A dozen things you never knew you wanted to know about the World Cup (part 5)

And, to round things off, we have upsets, high-scoring games, how to get knocked out of the World Cup without losing, the ball, how a replica World Cup ended up in Manchester and the question of which international organisation (FIFA or the UN) has more members…

49.   There have been a few major upsets at the World Cup over the years. Back in 1950, the USA managed to beat England. Then there have been such memorable occasions as North Korea beating Italy in 1966, East Germany beating West Germany in 1974, Algeria beating West Germany in 1982, Cameroon beating Argentina in 1990 and Senegal beating France in 2002.

50.   Brazil’s 7-1 drubbing at the hands of Germany in the 2014 semi-final is the biggest defeat suffered by a host nation. There have been a few matches with even more goals than that, though – the record number of goals scored in one game being 12, when Austria beat Switzerland 7-5 in 1954. In addition, there were three occasions on which the margin of victory was by nine goals. 9-0 wins were recorded by Hungary over South Korea in 1954 and by Yugoslavia over Zaire in 1974, while Hungary also beat El Salvador 10-1 in 1982. The highest-scoring draw has been 4-4, and it’s happened twice – England against Belgium in 1954 and the Soviet Union against Colombia in 1962.

51.   Brazil have taken part in both the highest-scoring World Cup final and the lowest-scoring one. In 1958, they beat Sweden 5-2. Then in 1994 they drew 0-0 with Italy, a match they went on to win via a penalty shoot-out.

52.   The most goals scored in a single tournament has been 171. This happened in 1998 and again in 2014. The fewest goals in a tournament was 70, in 1930 and 1934 when there were less teams and, therefore, much fewer games played. In terms of goals per game, the highest has been 5.38 (in 1954, perhaps unsurprising given some of the games mentioned in number 50) and the lowest was 2.21 (in 1990).

53.   It is entirely possible to be eliminated from a World Cup without losing a game (and I’m not trying to claim that losing by way of a penalty shoot-out doesn’t technically count as losing; of course it does). England managed to be knocked out undefeated in 1982, back when the tournament had a second group stage (they beat France, Czechoslovakia and Kuwait in the first round but could only draw against West Germany and Spain in the second). In 2010, New Zealand were knocked out after drawing all of their first-round matches.

54.   It is, of course, also possible to lose a game in the group stages and then go on to win the tournament. West Germany managed this in 1954 (they were beaten by Hungary, the team they would go on to beat in the final) and in 1974 (when they were beaten by their neighbours, East Germany).

55.   The official match ball of the 2018 World Cup is the Adidas Telstar 18. Its name and design are based on the iconic Adidas Telstar which was used in the 1970 and 1974 World Cups. That was the first football to use the now-familiar design, widely used throughout the world to depict a football, of 12 black pentagonal panels and 20 white hexagonal panels (and it was indeed a football for the modern age, for the name and design were inspired by the Telstar communications satellite).

56.   The Jules Rimet Trophy was stolen twice – once in 1966 when it was nicked from Westminster City Hall shortly before the World Cup (it was famously found several days later in South London by a dog called Pickles), the second time when it was taken from the Brazilian Football Confederation’s headquarters in Rio in 1983. It has never been recovered and is widely believed to have been melted down.

57.   A replica was made in 1966 by the FA after the first theft. This was kept secret, because FIFA had forbidden it, and after the real one was given back in 1970 it was hidden in the home of an FA executive. After his death, the replica’s existence became public knowledge and tests were done to ensure that it wasn’t the real one (it isn’t). The replica is now on display at the National Football Museum in Manchester. The Brazilians made their own replica in 1984.

58.   Getting back to the confederations, a country doesn’t necessarily have to belong to the confederation that covers the continent in which it is geographically located. Israel, for example, has been a member of UEFA since the early 1990s; originally a member of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), it was expelled from that in the 1970s and for the 1980s it had attempted to qualify for the World Cup via Oceania’s qualification groups. Australia was a member of the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) until 2006, when it transferred to the AFC (partly out of a desire to play more competitive football, Australia having very much been a big fish in a small pond in the OFC which mostly consists of small island nations); by winning the AFC Asian Cup in 2015, it became the first-ever country to have been a champion of two footballing confederations.

59.   In 2006, a one-off alternative World Cup took place for countries that aren’t recognised by FIFA. The FIFI (Federation of International Football Independents) Wild Cup was held shortly before the actual World Cup and was hosted by the Hamburg-based FC St Pauli, a club long known for its alternative traditions. Their youth team took part as the host ‘Republic of St Pauli’, a micronation called into existence solely for the FIFI tournament; Gibraltar, Greenland, Northern Cyprus, Tibet (a side comprised entirely of Tibetan exiles) and Zanzibar also took part. There were a few problems the organisers had to overcome, such as sorting out visas for the Northern Cypriots and attempts by the Chinese embassy in Berlin to ban the Tibetans from playing. Northern Cyprus won after beating Zanzibar on penalties in the final. Low attendances (averaging in the hundreds, although the final drew in a crowd of around 4,000) meant that this tournament has never been repeated. Of those taking part, Gibraltar later became a member of FIFA and took part in qualification for the 2018 World Cup (finishing bottom of their group).

60.   FIFA has more member states than the United Nations (211, compared to 193). As well as the four Home Nations, which for historical reasons play football under their own flags rather than as a single British team, there are also dependent territories which play international football (Gibraltar and the Faroe Islands, for example, and also Hong Kong which had been an international side before the 1997 handover, and which has been allowed to retain this status since then) and countries that aren’t universally recognised as being independent (for example, Kosovo and Taiwan although the latter plays as Chinese Taipei which is also the name it goes under at the Olympics). 

A dozen things you never knew you wanted to know about the World Cup (part 4)

Yes, there’s more! The seemingly random list of World Cup-related facts continues, with a look at a certain Russian who wasn’t actually Russian, the FIFA rankings, an unofficial method of deciding who the world champions are, Pelé and a few individual awards...

37.   Four Englishmen have refereed World Cup finals – George Reader in 1950, William Ling in 1954, Jack Taylor in 1974 and Howard Webb in 2010.

38.   Tofiq Bahramov, the ‘Russian’ linesman who judged that Geoff Hurst’s second goal in the 1966 World Cup final had crossed the line, was in fact from Azerbaijan which was part of the Soviet Union at the time. Shortly after his death in 1993, Azerbaijan’s national stadium was renamed after him. England played there during their qualification campaign for the 2006 World Cup.

39.   According to the latest version of the FIFA world rankings, Germany – the reigning world champions – are the best team in the world. Brazil, Belgium, Portugal and Argentina make up the rest of the top five, and then it’s Switzerland, France, Spain, Chile and Poland filling the spots from sixth to tenth. England are 13^th. The highest-ranked country not to have qualified for the World Cup is Italy (20^th), while the lowest-ranked country that has qualified is Saudi Arabia (joint 67^th, one spot below hosts Russia). Right down at the bottom in joint 207^th place are Anguilla, the Bahamas, Eritrea, Somalia and Tonga (the lowest-ranked European country is San Marino, which is 205^th).

