WORLD CUP USA '94: ROUND OF 16 : Spotlight : HAGI FAN CLUB

By WILLIAM TUOHY

July 5, 1994 12 AM PT

Times London Bureau

British sportswriters were ecstatic about Romania’s performance in defeating Argentina, 3-2, Sunday, and and Romanian captain Gheorghe Hagi was being depicted as the best all-around player in the World Cup.

The Mirror called it a “wonderful game, a vivid, flowing exciting spectacle,” adding “if this doesn’t convert America to soccer, nothing will.”

And from Pasadena, Jeff Powell in the Daily Mail reported: “. . . Gheorghe Hagi orchestrated the trio of classic counterattacks which set the tears flowing in Buenos Aires yet again.

“Maradona’s World Cup persona has been reinvented as a television commentator--a position for which no drug test yet applies--and he cried openly for Argentina as its heroic comeback fell tantalizingly short of forcing Romania to extra time.

“Hagi, one of the pretenders to the Maradona throne, scored once and made the most delightful goals of the finals thus far.”

And the Daily Express phrased it this way: “The tears of Argentina were flowing again in the game in which it had to bounce back from the fall of Diego Maradona. . . .

“They were tormented into another crisis by the brilliance of Romanian general Gheorghe Hagi.”