SOCCER / GRAHAME L. JONES : Letters Were Mixed, but Message Wasn’t
Bits and pieces from the world’s game . . .
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The handwriting was on the wall for Ossie Ardiles, Argentina’s World Cup-winning midfielder of 1978 who was fired this week as coach of the English Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur.
As loss followed loss, Spurs’ fans discovered that if they rearranged the letters in Ardiles’ name they could sum up his team pretty well.
The new arrangement of letters: “Side is a Loser.”
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After finishing his playing career, Dunga, Brazil’s World Cup ’94 captain, says he wants to open a zoo.
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Another member of Brazil’s victorious team is following a somewhat higher calling.
Goalkeeper Claudio Taffarel, who all but dropped from sight after his penalty-saving heroics helped the Brazilians win the World Cup, has resurfaced.
Unable to land a job with another team after being released by his Italian club, Reggiana, Taffarel, a deeply religious man, now plays free for a church team in the town of Reggio nell’Emilia.
He even scored a goal in a recent game.
“He believes God protected him and the Brazilian team during the World Cup,” said the parish priest, Don Luigi Gianferrari.
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The only country certain to be playing in the 1996 European Championship is England, the host nation for the 16-team tournament.
So, while 47 other countries are battling to make the field, England is left with nothing but “friendly” games between now and June 1996.
Coach Terry Venables is making sure his team will be well tested by then, however.
Unbeaten in the first five games of Venables’ reign, England has defeated European champion Denmark, 1-0; tied Norway, 0-0; trounced Greece, 5-0; beaten the United States, 2-0, and tied Romania, 1-1.
Now, the schedule gets decidedly more difficult.
England plays Nigeria this month and Portugal in March. Then, next June, it plays in a tournament with Brazil, Sweden and Japan.
If Venables’ team still is undefeated after that, it will have to be considered a legitimate candidate to win its first European Championship.
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Bulgarian striker Hristo Stoitchkov, who played superbly in helping Barcelona thrash England’s Manchester United, 4-0, on Wednesday in the European Champions’ League, has been a key figure in the Spanish champion’s four consecutive league titles.
But there has been a price.
When Stoitchkov was tossed out of a Spanish Cup game this season, it was was his 11th red card in four years. Referees have also given him 36 yellow cards in that time.
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The Nigerian team apparently enjoyed its World Cup experience in the United States a little more than most of the media realized.
Clemens Westerhof, the Dutch coach who led the Nigerians to within a whisker of the quarterfinals, said he knew his team was doomed to defeat against Italy.
In an interview in the current issue of African Soccer, Westerhof tells the following tale:
“Before the match against Italy, I saw that the players had lost concentration, so I suggested that we move to another hotel. Some of them had their wives with them, and some other ladies came. One night, six players were out until 6 a.m. The team discipline was slipping away.
“They refused to move. From that moment we had lost. We didn’t lose the match on the pitch, we’d already lost it.”
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When Liverpool of the English Premier League made a preseason tour of South Africa, the players and coaches had the opportunity to meet President Nelson Mandela.
A few weeks later, the Liverpool game program featured a photo of the president decked out in a Liverpool jersey and scarf.
A fan is born.
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When Diego Maradona, suspended for a second 15-month spell after failing a World Cup drug test, assumed assistant coaching duties at Argentina’s Deportivo Mandiyu club, he said, “I will give my players an injection of strength, morale and the will to play good soccer.”
Commented England’s Sunday Telegraph: “As long as this is the only injection he gives them . . . “
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Bayern Munich won the Bundesliga championship in Germany last season under the temporary coaching of Franz Beckenbauer, then hired Italy’s Giovanni Trapattoni as its new coach.
Trapattoni, who enjoyed great success at Juventus and Inter Milan, did not get off to an especially promising start in Germany. Nor did he win many friends with the following comment:
“The Germans historically have an idea of domination in their heads which I don’t personally share but which has certainly always caused a lot of problems,” he told Italy’s Corriere Dello Sport. “It’s time to review the idea.”
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A television network in Argentina has a novel way of showing its feelings about referees.
During televised games, whenever an official fails to give a penalty or call a foul, a cartoon referee is scrolled across the bottom of the screen--complete with dark glasses, white cane and guide dog.
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Cameroon authorities have declared goalkeeper Joseph-Antoine Bell an undesirable and have told him he will be arrested if he tries to return to the country. He is living now in St. Etienne, France, and, having retired as a player, hopes to become a coach.