40.   As well as the World Cup, there’s an alternative, unofficial way of defining who the footballing world champions are. Using a system similar to that used in boxing (in which you can only become a world champion by defeating a world champion, and you then hold that title until you are yourself defeated) and having been worked back to the second-ever international football match (the first one, Scotland v England in 1872, having been a draw), the Unofficial Football World Championship (UFWC) was unveiled in 2003. A total of 48 countries, from all six confederations, have at one time or another held the title. Any full international match – be it a tournament game, a qualifier or a friendly – counts as a title challenge if the reigning unofficial world champions are involved, so unless you’re familiar with the UFWC then you might not even know that your country is in with a shout. The UFWC is not in any way sanctioned by FIFA. For what it’s worth, the current unofficial world champions are Peru, who’ve held the title since they beat Bolivia in a World Cup qualifier last year. They’ll be unofficially (maybe unknowingly) defending their title at this year’s World Cup, providing they can avoid being defeated by Sweden in a pre-tournament friendly on Saturday. An alternative to this is a virtual trophy called Nasazzi’s Baton which runs on similar lines but has been worked back to the first World Cup final in 1930, which was won by Uruguay; it is named after their captain in that tournament, José Nasazzi. The current ‘holders’ of that one are Costa Rica, or at least that’s according to the competition’s website which hasn’t been updated for two years.

41.   Edson Arantes do Nascimento – Pelé to you and me – is the only man ever to have won three World Cups, for Brazil in 1958, 1962 and 1970 (admittedly he didn’t play in the 1962 final due to injury, but he was in the squad and had played in the earlier games). He was just 17 when he won the World Cup for the first time, becoming the youngest player to score in a World Cup final in the process (twice, as it happens). By scoring Brazil’s first in the 1970 final, he became the second person to have scored in more than one World Cup final, the first having been Vava, his 1958 team-mate and fellow-double-scorer who also scored one in the 1962 final.

42.   The 1958 final, in which Brazil beat Sweden 5-2, was the first time a South American country had won the World Cup in Europe. It wasn’t until 2014 that a European country won the World Cup in South America. Germany beat Argentina 1-0 on that occasion, replicating the scoreline of the 1990 final. FIFA reckons that, globally, over a billion people watched the 2014 final on TV.

43.   The Golden Boot is awarded to whoever scores the most goals at a World Cup. The record for one tournament is 13 which was set by Just Fontaine of France in 1958; four years later, six players shared the honours with just four goals apiece. The 2014 winner was James Rodriguez of Colombia, who scored six. Only one English player has ever won it – Gary Lineker, who scored six goals at the 1986 World Cup.

44.   The only player to have won the Golden Boot while playing for a team that was knocked out in the first round was Russia’s Oleg Salenko, who scored six in 1994. This included five against Cameroon – a record for a player in one World Cup match. Those were the only goals Salenko scored for his country (for which he made eight appearances, having previously played for Ukraine in that country’s first-ever international match).

45.   Germany’s Miroslav Klose has scored more World Cup goals – 16, over four tournaments – than anyone else. Second on this particular list is Ronaldo of Brazil, with 15. Pelé is in fifth place with 12, and the highest-placed Englishman is Gary Lineker, who’s in joint eighth place with ten goals, scored over the course of two tournaments.

46.   Geoff Hurst of England remains the only player ever to have scored a hat-trick in a World Cup final. You know when.

47.   In addition to the Golden Boot, there’s the Golden Ball which is awarded to whoever is judged to have been the tournament’s best player. It was first introduced in 1982 but has since been applied retrospectively to previous tournaments (Bobby Charlton would have won it in 1966, apparently). The winner of this award is usually announced before the final, which has at times back-fired as the winner’s appearance in said final ended up being memorable for the wrong reasons, as witness Ronaldo in 1998 (he played in the final despite having suffered a convulsive fit hours before the kick-off) and Zinedine Zidane in 2006 (he scored a penalty early on, but was sent off for head-butting Italy’s Marco Materazzi in extra time).

48.   There’s also a Golden Glove award, given to the tournament’s best goalkeeper. Initially called the Lev Yashin Award (in honour of the legendary Soviet keeper), it was first awarded in 1994. On four occasions – 1998, 2006, 2010 and 2014 – it has been awarded to the goalkeeper of the winning team. In 2002, Germany’s Oliver Kahn won both the Golden Glove and the Golden Ball.

A dozen things you never knew you wanted to know about the World Cup (part 3)

And it continues, looking this time at the Home Nations, the Women’s World Cup, on-field violence and red cards...

25.   The only time all four Home Nations qualified for a World Cup was in 1958. Back then, Northern Ireland and Wales both made it through to the quarter-finals while England and Scotland were eliminated at the group stage. This was Wales’s only appearance at a World Cup. Northern Ireland have since qualified twice – in 1982 and 1986 (those years being the two occasions on which three of the four Home Nations qualified). The last time all of the Home Nations failed to qualify was in 1994.

26.   Scotland last appeared in a World Cup in 1998. They have never got out of the group stage; in fact, they hold the record for the most World Cups competed in without having ever got out of the first round (eight).

27.   Still, it could be worse. Bolivia and Honduras have both been to the World Cup three times and never managed to win a game (their respective records are played six, lost five and played nine, lost six).

28.   1966 aside, England’s best performance was in 1990 when they reached the semi-finals (which marked the first, but alas not the last, time that they were defeated by way of a penalty shoot-out). After refusing to enter the World Cup in the 1930s along with the other Home Nations, England made their first appearance at the tournament in 1950 and were eliminated in the group stage – a feat that’s been repeated in 1958 and 2014.

29.   The first Women’s World Cup was held in 1991. The USA have won it the most times (three) and are the current champions. England’s best performance was in 2015 when they reached the semi-finals, only to be knocked out by Japan. The next Women’s World Cup will be held in France next year.

30.   Over the years, four World Cup matches have been judged to have been sufficiently violent (on the pitch) to merit being referred to as ‘battles’. The first was in 1938 – the quarter-final between Brazil and Czechoslovakia was dubbed the Battle of Bordeaux due to a series of fouls committed by both teams. This was the first time in which three players (two Brazilians, one Czech) were sent off in a World Cup match. The match ended with the scores level at 1-1 after extra time; as there were no penalty shoot-outs back then, a replay was played two days later. Both teams had to field several reserve players due to injuries  sustained in the first game; Brazil won the replay 2-1.

31.   The second ‘battle’ took place during the 1954 World Cup; the Battle of Bern between Brazil and Hungary saw three players (two Brazilians and one Hungarian) get sent off. 42 free kicks and two penalties were awarded; Hungary won 4-2 but fighting continued in the dressing-rooms after the final whistle.

32.   In 1962, the Battle of Sanitago was ‘played’ between Chile (the hosts) and Italy. Tensions were high between the two countries before the game after the host nation had been described in somewhat crude terms by some Italian journalists who’d gone to Chile to cover the tournament, to which the local press had responded by being rude about Italy. The first foul occurred some 12 seconds after the kick-off, and after 12 minutes Italy’s Giorgio Ferrini was sent off; when he refused to walk, he had to be dragged off by the police. After 41 minutes, a second Italian player was sent off. Two Chilean players escaped a similar fate in two separate instances of punches being thrown. The police had to intervene three more times. Chile won 2-0. The referee who’d struggled to keep control was Englishman Ken Aston, who would later invent the red and yellow card system (cautions and dismissals having hitherto been done by way of hand-signals).

