Rich J's Top 5 90s World Cup Moments

I love the World Cup..who doesn't? Well, Sepp Blatter's trying his best to ruin it, but then that's pretty much what he always has done...allegedly, said Rich, unaware that it's not actually still the 90s er...not! Ha!

Anyway, every World Cup brings highs and lows...more of the latter if you're from these lands, but here I shall give you my own personal top 5 moments from the 3 tournaments that took place in the 90s. Take note, these are not just the best goals or most famous incidents, this is my personal selection of memories from Italia 90, USA 94 and France 98 so yes, John Aldridge kicking off against Mexico may have been funny, but it's been played out so often now, it's just no longer that special.

Enjoy!

1. 1990 - Costa Rica V Scotland - Geovanny Jara's Backheel

Look everyone, it's Scotland at the World Cup...Yeah I know I've done joke before, but it's still funny! OK, so maybe not to everyone... Anyway, let's revisit the glory days when they used to get to Round 2...wait, what? They never did?  Ooooooooh....
But seriously, back in 1990, it was quite common for Scotland to be at the World Cup and it was only 12 years prior when those north of the border jetted off to Argentina while those 'back home' sat and watched Archie Gemmill tear Holland a new one.


Their opening match of Italia 90 came against a side with no great expectations and so in the sunshine in Genoa, Scotland, in their garish change strip, looked for a positive start. 4 minutes after the interval, that positivity was looking shakey.

Hector Marchena made a diagonal run before playing in the protagonist, defender Geovanny Jara. In the box, close to the penalty spot, it appeared Jara would turn and shoot, but no. Instead, he immediately rolled the ball into the open space directly behind him, allowing the incoming Juan Arnaldo Cayasso to carefully place the ball past the closing Jim Leighton. Costa Rica continued to defend resolutely and held on, Scotland unable to break through for an equaliser.

Ultimately, this early defeat cost them dear as they ended up exiting at the group stage once more as Costa Rica beat the group's whipping boys Sweden while Scotland lost to a single goal against Brazil in what was a much closer contest than the result could ever suggest.

For me, this just epitomised Scotland's World Cup campaigns. A combination of losing games they should have won, conceding a quirky goal and a brave, ultimately futile performance against a better side.


2. 1994 - Yordan Letchkov's header V Germany

One team who are always at the World Cup, and almost always in the final are Germany. Coming into USA 94 as title holders, they started off in their usual fashion...never looking brilliant, but somehow managing to progress. A lacklustre 1-0 victory over Bolivia in the opening match was followed by a stalemate against Spain. In their final group match, they were 3-0 up against South Korea before almost collapsing as Korea pulled 2 goals back, as they had done against Spain.

A jittery second round tie against Belgium saw yet another late scare and another 3-2 scoreline, which meant they would face Bulgaria in the quarters. While Bulgaria will be remembered as one of the best teams at this tournament, Stoichkov going on to share the Golden Boot with Russia's Oleg Salenko, the fact they were in the quarter finals was quite jammy. Opening the tournament with a 3-0 thrashing from Nigeria, they then dished out their own hiding against Greece...but then again, everyone was doing that. They booked their place after defeating a freshly Maradona-less and already qualified Argentina in the final group match and a penalty shoutout win over Mexico in the 2nd round.

Despite the Germans' shaky start, no-one really expected anything other than yet another semi-final appearance for Deutschland and sure enough, a 47th minute Matthäus penalty put them in the lead. Germany's failure to score a second seemed incidental until a fantastic Stoichkov free kick gave the Bulgarians a sniff of history-making. 3 minutes later, a cross makes its way into the German box. Letchkov escapes his marker and dives for the ball, sending it past the helpless Ilgner. Letchkov's celebration would suggest not even he thought it was going to work, but work it did and the nation of Bulgaria (and pretty much every other nation outside Germany) leaped to their feet with him as they looked forward to the first World Cup semi final without Germany since 1950!


3. 1990 - Maradona Cracks Brazil Open 

Like a nut...a Brazil nut...see!

Despite ultimately reaching the final, Argentina were a shadow of the team that had taken the trophy 4 years earlier in Mexico. Adorned in a rather dated looking Adidas kit, they'd lost their opening match to the totally unfancied Cameroon (an obvious Top 5 moment being Massing's attempted murder of Caniggia), beaten USSR thanks to another piece of Maradona handiwork and drawn with Romania, leaving them in 3rd place and scraping into Round 2.

There they faced Brazil, who conversely had won all of their group matches and were favourites for this all South American tie. A rather turgid game saw relatively few chances, when, with only 10 minutes left, Maradona, in a rare flash of his 86 best, rode several tackles on a run to the edge of the box, before threading a beautiful pass through to Caniggia, who made no mistake in ending the Brazilian dream once more.

Argentina would go on to drain the life out of the remainder of the tournament, playing for penalties in the 1/4 and semi finals, before ironically being defeated from the spot in the Final. Maradona may have ended the tournament in tears, but moments like these just confirmed what could have been.


