These Defenders Never Rest : The Favored Teams in This Year’s Tournament Have One Thing in Common: A Defense Anchored by a Veteran Recognized as One of the Best in the Game
Asked to list the top defenders in international soccer, anyone knowledgeable about the sport would not find it difficult to come up with at least a half-dozen names.
Here, for example, is one quick group of six: Franco Baresi, Oscar Ruggeri, Ronald Koeman, Andreas Brehme, Ricardo Gomes and Luis Carlos Perea.
These are players who have an established reputation as the best in the business. They are respected, and indeed feared, by strikers worldwide. They have written their names into the history of the game by their ability to foil opposing forwards, to break up attacking moves and to thwart the best-laid plans of coaches from Barcelona to Buenos Aires.
They are the rocks upon which opposing teams founder and upon which their own teams are built.
The six mentioned also have two other things in common:
--Each will be playing in World Cup ’94 this summer.
--Each is more than 30 years old.
If there is one common thread that runs through all the leading candidates to win the championship, it is that their defense is anchored by a veteran playing in what certainly will be his final World Cup.
This is the last hurrah for defenders whose names have become familiar during the past decade or more.
One of them will be on the World Cup-winning team unless this tournament produces upsets of monumental proportions. It is almost impossible to imagine that one of their teams will not be the champion.
Will it be Baresi, who this season won yet another Italian League title with AC Milan and helped the club win the European Cup for the fourth time in six years, kissing the solid gold World Cup trophy in Pasadena on July 17?
Baresi, who was on Italy’s 1982 World Cup team in Spain, turned 34 on May 8 and was bitterly disappointed when the Italians finished third in the 1990 World Cup, losing to Argentina in a semifinal game at Naples.
Another player on the field that night was Ruggeri, the grand old man of the Argentine defense and a World Cup winner in 1986. Ruggeri turned 32 in January and has been beset by injuries in recent years.
All the same, South America’s player of the year in 1991 has led his country to consecutive Copa America victories and into two consecutive World Cup championship games. It is not likely Coach Alfio Basile will disregard Ruggeri’s vast experience this time around.
Then there is Koeman, whose club, Barcelona, was beaten by AC Milan in the European Cup final at Athens in May. The Dutchman has been a mainstay of The Netherlands’ national team for as long as anyone can remember. Now 31, Koeman got a European Championship winner’s medal with the Dutch team in 1988 and a European Cup winner’s medal with Barcelona in 1992.
His specialty is the free kick, which he has developed into an art form. His free kick beat Italy’s Sampdoria in the 1992 European Cup final at Wembley Stadium in London and another one helped keep England out of World Cup ’94 when the Dutch beat the English in a vital qualifying match at Rotterdam last autumn.
Another player with a ferocious kick is Brehme, who will always be remembered by Argentine fans because it was his perfectly placed penalty kick just inside the left post that beat goalkeeper Sergio Goycochea in the 1990 World Cup final and gave Germany its hard-fought victory.
Brehme, 33, has been a member of the German national team since 1984. He retired briefly from the team after Italia ’90 but was recalled by German Coach Berti Vogts because Vogts could find no one who could play the left back position better than Brehme. Christian Ziege was challenging strongly for the spot last summer, but Ziege was injured in April and will miss the World Cup.
That means Germany will have most of its 1990 defense intact for this tournament. Joining Brehme at the back will be two other members of the 1990 World Cup-winning team, Juergen Kohler, 28, and Lothar Matthaeus, 33, who is playing sweeper instead of midfield. A third member of that team, Guido Buchwald, 33, has been playing more in midfield recently, but could be used on defense again just as easily.
Then there is Gomes, 30, who was a vital part of Paris St Germain’s drive to the French League championship this season. Gomes is paired at the back of the Brazilian defense with another veteran, Ricardo Rocha, 31, who left Real Madrid in Spain this year to join Vasco da Gama in Brazil.
Add right back Jorginho, 29, who is on the verge of winning the Bundesliga championship with Bayern Munich in Germany, and the vastly experienced Branco, who turned 30 in April, and it is obvious that Brazil has a defense every bit as “ancient” as Germany’s.
Finally, there is Perea, who was a revelation for Colombia in the Copa America tournament in Ecuador last summer and in the qualifying matches for the World Cup. At 30, Perea is Colombia’s most experienced international and, with Luis Herrera, 31, forms the backbone of the Colombian defense.
These six great defenders could be the key to their countries’ World Cup fortunes. But are they over the hill? Have they lost the pace they need to keep up with today’s lightning-fast forwards? Should they have been put out to pasture already, leaving the World Cup to younger men?
The answers will come in the weeks ahead.
Meanwhile, there are several other defenders in the tournament who are getting a bit long in the tooth. Ireland’s Paul McGrath is 34, Norway’s Rune Bratseth is 33 and Greece’s Stelios Manolas will be 33 in July.
But for every veteran defender in the World Cup, there are a half-dozen younger players waiting to take the spotlight on the international stage.
Some, like Italy’s Paolo Maldini, 25, already are recognized as among the best in the world. Others, like Mexico’s Ramon Ramirez, 24, and the Netherlands’ wonderfully named Ulrich Van Gobbel, 23, are waiting for fame to find them.
World Cup ’94 will be the sieve that sorts the best from the rest. But don’t discount those old defenders just yet. The last waltz has yet to be danced.