33.   Finally, the second-round clash between the Netherlands and Portugal in 2006 would become known as the Battle of Nuremberg. It saw a record four red cards and 16 yellow cards issued (all four reds were for second-yellow offences, and the two sides each had two players dismissed). Portugal won 1-0. The overworked referee was Russia’s Valentin Ivanov, whose performance was criticised by FIFA boss Sepp Blatter (who later apologised to Ivanov for criticising him).

34.   Three English players have been given red cards in World Cup games: Ray Wilkins against Morocco in 1986, David Beckham against Argentina in 1998 and Wayne Rooney against Portugal in 2006.

35.   In 1986, José Batista of Uruguay achieved the unenviable distinction of being shown the earliest red card in a World Cup match; he was sent off after just 56 seconds against Scotland following a foul on Gordon Strachan. In 2002, Argentina’s Claudio Caniggia went one better (or worse) by receiving a red card without even setting foot on the pitch, getting himself sent off from the bench for swearing at the referee during his country’s first-round match against Sweden.

36.   Five players have been sent off in a World Cup final: Pedro Monzon and Gustavo Dezotti of Argentina in 1990, Marcel Desailly of France in 1998, Zinedine Zidane of France in 2006 and John Heitinga of the Netherlands in 2010. Of these, only Desailly ended up on the winning side. For what it’s worth, Monzon has always claimed that Jurgen Klinsmann, the player he was judged to have fouled, had dived.

A dozen things you never knew you wanted to know about the World Cup (part 2)

Continuing on the countdown-to-the-World Cup theme, and picking up from where I left off...

13.   For the first World Cup, FIFA boss Jules Rimet – the organisation’s third president and the man who inaugurated the tournament – travelled to Uruguay on the same ship as the Belgian, French and Romanian teams. And, of course, the trophy which was in Monsieur Rimet’s luggage.

14.   The original trophy was named after Rimet, although it wasn’t so named until 1946 and, prior to it being replaced, it was generally referred to simply as the World Cup. It had to be replaced after the 1970 tournament, because Rimet’s original stipulation was that the first country to win it three times would get to keep it for ever. When Brazil faced Italy in the final of that year, whichever side won would become the first three-times winner, thus necessitating a replacement. Brazil won that final 4-1.

15.   The replacement, which has been used since the 1974 tournament, is officially called the FIFA World Cup Trophy. It’s made of 18-carat gold with a malachite base. Designed by Italian artist Silvio Gazzaniga, it is 36.8cm tall and weighs 6.1kg. FIFA claims it’s solid gold, but top British chemist Sir Martyn Poliakoff (a professor at Nottingham Uni) has theorised that it must be hollow, for if it were solid gold it would be too heavy to lift. Unlike its predecessor, this World Cup cannot be won outright – the winners must give it back four years later, however many times they’ve previously won it, but they do get to keep a gold-plated replica.

16.   The highest attendance of any World Cup game was when 199,854 people crammed into the Maracana in Rio to watch the Brazil-Uruguay game in 1950 (that’s the official attendance figure, although many have estimated that the actual attendance was somewhat north of 200,000). Although technically a group game (the final stage of the tournament being a four-team group for the first and only time), this was the de facto final as whoever won that game would win the World Cup. In fact, Brazil, who were ahead on points, only needed to draw to win it.

17.   In the 1950 final, Brazil were heavy favourites to win, although premature declarations of the hosts as world champions were probably tempting fate; Uruguay won 2-1. The fall-out in Brazil was intense. Their traditional white shirts with blue collars were never used again, and Brazil did not play at the Maracana for four years after that. Interestingly, they did not play any games at the Maracana when they hosted the World Cup for a second time, 64 years later.

18.   The last surviving player from the 1950 final, Uruguayan winger Alcides Ghiggia, died in 2015, 65 years to the day after the game (in which he scored the winning goal). He had been the oldest living World Cup winner, an honour that with his death passed to Hans Schafer, who played for West Germany in the 1954 final. After his death in 2017, the oldest surviving player from a World Cup final is his team-mate, Horst Eckel. He’s 86.

19.   The 1954 final, dubbed the Miracle of Bern, saw West Germany beat favourites Hungary 3-2. Hungary had previously thrashed the Germans 8-3 in the group stage, which may have led them to underestimate their opponents (who had in fact deliberately fielded a weak team for the earlier match, figuring – rightly – that they’d get out of the group stage anyway). The German victory unleashed a wave of euphoria in a country still recovering from the Second World War and is regarded as a key moment in post-war German history.

20.   Fritz Walter, the German captain in 1954, later had a stadium named after him in his home town of Kaiserslauten; it was used for the 2006 World Cup.

21.   FIFA is the world governing body for football, but below it there are six international confederations which are responsible for football in their respective continents. They are the AFC (Asia), CAF (Africa), CONCACAF (North America, Central America and the Caribbean), CONMEBOL (South America), the OFC (Oceania) and UEFA (Europe). Each of these has their own continental championship which takes either every two years (in the odd-numbered years) or every four years, either the year after the World Cup or in the even-numbered year that isn’t a World Cup year.

22.   Four reigning continental champions have failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup – Cameroon (who won the African Cup of Nations last year), Chile (the current Copa America holders), New Zealand (Oceania’s reigning champions) and the USA (last year’s CONCACAF Gold Cup winners). The two continental champions which are present at the World Cup are Austrailia (Asia) and Portugal (Europe).

23.   The World Cup isn’t the only international football tournament involving teams from different confederations. Held every four years in the year before a World Cup, the Confederations Cup is an eight-team tournament comprising of the reigning world champions and the winners of the six confederation championships, along with the host nation which is always the country which is due to host the following year’s World Cup (thus making this tournament a rehearsal of sorts for the host nation’s infrastructure).

24.   It was first held in 1997. Brazil have won the Confederations Cup the most times (four), while Germany won it for the first time last year (they beat Chile 1-0 in the final). To date, none of the Home Nations (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales) has ever qualified for it.

A dozen things you never knew you wanted to know about the World Cup (part 1)

With the World Cup just around the corner, here is the first in a series of facts about the history of the tournament…

1.       This year’s FIFA World Cup will be the 21^st running of the event. It’s the 11^th one to be held in Europe, which hasn’t had a World Cup since 2006. 32 teams will be competing.

2.       20 of those 32 teams appeared in the last World Cup in 2014. Two countries, Iceland and Panama, are making their first-ever appearances at a World Cup.

3.       Conspicuous by their absence are Italy (who haven’t qualified for the first time since 1958) and the Netherlands (not appearing for the first time since 2002).

4.       Brazil have won the World Cup the most times (five). Germany and Italy have both won it four times (although for the Germans, the first three of those were as West Germany), while Argentina and Uruguay have won it twice each. England, France and Spain have all won it once.

5.       Brazil is also the only country to have featured in all 21 World Cups, although Germany has played in more World Cup matches (106) than any other country.

6.       The World Cup has been won by the host nation in 1930 (Uruguay), 1938 (Italy), 1966 (England), 1974 (West Germany), 1978 (Argentina) and 1998 (France). The hosts have been the runners-up in 1950 (Brazil) and 1958 (Sweden), while the hosts made the semi-finals in 1962 (Chile), 1990 (Italy), 2002 (South Korea), 2006 (Germany) and 2014 (Brazil). South Africa (in 2010) is the only host nation to have failed to get out of the group stage. Russia, by the way, have yet to get out of the group stage at a World Cup (although as the Soviet Union, they did make it to the quarter-finals on three occasions).

