ANALYSIS : WORLD CUP ’90 : It Only Finished Third, but Style Helped Italy Emerge as True Winner
“Unification and the World Cup in one year is more than they deserve and more than we can stand,” an eminent Pole said to us the other day in Warsaw.
His rueful comments about the greatly talented young men of the West German soccer team spoke volumes about the problems of contemporary Germany and its place in Europe. As the German players prepared to go to the final with resurgent Argentina here tonight for the 1990 World Cup, they carried with them the shadow of a history not of their own making.
It is only stating the obvious to say that the West Germans were not the other Europeans’ sentimental favorites in the World Cup semifinals. That place belonged to the skillful, elegant Italians, who lost so poignantly to Argentina on penalty kicks on a sultry night in Naples.
Yet soccer fans on this soccer-crazed continent were quick to speak with solid admiration and respect for the consummately professional West German team and its superb coach, Franz Beckenbauer. The Germans nearly found their match in the semifinal game against a resolute, hard-driving England, which they beat also on penalty kicks in Turin.
After a spotty and in some respects dullish tournament, the two semifinals and the thrilling quarterfinal in which England beat Cameroon, 3-2, presented soccer as exciting as you could wish for.
One said goodby to the Cameroonians in the quarterfinal against England with the same regret one has since 1970 said goodby to the Brazilians, who this year tried to imitate the European style of play, but didn’t even make it into the quarterfinals. Amazingly technically proficient, enchanting Cameroon brought to this World Cup the kind of magic the Brazilians once did.
“Thank God it’s England,” a German soccer official told a friend of ours when he learned West Germany was to face England, not Cameroon, in the semifinals. “We can prepare for England. We would have had no way of knowing what the Cameroonians would have done next.” You had the impression that the Cameroonians themselves didn’t know what they would do next.
Any two of the four semifinalists could be in the final tonight. It is due to luck and the rules of the World Cup that West Germany and Argentina are, and Italy and England are not.
The West German team played the most offensive-minded game possible under the tactical concepts of European soccer. It tried to begin each game by harrying its opponents in the opponents’ half of the field, and they kept it up relentlessly. In so doing, they scored more goals through the quarterfinals than any other team. But in the semifinals, the English denied them this advantage.
The German team cannot escape the added pressure that history puts upon them.
“Just you watch,” a Dutch politician told us before the second round. “The Dutch will play their hardest against the Germans.”
And, indeed, they did, losing in Milan to the West Germans, 2-1, in one of the toughest and best games of the tournament.
The Italians watching the game that evening on large screens set up outdoors in the Villa Borghese, the park in central Rome, cheered the Dutch and whistled derisively at the West Germans.
“True, the Germans are the biggest threat to us in the World Cup,” said an Italian in the agricultural equipment business from Salerno. “But it’s not just that. They are Germans.”
You have to feel sympathy for the West Germans.
The team and its fans, like their contemporary country, have done nothing themselves to deserve the burden they are carrying. The nation has been a well-behaving democracy for 45 years. The West German fans, of which 30,000 to 45,000 have come to Italy, have been enthusiastic but mostly well-behaved.
The West German team has been playing most decently and has been making no unnecessary fouls. It has displayed great power and verve. It has been a long-distance runner.
Argentina, on the other hand, sprinted at the end.
Argentina plays the modern tactical soccer game with Latin American flair. It constructs an impenetrable defense and pushes forward with unrelenting tenacity and physical punishment of its opponents. In this rough game, it plays close to the edge of legality, and sometimes over--so much that four of its players have been barred from the final for having been booked twice for fouling in previous games.
Starting poorly, Argentina lost the Cup’s opener to Cameroon, 1-0; it beat the Soviet Union, 2-0; it tied Romania, 1-1. In the second round, Argentina was nearly overwhelmed by Brazil, but when Diego Maradona saw the only opening for Argentina in the game, he set up the only goal. Yugoslavia seemed stronger in the quarterfinals, but Argentina wore it down with relentless tactics and finally prevailed on penalty kicks.
Yet for all that, you have to respect Argentina. It gathered strength as the tournament progressed. Maradona’s talents became more evident. In its six games, Argentina has allowed only three goals in regular time, and one of them was an egregious error of its goalkeeper. You do not lose often if you allow an average of half a goal a game.
In Naples in the semifinal, Argentina combined pressure with brilliant offensive moves and cool nerves during the shootout to break the hearts of the Italian people.
The Italians defeated the English, 2-1, at Bari Saturday in the game to determine third and fourth place--a game that is rarely played at full speed, since the world of soccer does not care about the ranking of losers.
The play of the English reached its culmination in the semifinal against West Germany.
The English may have shown how old-fashioned soccer--the kind of soccer Kissinger remembers from his youth in Germany--may pose new challenges to the modern style.
Not for the English, the intricate patterns of continental European soccer, or the technical virtuosity of the Latin Americans.
Don’t waste time passing, just send long kicks down the flank, then take a turn toward the goal in the hope that God will in His own time reward the worthy.
Put it down to character, if you like. The English make no unnecessary fouls. They do not writhe on the ground. They do not protest to the referee.
As Coach Bobby Robson said after beating Cameroon in the tough quarterfinal match: “We had to hang on, but we never gave up and were glad to fight our way out through British spirit, determination, morale.”
The English success was a triumph of old-fashioned virtue. It was with this spirit that they fought the technically superior West Germans to a draw in regular time.
The Italian Blues, the Azzuri , play with the elegant efficiency of a racing car. They are a taut machine whose members display considerable personal virtuosity but in fact are dependent upon precise calculation and exact interplay.
To watch the Italian team’s deft and intricate passing on attack is to see the marriage of physical and mental skills.
But, like a racing car, the Italians are subject to misalignment and mishap.
A pall of silence fell over the stadium in Naples when Argentina scored its first goal in the semifinal. Neither the team nor the fans recovered after that. In retrospect, that goal, the first against Italy in nine months of play, seemed like doom itself. The Italians played beautifully; they lacked only the finishing touches. In part they were so worried about losing that they did not press their attack after they had gotten ahead.
Italy lacked nothing, though, in putting on the 52 games of the tournament. Though Italy lost the Cup itself, it won the admiration and affection of soccer fans everywhere for the efficiency, warmth and flair with which it presented the tournament.
The Italians brought off an extraordinarily complex job of organization and made it look easy.
Their success has created a daunting challenge for the United States, which is to be the host for the 1994 World Cup.
From the construction and rebuilding of the stadiums to the arrangements for the teams’ training camps to the provisions for the 5,000 press and broadcast journalists to the immense difficulties of security, the Italians have shown the rest of the world how it should all be done.
And not just in the matters of efficiency and planning. The warmth, the generosity and the humanity of the Italian people have to make you wish, ardently, their team had gone all the way to the end.