4. 1990 - ITV Opening Titles & The San Siro!

Ah Italia 90! My first proper World Cup. Home from school on a friday, I sat down to watch the opening match and my mind was about to be blown!

Firstly, Rod Argent's awesome theme tune, Tutti Al Mundo burst onto my screen and I was in love. Cod opera, stirring synth strings and orchestra stabs accompanied bouncing footballs on a map of Italy, all in lovely red, white and green computer graphics. Hello the 90s!

Once the theme tune was over, I was barely recovered when this hoved into view.

This was in the pre-internet days when photos of foreign stadia were like gold dust and the only hint I'd had of what this would look like was my Merlin World Cup 90 sticker album, which only showed it mid construction. The behemoth that is the San Siro remains to this day the ground that has most bowled me over and set off an unhealthy obsession with football grounds that has remained with me ever since. Just look at it! Giant girders, endless spirals, pure brutalist / modernist architecture at its finest. Even now, 23 years later, it still makes me gaze in awe.

Typically, Blogger can't find the youtube clip that exists of the opening titles so it's here instead!


5. 1998 Dennis Bergkamp! Dennis Bergkamp!

This is my favourite memory from 1998, not because of the goal itself (I wanted Argentina to win), but for the Dutch commentary that accompanies it. Obviously, this is a retrospective memory as I wasn't watching this in Holland at the time, but who cares? It's still the 2nd best piece of commentary ever, after the excellence of Bryon Butler for Maradona's 'goal of the Century'.

I'll say nothing more about this...just sit back and enjoy the perfect combination of a sublime goal and raw emotion.

The Football Grounds of Europe

Most people have a list of things they'd save in the event of a fire. I have three books on my list (which kind of suggests it's a long list...I mean, I have a cat and three kids, but then again, the kids aren't on the list, they're old enough to save themselves... and doing the maths, that means each child can carry one of the books! Result!). Anyway, the books...the first of these is 'Mexico 86 - A Pictorial Review' by Phil Soar and John Bone, a glorious hardback book covering the whole of that tournament in great detail. The 2nd is 'True Colours' by John Devlin and the third is the subject of this article.

Have you ever wondered what various football grounds around Europe looked like towards the end of the 1980s?  Hasn't everyone?  Luckily for you, the great Simon Inglis has this covered with the excellent Football Grounds of Europe, published just before the 1990 World Cup which, may I remind you, was 22 (twenty-two) years ago!



As I have already confessed, I have an obsession with football stadiums (Stadia? Apparently both are acceptable) and as mentioned in that review, it's fascinating to see how much has changed in the intervening years. For example, 22 years ago, the Stadio Delle Alpi didn't exist, whereas now... oh right... bad example.

The Delle Apli Roof...sadly, no longer with us

The book starts with a brief introduction, before covering in depth, the stadia that were to be used for Italia 90. As it was written whilst most of these were mid (re)construction, it's somewhat a shame none of the pictures are of the completed venues, though given the ease with which one could find such info on the internet, it's perhaps a blessing that we instead get to see them before they became what they are today (or in the case of the Delle Alpi, what they were up until a few years ago). One point of note in the intro is FIFA's criteria for World Cup stadia - a minimum capacity of 80,000 (3/4 covered) for the opening and final games and at least 40,000 with the main stand covered for all other matches. I purchased this book in October 1994 which meant the World Cup had just been staged in the US where the rules about covered seating seem to have been put aside.

Stadium Porn...

On to the stadiums and up first is the stadium that started my obsession, the Stadio Giuseppe Meazza - more commonly known as Milan's San Siro. This beast of a place, the ultimate in brutalist and modernist architecture, the Lloyds building of football stadia first captured my attention during the opening match of the 1990 World Cup. Just home from school on that friday, ITV's fantastic opening titles, 'Tutti Al Mondo' (suck it, Pavarotti!) make way for my first ever glimpse of this marvel. Gigantic red beams suspending a massive roof over a sheer maze of lines, it remains to this day, in one's humble opinion, one of the most striking sights, not only in modern stadium design but in architecture as a whole.

As previously mentioned, as it was under construction at the time, there are no pictures of the completed roof, however that does mean we are treated to a view from inside the ground, several beams in place, but with a long way to go; the giant yellow cranes, later sold to a Japanese shipbuilder, looming over the extended third tier.

Brutal Beauty in the making

As with every stadium covered in detail in the book, the ground is given a comprehensive history and in the case of the 1990 World Cup venues, a lot of detail is presented on the trials and tribulations that went into their construction / redevelopment. The Luigi Ferraris stadium in Genoa (another of my favourites) seems to have gone through its fair share of hassle, ranging from over-reflective security screens that blinded spectators to having to purchase extra buildings in order to be able to build a second tier on one side.

A stadium of two halves...sorry...

I do think the timing of this book was perfect as Italia 90 was perhaps the first tournament to see such modern, inspiring designs used so widely and had it been written at any other point in time I feel such interesting stories would perhaps have never seen the light of day. You can read about them all on Wikipedia, but the little details aren't there and it's these gems of info that truly make this a great book.