7.       Only two countries have won the World Cup twice in succession – Italy (1934 and 1938) and Brazil (1958 and 1962). On the other end of the scale, four countries have gone into a World Cup as reigning champions only to be knocked out in the first round: Italy (twice, in 1950 and in 2010), Brazil (in 1966), France (in 2002) and Spain (in 2014).

8.       Back in 1930, the first World Cup tournament had thirteen teams take part – seven from South America (including Uruguay, the hosts), four from Europe (the difficulty of travelling to South America at the time having put several countries off) and two from North America. It consisted of a group stage (one group of four, three groups of three) followed by semi-finals and a final. 16 teams took part in the 1934 World Cup, 15 in 1938 and 13 in 1950 although there was space for 16 teams at those tournaments. The 1934 and 1938 tournaments were the only ones to be played as straight knock-outs (which was how Indonesia – or, as it was called then, the Dutch East Indies – has only ever played in one World Cup match).

9.       The 16-nation format was the norm from the 1950s to the 1970s, with a few variations along the way – in 1950 the four group winners went into a final group stage (an innovation which was never repeated), following which the top two teams from each group progressed to the quarter-finals. Then in 1974 the format changed with the introduction of second group stage, with the top two teams from those two groups progressing to the final.

10.   The tournament was expanded to 24 teams in 1982, and then to 32 teams in 1998 – allowing more teams from Africa, Asia and North/Central America to take part, although Europe and South America continue to dominate, with no country from any other continent having ever reached the World Cup final.

11.   Penalty shoot-outs were first introduced in 1978 to determine the outcome of any match at the knock-out stage which remained a draw after extra time (previously, replays had been used). The first time a penalty shoot-out was used at a World Cup, though, was at the 1982 semi-final between France and West Germany.

12.   Two World Cup finals have been decided by way of a penalty shoot-out – 1994 (in which Brazil beat Italy) and 2006 (when Italy beat France).

The story of the British bobsleigh gold

Looking into the history of the Winter Olympics, my attention was drawn to the events of the bobsleigh in 1964. There was plenty of booze. There was some highly impressive sportsmanship. And, of course, there was a British gold medal…

Back then, the Winter Olympics – the ninth holding of the winter games – were held at Innsbruck in Austria. 1091 athletes from 36 nations took part (compare that, if you will, with the statistics for the 2018 games which tell us that 2952 athletes from 92 countries are participating). From a British perspective, 1964 was the first time the BBC opted to televise the Winter Olympics (improvements in TV technology presumably combining with the fact that the nation’s sporting schedules had been decimated the year before in the Big Freeze of ’63). Prior to the games, there were concerns about an unseasonal lack of snow, which resulted in the Austrian Army being called on to carry snow from the higher ground to the ski slopes. Sadly, tragedy struck before the games had even started, with two athletes – an Australian skier and a British luger – being killed on practice runs before the opening ceremony. The latter was a Polish-born ex-RAF pilot called Kazimierz Kay-Skrzyppecki; according to Wikipedia, he was in his fifties at the time. 

Then as now, particular attention was paid by the Beeb to any event in which the British might stand a chance of winning a medal (something that hadn’t been done by Great Britain at the Winter Olympics since 1952). Just one such event stood out – the bobsleigh, especially the two-man event in which Tony Nash and Robin Dixon had finished third at the previous year’s World Championships.

Bobsleigh, which had not featured at the 1960 Winter Olympics for the first and only time, was dominated in the Sixties by European nations, most notably Italy and Germany (there were two Germanies then, but prior to 1968 they competed jointly in the Olympics as the ‘United Team of Germany’), although the Austrian and Swiss teams were also much-fancied, as were those of Canada and the USA. Going into the 1964 games, the Italians were the reigning World Champions in both the two-man and four-man events (women’s bobsleigh would not become a Winter Olympic sport until 2002).

Both of the British bobsleighers had got into the sport via the British Army, albeit in very different ways. Amersham-born Nash had taken it up while doing his National Service and had kept involved afterwards, receiving financial backing from his father – he worked for his family’s brewing company – as part of a deal whereby he wouldn’t take up motor racing which Nash senior reckoned to be far too dangerous. Dixon, meanwhile, was an Old Etonian Grenadier Guards officer who had got into bobsleigh in 1957 following a chat about winter sports with his cousin, John Bingham, while on an Army skiing holiday in St Moritz. He had a go, and was hooked (both cousins, by the way, were sons of peers who would go on to inherit their fathers’ titles; Dixon as the third Baron Glentoran, Bingham as the seventh Earl of Lucan; yes, that one). They were originally part of a four-man team, but things changed in 1961 when the team’s pilot, Henry Taylor, was injured in an accident at the British Grand Prix (he was also a Formula One driver, although following said crash he went into rallying instead). From then on, Nash took over the piloting duties despite his short-sightedness which required him to wear glasses or contact lenses while competing, and they started to compete together in the two-man event while also making up half of the British four-man team.

This was a changing time for bobsleigh. Thanks largely to the Italians, the bobsleighs themselves were becoming more technologically advanced and, although it was still an amateur sport, it was beginning to get more professionally organised. There was also a conscious effort on the part of the Italians to get some of the non-alpine countries more involved; then as now, friendships developed among competitors, and in particular Nash’s growing friendship with the Italian pilot, Eugenio Monti, paid dividends. “In 1963, the Italians had built a new run in Cervinia very similar to the Olympic run in Innsbruck, with three very big S-curves,” Dixon later recalled. “Tony and I were in St Moritz and they invited us over to open the run with them ... a very good start to the season.” 1963 saw the British pair come third in the World Championship at Igls; the Italians took first and second. 

At the Innsbruck Winter Olympics, Dixon and Nash – part of a British contingent that consisted of 27 men and nine women – shared a room at the Olympic Village. They spent the evening before the first day of the bobsleigh competition listening to records and drinking whisky; different times, the Sixties.

Day one saw the first two runs, after which the British pair found themselves in the lead; they had not done the fastest run – Monti and his partner Sergio Siorpaes had done that – but it was the total time over all of the runs that counted. The final two runs would be held the following day, and it looked as though everyone was going to be slightly slower as there was a fresh fall of snow over the course overnight (“we didn’t drink too much whisky that night, I can tell you,” Dixon later admitted). After their first run on the second day, disaster loomed as they discovered that a rear axle bolt had sheared off; they didn’t have a spare, and if they couldn’t find one they wouldn’t be able to do their fourth run. It looked like their Olympic effort would end there and then, but salvation appeared in the unlikely form of one of their competitors – Nash’s friend, Eugenio Monti of Italy, offered to take the bolt from his bobsleigh after he’d competed his run and give it to them.

“Eugenio was on the line about to do his run," Dixon later recalled, “but he came across and said: 'Don't worry. Send an Englishman down to meet me and you can have mine'." Monti's lending of a vital component to a serious competitor would go down in legend as one of the most selfless acts in Winter Olympic, indeed in sporting, history. However, it was not until many years later that it became known that Monti's bolt was not actually used on the British bobsleigh; after finishing his run he did indeed remove it from his own bobsleigh and send it up to the start for Dixon and Nash to use, but by the time it got there they had managed to find another one.

