WORLD CUP USA ’94 / THE FIRST ROUND : He Hits Nothing but Nyet : Group B: Salenko sets record with five goals in 6-1 rout of Cameroon, keeping Russians alive.
Cameroon, which four years ago became the first African team to earn a berth in the World Cup quarterfinals, learned Tuesday what it is like to be on history’s dark side.
Lion kings no more, they not only lost to Russia, 6-1, but made sure that no one will ever forget it by allowing forward Oleg Salenko to score five goals, the most by one player in a World Cup game.
“I guess we can’t have God on our side all the time,” Cameroon forward Francois Omam-Biyick said after his team finished fourth in Group B with an 0-2-1 record and failed to advance to the second round.
The Russians had also felt forsaken after losing their first two games, scoring one goal and giving up five. But that changed before a Stanford Stadium crowd of 74,914 as their overwhelming victory gave them hope of moving on in the tournament.
But even if Russia does not play again, Salenko, 24, has left his mark on the World Cup. His three first half and two second-half goals against Cameroon give him six in three games--the same number that Italy’s Toto Schillaci had in seven games when he led the 1990 World Cup in scoring and more than all but five teams in this year’s tournament.
Who says Americans will never adopt soccer because it has too few statistics to form rotisserie leagues? Of course, if there had been rotisserie leagues for this World Cup, it is possible that no one would have selected Salenko.
Salenko earned notoriety at home as a teen-ager, becoming the first player in the new era of professionalism to move from one team in the former Soviet Union to another for an official transfer fee.
After Dynamo Kiev lured him away from Leningrad Zenit with an apartment, a car and a salary that included payments in dollars as well as rubles, Zenit sued and was awarded 50,000 rubles, which, before the Russian currency was devalued, was equal to $50,000.
Four years later, not especially productive ones for Salenko, Dynamo Kiev sold him in 1992 to a Spanish team, Longrones, for $2 million. Welcome to capitalism.
Without the luxury of a scouting budget, the Russian coaches lost track of him. It was only after they asked a national sports newspaper, Sport Express, to report on how Russian players were faring in foreign leagues that they learned Salenko had regained his scoring touch. He had 16 goals last season for Longrones and has since transferred to Valencia, a more prestigious Spanish club.
Still, Salenko did not start in Russia’s opening 2-0 loss here to Brazil, and although he scored the team’s lone goal in a 3-1 loss to Sweden last Friday at Pontiac, Mich., no one could have foreseen the game he had Tuesday.
“You only have one day in your life like this,” he said.
That no doubt is the hope of Cameroon goalkeeper Jacques Songo, playing his first World Cup game after the regular starter, Joseph-Antoine Bell, decided that his presence on the field was too divisive.
An outspoken critic of Cameroon’s soccer federation in a never-ending dispute between players and officials over money, Bell did not enjoy his view from the bench.
“Six goals is good for soccer, but it is bad for goalies,” he said. “It was not a pleasant thing to watch.”
Believing that they were playing for nothing but respect, Russia’s beleaguered coach, Pavel Sadyrin, said his team was motivated by media forecasts that Cameroon would score “three, four, five times against us.”
With his team attacking from the outset, Salenko scored his first goal in the 16th minute, his second in the 41st and his third--on a penalty kick--in the 45th.
Looking for inspiration, Cameroon Coach Henri Michel sent the oldest Lion, 42-year-old forward Roger Milla, into the game to start the second half, and only two minutes later he delivered a goal. He already was the oldest man to score in the World Cup with four goals in 1990.
But with the Lions pushing forward desperately in an attempt to edge closer, their already suspect defense was stretched too thin. Salenko scored in the 73rd minute and again in the 75th, then assisted on forward Dmitri Radchenko’s goal in the 82nd.
“It was his star hour,” Russian captain Viktor Onopko said of Salenko.
Single-Game Scoring
Top performances in World Cup finals history: FIVE GOALS:
Player (Team): Oleg Salenko (Russia)
Opponent: Cameroon
Year: 1994
FOUR GOALS
Player (Team) Opponent Year Emilio Butragueno (Spain) Denmark 1986 Eusebio (Portugal) North Korea 1966 Just Fontaine (France) West Germany 1958 Sandor Kocsis (Hungary) West Germany 1954 Juan Schiaffino (Uruguay) Bolivia 1950 Ademir (Brazil) Sweden 1950 Ernest Willimowski (Poland) Brazil 1938 Leonidas Da Silva (Brazil) Poland 1938 G. Wetterstrom (Sweden) Cuba 1938
