach Dino Zoff, whose 22-time Italian League champions beat the United States, 2-0, said that his team needs considerable work on its conditioning before it is ready to open the regular season two weeks from today. Mexico’s interim coach, Mario Velarde, whose team beat South Korea, 4-2, said that his players have not been together long enough to play as a unit.
Their comments are hardly designed to inspire enthusiasm for tonight’s championship game at the Coliseum at 6. (The United States meets South Korea for third place at 4 p.m.). But since neither Zoff nor Velarde is a novice in international soccer, it could be that each is trying to lull the other.
It should be noted that Velarde made similar comments Wednesday, 24 hours before he unleashed his secret weapon, forward Ricardo Pelaez, who scored all four of Mexico’s goals.
“I don’t know him,” Zoff said Friday. “But he doesn’t need any introduction by me.”
Hardly anyone outside Mexico knew Pelaez before Thursday night. Although he is 25, he was playing in his first international game. Velarde explained that Pelaez, who plays for Necaxa in Mexico’s professional league, comes from a family in Mexico that insisted he complete his education before beginning a soccer career.
Velarde said that he was not particularly impressed with his team’s victory in the first round, saying that the South Koreans had contributed greatly to their own defeat.
When the subject turned to excuses, the South Koreans should have been first in line. But they were not represented in a news conference Friday at Torrance because, a tournament official explained, they had “lost face” the previous night in their loss.
In reality, their biggest problem in recent days has been lost sleep.
Since receiving a cordial welcome at Seoul last year for the Summer Olympics, the Soviets have been encouraging more sports contacts between themselves and the South Koreans. The South Korean national soccer team found a break in its schedule week before last, flew to Moscow, took an 11-hour train ride to the Ukraine for a game Aug. 3, returned on the same train to Moscow for another game Aug. 7 and then went to the airport for a 20-hour trip to Los Angeles, via London.
“Our match against Mexico was horrible,” South Korea’s team leader, Huh P. Sung, said. “But I understand, because my boys couldn’t eat and couldn’t sleep before the game.”
Huh said he realized that his team’s play was a disappointment for Los Angeles’ large Korean community, which was expecting to see the Asian power at its best. In six qualifying games for next year’s World Cup in Italy, South Korea is undefeated.
“I’ve been getting many calls from Koreans in Los Angeles,” Huh said. “Somebody told me, ‘If you lose, don’t come back here again.’ I understand that our result was horrible for them because they wanted to beat the Mexicans. Their pride was hurt when we lost.”
Huh said his team would like to compensate them with a victory over the United States. But he was not overconfident. For one thing, he said, he fears his team will still be sapped by its travels, despite a couple of days off. For another, he said, the United States is no longer a pushover. That was evident to the South Koreans last year, when the Americans played them to a scoreless tie in an Olympic game at Taegu, South Korea.
“Two or three years ago, we thought we could beat the Americans too easily,” Huh said. “But now, I don’t know whether we can beat them easily.”
