WORLD CUP USA ’94 / THE FINAL : Hokey Finish Can’t Cheapen Value of Prize
Oh, dear! Or, rather, oh-oh!
The two best soccer teams on the planet struggled through three periods of the game Sunday and neither could score.
Brazil won the World Cup, 0-0.
Brazil won it from the free-throw line, so to say.
It was like watching two woolly mammoths struggle in a tar pit all afternoon and end up gumming each other to death.
It’s kind of embarrassing. What they do in situations like this is, after 22 guys run and kick and dribble and trip each other for 120 minutes, they put the ball at point-blank range and give each team five kicks at it. Even then, they miss. It’s only 12 yards into a goal eight yards wide, but the World Cup went flying down to Rio when the guy who is supposed to be one of the two best strikers of the soccer ball in the world, Roberto Baggio, kicked the ball over the goal.
If you can picture a World Series scoreless tie in Game 7 in which they decide the championship by a home run derby with key players or a base-stealing contest, you get the picture.
It’s the first World Cup final decided this way. It’s really a kind of crapshoot. Like cutting the cards or maybe deciding a heavyweight championship fight after regulation by having the fighters held by someone and letting the opponents see who can score the most knockdowns.
As unclassical as it was, it was exciting. You can bet Brazil likes it just fine.
So, strike up the marimbas! Get Carmen Miranda to put a bunch of bananas in her hat and give us a chorus of Chicky-chicky-boom-boom. Get the conga line going. Tell the gang at Copacabana beach to break out the rum and Coca-Cola for all hands.
As for the forces from Forza Italia, hold the fettuccine. Nobody feels like eating. Tell Pavarotti to forget “Funiculi, Funicula.” Maybe “Laugh, Clown, Laugh” would be more like it. Sorry, paisan.
I don’t know if they have “goats” in World Cups like World Series, but if they do, I hate to say this, but I have to feel Roberto Baggio must fill the bill. Poor guy! He came up to the postgame showdown with his team down 3-2 in penalty kicks. If he makes it, he at least forces the fifth Brazilian kicker to make his shot to win.
He kicked it clean over the top of the goal. That’s 8 feet high. He had just kicked the Cup to South America.
His chief rival for player of the tournament, a flamboyant Carioca who, like Picasso and Napoleon and Madonna and Cher, goes by one name--Romario--made his penalty kick. But I have to say it hit the post first.
If it was inartistic by football purists’ standards, it was probably better than the alternative. The way these two teams were going, they might have gone the rest of the year without scoring.
You know how that announcer became famous in Cup contests shouting “G-o-o-o-o-l!” Well, Sunday, he would have had to yell “S-a-a-a-v-e!”or “O-o-o-ps!” Even uncontested from the 12-yard line, four of nine missed.
It was like having a putt-off to decide the U.S. Open. But you have to say the Great Soccer Experiment was a crashing success. You know, we export our national sports to other countries. But not the World Series. Not the Super Bowl. Not the Final Four.
We export exhibition games, demonstration sports. These guys gave us the whole enchilada. The United States got the greatest soccer spectacle in the world. We got the greatest players, the greatest teams and an event that occurs only every four years.
It was a great party. More than 3.5 million spectators jammed nine venues. The gross, figuring an average of $100 a ticket, was $350 million not counting TV receipts.
For that, you cheerfully do penalty kicks. Penalty kicks ordinarily are awarded for infractions in the penalty area.
Even the victorious goalkeeper, Claudio Taffarel, described the postgame kick-off as “a lottery.” He blocked only one of the three shots Italy missed.
Does this now mean Brazil is the best team in the world? Well, you play by house rules whether it’s in a Vegas casino or a floating crap game. After all, Brazil penalty kicks went in the goal. The one miss was blocked.
In the history books, it goes down as a victory. Same as 5-0 even though FIFA will list the score as 0-0. Brazil won, it is the World Cup champion by house rules. As the golfer Lloyd Mangrum, when criticized for not playing classic golf from tee to green but proceeding to one putt his way to victory, asked sweetly: “Are we playing how or how many?”
Brazil can say the same. It was playing how many--and it had the most. Can’t wait till 1998.