By this time, the snow that had fallen on the course was turning to slush and the British pair were unhappy with their final descent. Convinced that they'd blown their chances, the did what any self-respecting amateur sportsmen (and quite a few professional sportsmen for that matter) would do and went off to drown their sorrows. "We went to a hut near the finish and had a coffee and schnapps and thought, 'well played, but not well played'," recalled Dixon. "Then various people found us to say the world's press were looking for us. The race track had softened and nobody could overtake us." Over the four runs, they'd been 0.12 of a second faster than their nearest competitors, the Italian 'second' team of Sergio Zardini and Romano Bonagura. Monti and Siorpaes were third. The British pair duly switched from schapps to champagne.

That evening, there were a couple of final hurdles for them - getting interviewed by a characteristically overly-excited David Coleman, and getting into the medal presentation ceremony. As far as the latter was concerned, security was tight and they couldn't find a way in. Then they saw someone they knew - Lord Exeter, at the time the Vice-President of the International Olympic Committee (back in the 1928 summer games, he'd won gold for Great Britain in the men's 400-metre hurdles). "Don't worry, chaps," he assured them. "They can't start without us. You're getting the medals, and I'm giving them to you."

Having collected his bronze medal, Monti faced heavy criticism from the Italian press for his sportsmanship; his response was very much in keeping with his actions: "Nash didn't win because I gave him the bolt. He won because he had the fastest run." His generosity on this occasion was by no means a one-off. In the four-man event, he and his mechanics helped to fix a damaged axle on the Canadian bobsleigh; the Canadians went on to win gold in that event, with Monti and his team taking the bronze (the British four-man team, which included Nash and Dixon, came in twelfth). Monti's sportsmanship did not go unrecognised by the IOC, for in addition to his medals at the 1964 games he was also awarded the then newly-inaugurated Pierre de Coubertin Medal for those whose sportsmanship exemplifies the Olympic ideal. He was the first living person to be so honoured. 

Dixon and Nash, who like all British gold medal-winning Olympians were subsequently awarded MBEs as well, would go on to win the World Championship the following year at St Moritz. They also competed at the 1968 Winter Olympics, finishing fifth with Monti getting the gold (after four runs it was actually a dead heat between the Italians and the West Germans for first place; initially it was decided to give both teams the gold, as would later happen in 1998 and as has happened in 2018, but this was later changed, with the Italians being given first place on the grounds that they’d done the quickest single run). Eugenio Monti, who died in 2003, is now remembered not just as a true sportsman but as one of the most successful bobsleighers ever, with six Olympic medals (two of each colour) and nine World Championship wins to his name.

Sources: BBC, Wikipedia

How Henry Blofeld almost played for England

Earlier this month, legendary cricket commentator Henry ‘Blowers’ Blofeld – he of the plummy upper-class voice and penchant for counting pigeons and buses – retired from Test Match Special at the age of 77. After the Test match on which he had been commentating ended a short while later, he did a lap of honour of the ground and was given a standing ovation by the spectators. In an age in which a pre-requisite of sports commentary would appear to be having excelled at the highest level of the sport in question, it’s unlikely that we’ll see his like again. It is also highly unlikely that we will ever witness a septuagenarian dressed in a mint-green blazer and scarlet trousers doing a lap of honour in front of an adoring crowd ever again, even at Lord’s.

His father, as is reasonably well-known, provided the name of one of the great villains of twentieth-century fiction; Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, was at Eton with Blofeld senior and that is believed to be where he got Ernst Blofeld’s surname from.

But did you know that Henry Blofeld almost played Test cricket for England? 

The records show that he was a promising schoolboy cricketer (he even hit a century at Lord’s, for the Public Schools against the Combined Services) but due to a road traffic accident in his teens – he was hit by a bus while riding his bike – a career as a cricketer was a non-starter. Nevertheless, he did play in 17 first-class matches, most of them for Cambridge University (in typically self-deprecating fashion, he has described himself as “an opening batsman of sorts … the worst Blue awarded since the war”) as well as turning out for his native Norfolk in Minor Counties cricket in the late Fifties and early-to-mid Sixties.

Career-wise, he spent a few years in a merchant bank before going into sports journalism, and by 1963 he was reporting on cricket for The Guardian. It was in this capacity that he went to India to cover England’s 1963-64 tour.

That was one of those sub-continental tours where several of the visiting side were laid low due to either gastric problems or injury in the warm-up games, to the point that by 20^th January 1964, the eve of the of the second Test at Bombay, the England squad had just ten fit players (including, somewhat unhelpfully, both wicket-keepers). Wisden would later describe the situation as a “hospital background”. With no chance of anyone flying out from back home at such short notice to make up the numbers – the mid-Sixties were modern but not that modern – the man from The Guardian was told by the England manager David Clark that the pair of them were the only available options, and as Blowers was the younger man by two decades he would most likely get the call-up.

“I replied I would certainly play if needed,” Blowers later recalled, “but if I scored 50 or upwards in either innings I was damned if I would stand down for the Calcutta Test ... I suspect that David’s reply was unprintable.” He was told to get a good night’s sleep, just in case, but as the enormity of his situation sunk in he barely slept.

The following morning, it turned out that his batting services would not be needed; England, in this case, did not expect. But only just. One of the sick, vice-captain Mickey Stewart (Alec Stewart’s dad) discharged himself from hospital and declared himself to be fit to play even though he clearly wasn’t. Thus did “the oddest England side ever to have played an official Test” (according to the reporter from the Daily Telegraph) take to the field, with just ten fit players and a tail-end that started with the number six batsman (Middlesex’s J.S.E. Price, who usually batted at eleven, would end up going in at number eight). India won the toss and elected to bat first, and by tea on the first day Stewart was back in hospital and would play no further part in the match; Kripal Singh, the hosts’ twelfth man, was called upon to field for the visitors. They were expected to lose, but curiously India failed to push home their obvious advantage and the match ended in a draw.

For the third Test, help from home arrived in the form of Colin Cowdrey, who had not been selected in the first place because he’d still been recovering from having his arm broken while batting against the West Indies at Lord’s the previous summer. He would score centuries in the third and fourth Tests. The five-Test series ended in a draw, with neither side winning any of them.

Blowers, meanwhile, continued to work in print journalism until 1972, when he joined the TMS team.

What are those things that are given to Olympic medallists?

While enjoying watching the Olympics, a thought crossed my mind during one of the medal presentations; one of the cycling ones to be precise. The British had won the gold but my attention was drawn to the Canadians receiving the bronze, who appeared to be having a conversation among themselves along the lines of ‘what’s this?’ when they were presented with that colourful paperweight-like object that they got with their medals.

Along with questions like ‘why are all those seats empty?’, ‘why has the diving pool turned green?’ and ‘who comes up with the ideas for some of these events?’ (admittedly a question at every Olympics, that last one), this has puzzled me no end. Frankly, I’m surprised that the BBC hasn’t educated/informed us as to what these objects are, or maybe I missed that amid the celebration of all things Team GB.

In search of enlightenment, I turned to the Internet. It turns out that the little figurines are in fact 3-D representations of the Olympic logo – which for this games shows three human-like figures linked together to look like the Sugarloaf Mountain (or maybe spell out the word ‘Rio’; perhaps both). It’s the first time an Olympic logo has been done in 3-D form, apparently.

