{UAH} When Tunisia claimed continent's first win - Football - nation.co.ke
|
6:25 AM |
No comments |
MONDAY, MAY 19, 2014
When Tunisia claimed continent's first win
Germany's Rolf Russmann (in white jersey) battles for the ball with Tunisia's Ben Aziza during their 1978 World Cup match. They drew 0-0. PHOTO/Getty Images
More by this Author
In the annals of the riskiest voluntary public promises ever made by a football coach, the one announced by Abdelmajid Chetali obviously takes the cake.
Who was Abdelmajid Chetali?
He was coach of the Tunisian team to the 1978 World Cup finals in Argentina.
He had been a highly successful player in his younger days, too, having represented his country in the 1960 Rome Olympics.
He had clocked a goodly 70 matches in his international career.
He topped all this by leading his country to their first ever World Cup appearance – Argentina '78.
Tunisia were grouped with Poland, Mexico and West Germany, then the reigning champions.
Before their first game against Mexico, Chetali told the whole world that he would shave his beard only after Tunisia had won a match at the World Cup. He caught everybody's attention at once.
Africa had participated in the World Cup since 1970 – and none of its teams had won a single match there.
Fifa guaranteed Africa one place in the World Cup after the continent staged a mass boycott of the qualifying process of the 1966 tournament.
At that time, the Confederations of Africa, Asia and Oceania had been lumped to contest a single slot in the competition while Europe had eight and South America three.
Major fight
It was the first major fight that Africa had with Fifa and it won; the next would come 40 years later when it demanded to host the tournament and won the right to do so with South Africa doing the honours. Fighting for one's rights clearly works.
After the boycott, Morocco were the continent's first representatives in 1970 in Mexico.
They performed honourably – leading West Germany 1-0 for a while before just losing 1-2.
They then went down 0-3 to Peru and drew 1-1 with Bulgaria in their final match.
In 1974 in West Germany, Africa's third and first sub-Saharan team at the big stage, Zaire, didn't score a single goal; they lost 0-2 to Scotland, 0-9 to Yugoslavia and 0-3 to Brazil.
Longest beard
Now Chetali said all this would be history – before the first ball was kicked. Many people at the time said he was an incredible romantic.
Others predicted a new entry into the Guinness Book of World Records for the longest beard on earth.
And they wondered how it would all end given that Chetali was a man of his word. Few thought he knew something they didn't.
Come Tunisia's first game against Mexico and the Carthage Eagles thumped them 3-1. Experts ate humble pie for their next meal.
Africa's first victory at the Fifa World Cup had come in an extraordinarily emphatic fashion.
But Chetali was not done yet. Poland, the eventual group winners, just managed to squeeze a 1-0 win against his high flying Eagles.
Then Tunisia locked West Germany 0-0. The shaky world champions just managed to limp into the next round at Tunisia's expense because of what one journalist described as a "6-0 day of shooting practice against Mexico.
The luckless Mexicans returned home in an unannounced flight timed for 3 am to evade enraged fans who were waiting at the airport with stones."
Argentina '78 is one of my most memorable World Cups.
I remember it for so many things. There was the world's best striker of the day, Mario Kempes of the host nation after whom one of my schoolmates and best friend, Gor Mahia and Harambee Stars midfielder Sammy Owino was named.
Hugh McIllvaney, the venerable master of sports journalism, described him as "at least 50 per cent of his team."
Then there was his captain, central defender Daniel Passarella, a gritty workaholic, a commanding leader with highly pronounced rough edges; forwards were always advised to watch his elbow.
To this day, Passarella is recognised as one of the greatest defenders of all time; he was also at one time the leading scoring defender in the world with 134 goals in 451 matches. In 2004, Fifa named him among the 125 Greatest Living Footballers.
Banning orders
Passarella later became Argentina's coach.
A puritanical man, he issued banning orders for long hair, earrings and homosexuals from his squad. This proved quite divisive and great players like Fernando Redondo and Claudio Caniggia refused to play for him.
He just told them to get lost.
Though suspected of unsavoury conduct in the match that got them into the final, I still think Argentina's 1978 squad was simply brilliant, one of the best ever World Cup squads.
When years later I learnt that their elegant midfielder, Osvaldo Ardiles had starred in the film "Victory" alongside Pele and England's Bobby Moore, I bought the DvD which I still retain.
The literal meaning of today's cliché, "you don't change a winning team" or its colourful American variant "don't fix it if it ain't broke" was also famously proved practically true in the 1978 World Cup.
At that time, a precocious 17-year-old, a genius by universal acclamation, burst into the Argentine football scene.
His name was Diego Maradona. There was a huge clamour for his inclusion in the national squad.
But Cesar Luis Menotti, the chain smoking left wing intellectual who coached Argentina, would have none of it.
He even told his country's ruling military junta to get off his back on that matter, something akin to a death wish then.
It was Argentina versus Menotti. Menotti won, and Argentina proceeded to win the Cup.
Everybody wanted Menotti
Now everybody wanted a piece of Menotti and his wisdom. They got it. He said simply that his winning squad had played together for a long time and each player knew the other well.
