Soccer in Sun and Shadow

The 1974 World Cup

President Nixon was hanging from the ropes, weak-kneed, buffeted ceaselessly by the Watergate scandal, while a spaceship was hurtling toward Jupiter and in Washington an army lieutenant who had murdered a hundred civilians in Vietnam was being found innocent: after all, there weren’t more than a hundred, and they were civilians, and what’s more, they were Vietnamese.

The novelists Miguel Ángel Asturias and Pär Lagerkvist lay dying, along with the painter David Alfaro Siqueiros. General Perón, who had burned his mark on Argentina’s history, was on his deathbed. Dying too was Duke Ellington, the king of jazz. The daughter of the king of the press, Patricia Hearst, was falling in love with her kidnappers, robbing banks, and denouncing her father as a bourgeois pig. Well-informed sources in Miami were announcing the imminent fall of Fidel Castro, it was only a matter of hours.

The dictatorship in Greece was crumbling, and so was the one in Portugal, where the Carnation Revolution was dancing to the beat of “Grândola, vila morena.” The dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet was tightening its grip on Chile, while in Spain, Francisco Franco was dying in the Francisco Franco Hospital, sick with power and age.

In a historic plebiscite, Italians were voting to legalize divorce, which seemed preferable to daggers, poison, and other methods favored by tradition for resolving marital disputes. In a no less historic vote in Switzerland, the leaders of world soccer were electing João Havelange president of FIFA, ousting the prestigious Stanley Rous, while in Germany the tenth World Cup was getting under way.

A brand-new cup was on display. Though uglier than the Rimet Cup, it was nonetheless coveted by nine teams from Europe and five from the Americas, plus Australia and Zaire. The Soviet Union had lost out in the run-up for refusing to play a qualifying-round match in Chile’s National Stadium, which not long before had been a concentration camp and the site of executions by firing squad. So in that stadium the Chilean team played the most pathetic match in the history of soccer: it played against no one and scored several goals on the empty net, to cheers from the crowd. In the World Cup, Chile did not win a single match.

Surprise: the Dutch players brought their wives or girlfriends with them to Germany and stayed with them throughout the tournament. It was the first time such a thing had happened. Another surprise: the Dutch had wings on their feet and reached the final undefeated, with fourteen goals in their favor and only one against, which out of sheer bad luck had been scored by one of their own. The 1974 World Cup revolved around the “Clockwork Orange,” the overwhelming creation of Cruyff, Neeskens, Rensenbrink, Krol, and the other indefatigable Dutch players driven by coach Rinus Michels.

At the beginning of the final match, Cruyff exchanged pennants with Beckenbauer. And then the third surprise occurred: the Kaiser and his team punctured the Dutch party balloon. Maier who blocked everything, Müller who scored everything, and Breitner who solved everything, poured two buckets of cold water on the favorites, and against all odds the Germans won 2–1. Thus the history of the ’54 Cup in Switzerland, when Germany beat the unbeatable Hungary, was repeated.

Behind West Germany and the Netherlands came Poland. In fourth place Brazil, which did not manage to be what they could have been. One Polish player, Lato, ended up as leading scorer with seven, followed by another Pole, Szarmach, and the Dutchman Neeskens with five apiece.