There’s also a reason why they are being presented to the medallists, and it ties in very neatly with the idea of this being a sustainable Olympics – as also seen with the smaller-than-usual flame and indeed the medals themselves; the gold ones are made from gold extracted without the use of mercury, while the ribbons are apparently made from recycled plastic bottles. In previous years, those athletes who’ve made it to the podium have received a bunch of flowers as well as their medals; the flowers usually get thrown away but the figurines – which some sources say can be used as holders for the medals – are of a more permanent nature.  

Now that I’ve learned this, I can’t help but wonder how soon it will be before some of the figurines start to appear on eBay.

Football and nostalgia

This Saturday, it will be fifty years since England won the World Cup. Funny really; that final took place just over twelve years before I was born but I can tell you more about it than a lot of games that I’ve actually seen. Odd, too, that so much attention is being devoted to looking fifty years back into the past at a time when our present-day national side has been doing so monumentally badly. But maybe that’s the point; if dwelling on the present – or rather, the recent past given that that infamous defeat at the hands of Iceland was over a month ago – is just depressing, why not opt for wallowing in history, or rather history as remembered in the warm fuzzy glow of nostalgia?

Why do we English (and I include myself in this, for the only England football shirt I own is a replica of the red, heavy cotton one as worn for that game) look back so fondly to 1966? Simple – it is the only time our national side won, well, anything of note, and football fans are a notoriously nostalgic lot. It’s ubiquitous at club level; every club has its own specific time-period that its supporters fondly look back upon – there’s a whole sub-culture that includes but is by no means limited to retro shirts, long-retired pros revered by grown men who saw them play years ago and various publications (of which more shortly). Internationally I suppose that it is the same with other countries. I have, for example, met Hungarians, some of them my own age, who’ve been more than happy to remind me about what happened when Puskas and co. turned up at Wembley in ’53.

With unusually good timing, I have recently been reading a book called 4-2 by the film critic David Thomson; published in 1996, it is to all intents and purposes a blow-by-blow account of that famous final, interspersed with various diversion which touch on snippets of autobiography and the exploration of themes such as the nature of football fandom, the tradition of the English as ‘good losers’ and the contrast between living in a (football-induced) dream and getting on with life – shades, perhaps, of Fever Pitch here which is somewhat appropriate as it came out at the height of the mid-Nineties football literature boom. It’s an engrossing read, a pretty good football book (albeit one with the odd diversion onto certain American sports which perhaps should have been edited out) which I am surprised I’ve only just encountered, with the best part (in my opinion) being the seven-page chapter on Geoff Hurst’s second goal – you know the one I mean, don’t you?

4-2 was originally published to coincide with the thirtieth anniversary of that World Cup win, meaning that it first hit the bookshops just before the 1996 European Championship started. There was plenty of nostalgia about 1966 back then, and there is now a growing sense of football-related nostalgia about Euro 96, twenty years on. What with England having only ever won one major international football tournament, failed campaigns – not the bad ones like Euro 2016 and the World Cup two years ago, but the ones where England were genuinely in with a shout of getting to the final – are also being celebrated (which, I suppose, is why Pete Davies’s excellent book All Played Out, published shortly after the 1990 World Cup, got made into the documentary film One Night in Turin six years ago).

Earlier this year, a book called When Football Came Home by Michael Gibbons was published; it tells the story (with the benefit of twenty years-worth of hindsight) of Euro 96 from an English viewpoint. It’s a fascinating read even for those of us who think we remember it all (we don’t; memory can sometimes play strange tricks, especially where football is concerned) although the title, a play on the chant from the Baddiel & Skinner song, is hardly original (the legendary Des Lynam used it for a BBC doco on the tournament several months after it took place).

Gibbons resolutely refuses to buy into the rose-tinted view that England were brilliant – they weren’t; a few sublime moments (the bits everyone remembers) obscured what was basically an OK side that had been unlucky not to qualify for the 1994 World Cup but which, come 1996, had the benefit of home advantage. The high point of England’s Euro 96 campaign, the 4-1 win over the Dutch – a match that was analysed in some detail in Jonathan Wilson’s superb book The Anatomy of England six years ago – is summarised thus: “In football the result is sacrosanct, and can drench any performance with a tin of industrial gloss. The received wisdom that has developed since the 4-1 – that England battered the Netherlands in open play – is spurious … the Netherlands had enjoyed more shots, more corners and more possession than their opponents … England didn’t outplay the Dutch, but they did outscore them.” Overall, Gibbons has done a great job in a book which doesn’t flinch from portraying the tournament as the mediocre, poorly-attended (Wembley aside) affair that it really was; even the ugly side of Euro 96, such as the accompanying violence and the ever-odious behaviour of Piers Morgan, gets an airing here.

As if there wasn’t enough footballing nostalgia in the air already, I have contributed something to it myself – although my latest published article is not about 1966 or even 1996, and it doesn’t concern England. There is a link with the 1966 World Cup, but only in passing – Eusebio, the highest scorer in that tournament, features in this story. It is the story of how the unfancied Toronto Metros-Croatia managed, against the odds, to win the North American Soccer League forty years ago this summer. My interest in football on the other side of the Atlantic was aroused when I found out that Toronto has its own MLS team, and I was intrigued to find that Toronto’s footballing history goes back way before Toronto FC joined said league in 2007. My retelling of the story of Toronto’s forgotten footballing triumph – and it’s a fascinating underdog story involving an ageing star, a player walk-out and a training-ground bust-up among other things – can be read in the latest edition of the retro football magazine Backpass. No prizes for guessing what the main focus is in the rest of the magazine...

The European Championship: A potted history (part two)

Before we continue with something that probably should have been finished before the current tournament started, let’s have a peek at the European Championship trophy. Its official name is the Henri Delaunay Trophy, named for the first General Secretary of UEFA who came up with the idea for the tournament (in the Twenties) but died five years before the first one. Delaunay had been a referee prior to being a football administrator, but gave up on refereeing after an incident in which he was struck in the face by the ball; he broke two teeth and swallowed his whistle as a result. The current version of the trophy is the second one – the original was considered to be too small in comparison with other trophies like the European Cup. The new one, which has been used since 2008, is 24 inches tall, weighs 18 lbs and is made of sterling silver.

Anyway, on with the story, picking up from where the first part ended in the Nineties. When England successfully bid to host the 1996 European Championship, the assumption was that there would be eight teams as in previous tournaments. However, a sharp rise in the number of UEFA members (caused by the break-ups of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia) prompted a rethink and the tournament was doubled to sixteen teams; four groups of four followed by the knockout stage. Euro 96 (slogan: ‘Football Comes Home’) was also the first time that a tournament was referred to by the word ‘Euro’ followed by the year – this has been done with tournaments ever since and has even been applied retrospectively to previous tournaments. Four countries – Bulgaria, Switzerland, Turkey and newly-independent Croatia – qualified for the European Championship for the first time, while the Czech Republic (not Czechoslovakia) and Russia (not the Soviet Union) also made the trip to England.

The first round saw one of England’s finest performances – a 4-1 win over the Netherlands (that one Dutch goal would ensure that they would also get through to the next stage, eliminating Scotland on goal difference). Elsewhere, the Czech Republic beat Italy (who were knocked out in the group stage two years after reaching the World Cup final) while reigning champions Denmark went home early as Portugal and Croatia made it through. The knockout stage would see the first use of the golden goal rule (if it goes to extra time, next goal wins) at an international tournament. As it happened, two of the quarter-finals (Spain-England, France-Netherlands) and both semi-finals (France-Czech Republic, Germany-England) were decided on penalties, following which Germany beat the Czech Republic in the final by way of a golden goal. This marked Germany’s first international trophy as a unified country.