They were finishing each other's moves, if not sentences, flawlessly.
A late introduction of the genius Maradona would have upset that balance with unpredictable consequences.
Yes, of course, the country agreed with him. But he earned Maradona's eternal wrath.
Kenyans who have no recollection of these events will be deeply interested in the fateful connection between Argentina '78 and Kenya 2008 to the present.
It so happened that in 1976 – two years before the World Cup – there was a military coup in Argentina.
The new junta was as right wing as they come.
Its chief was an army general named Jorge Videla. His junta immediately launched a hunt for suspected leftists and thousands of people were murdered or simply disappeared. It was called the Dirty War.
Security forces conducted a bloody campaign against anybody suspected of association with socialism.
These included journalists, trade unionists, students and just about anybody the security forces didn't like.
Up to 30,000 people are believed to have disappeared.
Some European teams to the World Cup made it known that they were not willing to shake Videla's hand, which they said was dripping with the blood of the innocent.
Johan Cruyff, the Dutch superstar, stayed away from Argentina and it was widely believed he did so for political reasons.
Years later, he said this was not the case. There were even feeble suggestions to move the Cup from that badly scarred land.
In the end, everything went according to plan, but Videla took the precaution of offering no hand to shake.
A group of women, all whose children had disappeared, organised themselves into a group known as the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo.
They held demonstrations outside the presidential palace in defiance of the government's anti-terrorism laws.
The Dirty War lasted between 1976 and 1983 when democracy returned to Argentina.
When it ended, trials of the generals who had prosecuted it started. It was internationally known as the Trial of the Juntas.
Among the people in the dock was Videla who eventually got a sentence of life in prison.
The trials captured world attention, being the first since the Nuremburg Trials that followed World War II.
Moreno Ocampo
The Chief Prosecutor was a man known as Julio Cesar Strassera. And his deputy, who gained such star status that he later became the first prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, was one Louis Moreno Ocampo.
His handiwork is very much with us today. I will say no more on this issue because, just as our unwritten laws require every Kenyan to describe land matters in this country as "emotive", Ocampo's name is emotive, too.
I have said that Argentina's victorious team in 1978 was one of the best that I have ever seen.
I can repeat that statement any time. However, it is imperative to write about the suspected scandalous way in which they reached the final and how it led to a change in a key Fifa rule.
It was clear from day one that Jorge Videla's reviled military dictatorship was going to stop at nothing to win the World Cup in an effort to rally patriotic fervour in the populace.
Some people equated it with Adolf Hitler's dark efforts to show Aryan racial supremacy during the 1936 Olympics.
They are ones who said that the junta had opened the vaults of the Central Bank of Argentina and let Peruvian players laugh all the way into them.
Since 1978, tens of accounts have been written about the highly suspicious match between Argentina and Peru that sent the hosts to final meeting with the Netherlands. I like the lucidity of the on-line encyclopedia, Wikipedia quite.
It said: "Group B was essentially a battle between Argentina and Brazil, and it was resolved in controversial circumstances.
In the first round of group games, Brazil beat Peru 3–0 while Argentina saw Poland off by a score of 2–0. Brazil and Argentina then played out a tense and violent goalless draw, so both teams went into the last round of matches with three points.
"Argentina delayed the kick-off of its last match to await the result of the Brazil-Poland encounter. Brazil won by a 3-1 score, meaning Argentina had to beat Peru by four clear goals to reach the final.
They managed to do it. Trailing 2–0 at half-time, Peru simply collapsed in the second half, and Argentina eventually won 6–0.
"Conspiracy theorists claim the Argentine military dictatorship interfered to ensure Argentina would defeat Peru.
However, these claims were refuted by the Peruvian captain and several Peruvian players.
"The story varies wildly depending on the accuser and no proof has ever been shown.
There is no agreement on whether they were threatened or bribed, whether it was the trainer, all the players or some players, or whether it happened before the game or during half time.
Initially, the rumours stemmed from the Brazilian media due to the fact that the Peruvian goalkeeper had been born in Argentina.
No evidence
"There's no agreement on what encompassed the deal either.
An alleged deal, reported by the British media as an anonymous rumour and only decades later, involved the delivery of a large grain shipment to Peru by Argentina and the unfreezing of a Peruvian bank account that was held by the Argentine Central Bank.
"Another deal, published by a Colombian drug lord in a controversial book, simply involved the Peruvian team being bribed without any political implications.
A third deal, claimed by a Peruvian leftist politician, encompassed sending 13 Peruvian dissidents exiled in Argentina back to Peru.
On top of the contradictions between stories, no evidence is shown in any case."
Fifa is slow to change its rules. It is not until the following World Cup in Spain that it decided that the final two group ties in any World Cup would be played simultaneously.
This rule has since cascaded into all competitive league and Cup matches where advance knowledge of the outcome of one contest can tempt the other contenders to do deals.
Back to the beginning: Adel Amrouche, what do you think of your neighbour, Abdelmajid Chetali?
I am restricted in what I can say but surely, Gillette is not the best thing a man can get, is it? It's a World Cup win, no?
gachuhiroy@gmail.com
0 comments:
Post a Comment