A perfect example of this is that, as Genoa's ground was completed in two halves (split right down the length of the pitch), by the time the second half was completed, the first was already covered in graffiti - a situation lamented by the author as it meant the ground was never pristine. Again at Genoa, the second tier originally had holes in the floor to let light through, but the crowd assumed these were to dispose of litter, much to the chagrin of those in the tier below. The book is full of this kind of exhaustive research and is one of the many reasons reading it even now for what must be the 100th time, is still a joy.

I could spend all day on the grounds of Italy, however I shall move on after one last item of note. The magnificent, yet ultimately flawed Stadio Delle Alpi is never referred to as such in the book: at the time it was known merely as the Nuovo Comunale.

From Italy we move to Austria for a short stop off. The Weiner (Prater to the locals, Ernst-Happel to the modern world) stadium is covered in detail, however it's the home of SK Rapid Vienna that provides yet another Inglis ingot (sorry). While fans may currently be captivated / increasingly irritated by the 'Poznan' goal celebration (hey, welcome to 1961!), Simon treats us to the story of the Rapid Viertelstunde, a.k.a. the Rapid Quarter Hour, "a sustained period of handclapping the fans have traditionally used to stir the team's recovery from lost causes."

On the move again and next we pay a visit to Belgium and inevitably to Heysel. When the book was written, the ground had not yet been redeveloped into the current King Baudouin Stadium and looks exactly as it had done in 1985. The disaster and the aftermath is covered and Simon makes the point that, at the time, there seems to have been a desire to try and forget what happened there, with the infamous Block Z wall that collapsed rebuilt exactly as it was before and no form of memorial at the ground at all. It was only 20 years afterwards that a memorial was finally placed at the new stadium.

Soon after we've left Belgium we land in yet another reminder of a world from the past.. .a country known as Czechoslovakia. This is another reason this book is a true football classic as it contains football grounds from the aforementioned Czech Republic / Slovakia as well as Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union and East and West Germany. In the short space of time between this book being published and me buying it, all of these places had ceased to exist and had in fact created 23 new nations.

Questionable murals...

Another ground that is no longer around greets us as we land in Denmark at the Idrætsparken, now completely rebuilt and known more simply as the Parken. The most stunning feature of the old ground was the roof of the main stand, or rather the underside of it. A painting competition was held by the Hydro Oil Company in 1985 and the prize was to have the winner's submitted artwork re-created on a gigantic scale, covering the underside of the main stand roof. The winner was 9-year-old Michael Jorgensens and his piece was indeed enlarged several hundred times and adorned the roof. From the picture, you can see it didn't exactly show up very well and, frankly, it makes you wonder what the quality of the entries (over 13,000 of them!) was like if that was the winner. Sorry Michael.

Give it 30 years...

Moving through the rest of Europe, it becomes very apparent just how many stadiums have either been redeveloped, rebuilt or consigned to history and it's probably easier to count those which haven't changed at all compared with those that have. While this may sound like an obvious point given the sweeping changes that have taken place at football grounds in this country since the Taylor Report, when you look at how many grounds had changed much in the 20 year period prior to the book's publication, the rate of change in the last two decades has been unprecedented. One point that is repeatedly made throughout the book is how far behind Britain had been in stadium design. While concrete cantilevers made their debut in the 1930's in places such as Florence's Stadio Comunale, Britain remained hopelessly in love with the column for a good 30 years. Can you imagine a situation now whereby Britain's grounds were only just beginning to adopt design ideas seen abroad in 1980?

Camp Nou in 1989...or is it 2012?

Large sections are granted to France, Spain, West Germany and the Soviet Union and even in those countries which had only recently held tournaments (Spain in '82, West Germany in '74) and had therefore only just had large redevelopment programmes, most of the grounds shown have still changed significantly.  One notable exception to this is Barca's Camp Nou, which, aside from additional seating replacing standing areas, looks exactly the same in 1989 as it does today.

The final chapter covers the four main stadiums in the former Yugoslavia, one of which - the Maksimir, then known as Stadion Dinamo - was set to be the stage for a huge riot between the mostly Croat fans of Dinamo Zagreb and the mainly Serbian Red Star Belgrade, which left over 60 people injured. The larger ramifications of this day, however, played out over the next few years as the region fell into a bloody civil war and this riot is seen symbolically by some as the start of those hostilities.

Overall, The Football Grounds of Europe is a truly great publication and one which should be in every football fan's collection as, even if you have no particular interest in the grounds themselves, the stories and history encompassed within its pages are reason enough to buy a copy. One can only hope that one day, Mr. Inglis might recreate his journey for a FGOE 2 for, while info and pictures of any European stadium is now just a click away, the detail and love of the subject he brings is something not easily found elsewhere.

You know, going back to that fire thing... these days I could probably get most of these off eBay... in which case the kids can go fetch some more of my football shirts. Hurry children, the smoke is thickening!