Four years later, the European Championship experimented with joint hosts – Belgium and the Netherlands – for the first time (appropriately, the tournament slogan was: ‘Football Without Frontiers’). There were two first-time qualifiers, Norway and Slovenia. Portugal were the big surprise of the group stage, winning their group (which included England and Germany, both of which crashed out in the group stage – historically, more of a  shock for the latter at the Euros). Elsewhere, Turkey progressed at the expense of hosts Belgium who became the first hosts to be eliminated in the first round. The quarter-finals saw the Netherlands thrash Yugoslavia (as Serbia & Montenegro were then called) 6-1. In the semi-finals, France beat Portugal 2-1 on the golden goal rule – and they would beat Italy in the final by the same scoreline and method to win their second European Championship, becoming in the process the second country (West Germany having been the first, back in the Seventies) to be the World and European Champions at the same time.

For 2004, the format stayed the same although the golden goal rule was replaced by the silver goal for the knockouts – in extra time, if a team were to be ahead after the first period they would be declared the winner. This would be the only time this rule was used at an international tournament – widely perceived as a failed experiment (it and its predecessor had been intended to produce more attacking play in extra time, which hadn’t really happened), it was dropped after Euro 2004, and thereafter the pre-1996 extra time format (15 minutes each way, regardless of how many goals scored) was reinstated.

Greece had hitherto not distinguished themselves in major international tournaments; a draw against West Germany in the 1980 European Championship had long been overshadowed by a disastrous performance at the 1994 World Cup (played three, lost three, scored none, conceded ten). In 2004, they went to Portugal as 150-1 outsiders (only Latvia, playing at a major tournament for the first time, had worse odds). Surprisingly, they beat the hosts in the opening game although they only managed to get out of the group on goal difference. In a tournament full of surprises, Germany, Italy and Spain all went out in the group stage. Elsewhere, England came second in their group, only to lose to Portugal on a penalty shoot-out in the quarter-final. Meanwhile, Greece beat France and then triumphed over the Czech Republic in extra time to set up a final that was the same fixture as the opening game – Portugal v Greece (the first time this had ever happened at a major international tournament). In an underdog triumph to rival Denmark’s 1992 win, Greece won.

The reigning European champions have always had to qualify for the next tournament (they’ve usually managed to do so, France’s non-appearance in 1988 being the exception) – unlike the hosts, and by co-hosting the 2008 tournament (with Switzerland), Austria made its first appearance at a European Championship (slogan: ‘Expect Emotions’). Neither host nation was expected to get out of the group stage, and that is what happened (for the first time at a European Championship). Also appearing at the Euros for the first time was Poland (who were also eliminated in the group stage). Turkey were something of a surprise package, making it out of their group after a last-gasp winner over the Czech Republic (in a match that had seen the Turkish goalkeeper sent off). Meanwhile, Croatia, the Netherlands and Spain won all of their group games, while France crashed out with one point (which was one better than Greece). In the knockouts, Turkey beat Croatia on penalties, Spain saw off Italy in a similar manner and Russia knocked out the Netherlands with two extra-time goals. Turkey’s bid for glory failed with a semi-final defeat to Germany, although the last-minute winning goal wasn’t seen by many due to the transmission being interrupted by a thunderstorm at the TV broadcasting relay station. Spain, meanwhile, thrashed Russia to earn their first appearance at a major final since 1984. They beat Germany 1-0 to win their first major trophy since 1964, and added the World Cup to their trophy cabinet two years later.

Four years later, Poland and Ukraine co-hosted Euro 2012 (‘Creating History Together’), the last tournament to use the 16-team format. Ukraine were the only first-time participants, with Poland and Ireland both taking part in the Euros for the second time. Once again, both hosts failed to get out of the group stage. The Czech Republic became the first team to win a group with a negative goal difference (a heavy defeat to Russia followed by one-goal wins over Greece and Poland), the Netherlands lost all three of their games (drawn into the ‘group of death’, in which all four teams were in the top ten of the FIFA rankings, they lost to Denmark, Germany and Portugal), Ireland equalled the worst-ever performance by any country at a European Championship (no points and a goal difference of minus 8, the same as Yugoslavia in 1984, Denmark in 2000 and Bulgaria in 2004) and England topped their group for the first time since 1996. A familiar story followed in the quarter-finals, though, as they went out on penalties for the third time at the Euros (and the sixth time in their history) – to Italy, this time. Italy went on to reach the final thanks to a 2-1 win over Germany, while Spain reached the final by way of wins over France and Portugal (on penalties, that last one). Could the reigning World and European Champions become the first-ever country to retain the European Championship? Yes they could – by thrashing Italy 4-0 in Kiev.

The European Championship: A potted history (part one)

The European Nations Cup, as it was originally called, began in 1960 although for that first tournament several countries, notably England, Italy and West Germany, refused to take part. After qualification by way of a knock-out tournament, the four-team finals tournament was held in France and was won by the Soviet Union. For the next tournament, 29 countries entered the knockout qualification competition (up from 17 the previous time, although Greece withdrew after being drawn against Albania) which began in the summer of 1962 and was played in home-and-away legs until the semi-finals, which were held in Spain in 1964; thus, only the semi-finalists were deemed to have ‘qualified’ – a bit harsh on Luxembourg, who’d made it to the quarter-finals. From the four semi-finalists, Spain was chosen to be the host nation and went on to win it by defeating the Soviet Union in the final.

For 1968, the tournament had a new name – the European Championship – and a new method of qualification – a group stage, followed by a two-leg quarter-finals round with the winners going through to the finals with one of those winners being chosen as the hosts. For the first and only time, the results of two years of the Home International Championship – that annual four-way tussle between the Home Nations – served as one of the qualifying groups. England made it to the finals tournament for the first time, and lost the semi-final to Yugoslavia; hosts Italy beat the Soviet Union in the other semi-final by way of a coin-toss after the match finished goal-less after extra time. In the final, Italy and Yugoslavia drew 1-1, meaning that it went to a replay for the only time in the tournament’s history; Italy won the replay 2-0. England won the third-place play-off.

Four years later in Belgium, West Germany won the European Championship for the first time (beating the Soviet Union 3-0 in the final), and would go on to become the first European Champions to also hold the World Cup when they won the latter two years later. In Yugoslavia in 1976, they made it to the final again – only to lose to Czechoslovakia on penalties, the first time an international final was decided in this way (and also the only time the Germans have ever lost on a penalty shoot-out).

As of 1980, the European Championship was expanded so that the finals tournament had eight teams, and this also marked the first time that the host nation – Italy in this instance – was chosen in advance and so didn’t have to qualify. The first round now consisted of two four-team groups, the winners of which went straight through to the final while the runners-up got to contest the third-place play-off. That last one, between Czechoslovakia and Italy, went to a penalty shoot-out and was only decided in favour of the Czechs after someone finally missed the 18^th penalty; perhaps unsurprisingly, the third-place play-off was scrapped for future tournaments. England, who’d qualified for the first time since 1968, failed to get out of the group stage with a draw, a defeat and a win (perhaps the most interesting thing to happen to them was when play was held up in their match against Belgium after the police had to use tear-gas on the crowd). West Germany beat Belgium in the final to become the first country to win it for the second time.

Semi-finals were introduced for the 1984 tournament which was hosted by France (the flawless organisation of this tournament would play a key role in that country’s successful bid to host the 1998 World Cup). Thanks to nine goals by Michel Platini (including two hat-tricks), the hosts won – beating Spain 2-0 in the final. This was to be the last time to date that the tournament was won by the host nation. The 1988 tournament in West Germany was notable for there being no goal-less draws, sendings-off or extra time, and it was won by the Netherlands (long regarded by the Germans, who they beat in the semi-final, as their biggest rivals on the football pitch) in emphatic style. England, by contrast, lost all of the their games – a surprise defeat to Ireland (playing in their first European Championship) followed by thrashings at the hands of the Dutch (courtesy of a Marco Van Basten hat-trick) and the Soviet Union (who would go on to be the losing finalists).

The 1992 European Championship (official slogan: ‘Small is Beautiful’) was won by a country that hadn’t actually qualified. Denmark had lost out to Yugoslavia in the qualification stage, but found themselves in the tournament 11 days before it started after Yugoslavia was banned from appearing due to the break-up of that country. After drawing their first game against England, the Danes lost to hosts Sweden and then beat France to get through to the semi-finals, where they beat reigning European Champions the Netherlands on a penalty-shoot out before beating World Champions Germany 2-0 in the final. England, meanwhile, managed two draws and a defeat; in the other group, Scotland (who’d qualified for the Euros for the first time) were beaten twice but did manage a win against a transitional ex-Soviet Union side playing under the provisional name of the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Football reading

Football literature can be a bit hit-and-miss sometimes, but there are some good books on the game out there. Here are a few that I’ve read recently…

How Soccer Explains the World by Franklin Foer

I’m using this book’s American title (it was, of course, published in Britain as How Football Explains the World) because this is the version that I happened to pick up in a (London) charity shop. Personally, I’m fed up with the whole thing about how some people get into a tizzy when other people (Americans and Canadians, mostly) call football soccer – for me, the tipping point came when I realised that Why England Lose by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski had been published elsewhere as Soccernomics which is, quite frankly, a much better title (that book, after all, was basically a football version of Freakonomics). I have decided the football/soccer thing is something about which I no longer care; let people call it what they will, and enjoy the game. Back to the book: Sadly, but perhaps inevitably, it doesn’t really explain how football (or soccer) explains the world – a title like that may be eye-catching, but you’re setting yourself up to fail (rather like Ed Smith with his book What Sport Tells Us About Life which was more about how things that happen in sport can (funnily enough) relate to real life, as opposed to explaining them). Here, Foer is looking at football phenomena and trying to put them into a wider, non-footballing context – the focus is on globalisation but it’s more about how that has affected football rather than the other way round. He is, I think, trying very hard to write a modern-day version of that Nineties classic Football Against the Enemy by Simon Kuper (also published as … you get the idea) and he fails badly on impartiality, especially when he turns his attention to the Old Firm derby in Glasgow (could he have at least tried to have included a view or two from the Rangers/Protestant perspective to balance out the obvious Celtic/Catholic bias?). He also allows his love of Barcelona to take over what could have been an interesting chapter on football and its appeal to the middle classes, the result being that he loses his way somewhat. Shame, as he may be onto something when he uses football as a prism to look at how globalisation (Nigerians playing professionally in Ukraine!) hasn’t done much to reduce local or even tribal rivalries and hatreds.

The Game of Our Lives by David Goldblatt

Now this is the good stuff – a very informative, warts-and-all book about modern English professional football and its impact on modern society, and how the game has gone from an unfashionable and in some cases embarrassing fringe event to being a key part of the entertainment industry. Goldblatt, who won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year for this, sets out to put the modern game in its social and historical context and he’s done a fine job. The chapter on how the match-day experience has changed since the forming of the Premier League – commemorative statues, Pukka Pies, glossy programmes with poor-quality content, overly loud PA systems – is particularly good, as is the chapter on football and racism (this book, written in advance of the last World Cup – a popular time for publishers to bring out football books – was published before the Malky Mackay email scandal) and the part where he looks at what’s happened city by city, right down to the smaller clubs whose woes rarely reach the attention of the Premier League-obsessed national press. This well-written book has been impressively researched (we’re even told what team the Queen apparently supports!) and deserves to be read by anyone who’s ever wanted to know more about how football came to occupy such a central place in modern English society.

Who Invented the Stepover? by Paul Simpson & Uli Hesse

I must admit to being a bit of a fan of those New Scientist books like Why Don’t Penguins’ Feet Freeze? where answers are provided to off-the-wall questions. This book is to all intents and purposes a football version of that (the authors even acknowledge this in the introduction) and it sheds some light on football’s origins, development and culture. Why do games last for 90 minutes? Has any footballer ever played two matches on the same day? What’s the point of dugouts? These and more questions are answered within the pages of this book, in which you will find out about the ref who once added 45 minutes to a schoolboy fixture, the non-league player who was banned for two years, the original ending of Escape to Victory (to which Pelé and Bobby Moore both objected) and the time a group of professionals took on an elephant in a penalty shoot-out. It’s fascinating stuff, but there are a few errors. The pictures are accompanied by the odd basic typo that anyone with even a vague knowledge of footballing history will be able to spot; for example, Brazil are at one point named as the winners of the 1954 World Cup. There’s the odd omission too – in establishing the most brutal game of football ever played, the authors go over the World Cup games that, due to their excessive on-field violence, have been unofficially designated as ‘battles’, only to miss out the most recent (it happened in 2006 and the book was published in 2013, so no excuses there). Despite these errors, the book is a good read that can be dipped into at leisure, and should be enough to keep fans entertained.

Whatever Happened to Billy Parks? by Gareth R. Roberts

Novels about football don’t have a good reputation, mainly because what happens on the pitch in real life can be strange enough (tellingly, after making his name with Fever Pitch – a memoir, not a novel – Nick Hornby didn’t try his hand at a football novel). For me, the best of a poor bunch was Simon Cheetham’s gloriously bonkers Gladys Protheroe: Football Genius which was a footballing take on the old ‘insert a fictional character into real-life events’ trick, with plenty of chaos alongside a lot of references to Watford (perhaps unsurprisingly, it had a very niche appeal, and were it not for the fact that I support Watford I would probably never have heard of it, let alone read it). I mention this because Whatever Happened to Billy Parks? does a similar thing, albeit without the stuff about Watford. The titular character is a washed-up star from the Seventies – West Ham, Spurs and a couple of England caps – who has been deserted by his family and is reduced to telling stories about his career in return for drinks in pubs. At this low and rather pathetic ebb, he’s offered the chance to go back in time and redeem himself by rewriting history – well, see if he can score against Poland in the infamous Tomaszewski Game of 1973 (the one where England failed to qualify for the 1974 World Cup). He is summoned to appear before the Council of Football Immortals (five legendary managers seemingly trapped for eternity in a series of committee rooms) while he looks back at his life via a series of chapters based on matches he played in – at times, it felt genuinely autobiographical! This goes to show how well Roberts researched this, and how good a job he did at creating the realistically flawed character that is Billy Parks. The writing, needless to say, is excellent. All football fans should read this if they haven’t already done so. I, meanwhile, will be on the look-out for more of this author’s work.