After two more draws (1-1 and 0-0) at the 1988 and 1996 Euros, on July 4, 2006, Germany and Italy met again in the semifinals of the World Cup. The venue was the Westfalenstadion in Dortmund, an intimidating ground for any visiting team.
In a remarkable affair reminiscent of the 1970 World Cup semifinal at the Azteca (see my previous post here), extra time was needed. The climax defies description. So let’s leave it to Fabio Caressa and Giuseppe Bergomi (1982 World Cup winner at age 18) of Sky Italia to resurrect the memories — spine-tingling ones from an Italian point of view — of that cathartic evening.
Follow me on Twitter during the game tomorrow: @futbolprof
E daje Italiaaaaa!
Category: Video
July 11, 1982: the World Cup final at the Santiago Bernabeu in Madrid. Four years earlier, West Germany had drawn 0-0 against a young, enterprising Italian side in the second group stage of the 1978 World Cup — the Argentinean Generals’ Mundial. (Video highlights here.)
1978 was also the year of the assassination of Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro (who was held for a month in an apartment building adjacent to my elementary school), and the inauguration of President Sandro Pertini, a dedicated socialist and former anti-Fascist resistance fighter. We didn’t know it back then, but “The Years of Lead” were about to come to an end. Football — or calcio as we call it — was about to show us that the road to the future went beyond Left and Right.
With the pipe-smoking Pertini enjoying the 1982 final next to King Juan Carlos in the VIP section of Real Madrid’s majestic stadium, the Azzurri demolished the (West) Germans 3-1. Not everything went perfectly that night. Graziani’s injury forced an early substitution and then Cabrini — my mother’s favorite player — missed a penalty: the only time I ever heard my uncle, a man of the cloth, swear audibly.
The second half was all Italy. Physically and mentally fatigued after their penalty shootout victory gainst Michel Platini’s France in an extraordinary semifinal (highlights here), Germany caved in. Paolo Rossi opened the score with his sixth goal of the tournament and then Tardelli made it 2-0, celebrating it with such emotional abandon that we imitated it for years on playgrounds and pitches around the land.
When Altobelli added a third late in the game Pertini leaped out of his seat, waving his arms, rejoicing, telling everyone around him that “adesso non ci prendono più!” (Now they’re not going to catch us anymore!). Breitner got a consolation goal, but it didn’t matter. When the Brazilian referee theatrically picked up the ball with his hands, raised it above his head and blew the final whistle, match announcer Nando Martellini pronounced to the masses that we were “Campioni del Mondo! Campioni del Mondo! Campioni del Mondo!”
Millions of Italians thundered in a massive impromptu street carnival the likes of which had not been seen, the elders told us, since Liberation. Giving in to pleas from me and my friend Fabio, my uncle, in his clerical collar, honked his rickety FIAT 127’s horn all the way from our parish in the Marche hills to coastal Pesaro so that we could experience these historic celebrations. A quarter of a century later, another generation would experience the intoxicating feeling of World Cup victory . . . and Germany, once again, would play a key role in Italy’s success story.
Come back tomorrow for the final installment of Germany’s history of failure against Italy.
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Germany’s History of Failure Against Italy
Germany is favored to win Thursday’s Euro 2012 semifinal against Italy. While Die Manschschaft has played the best and most consistent football in the tournament, the Azzurri have won just one game in regulation and reached the semifinal only after surviving a penalty shootout against England. History provides a counterpoint to soccernomics-style prognostications, however, because the Germans — or West Germans — have never defeated Italy in Euros or World Cup tournaments.
It started with a forgettable goalless draw at the 1962 World Cup in Santiago del Chile, but ignited in a globally televised World Cup semifinal played at the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City on June 17, 1970, which Italy won 4-3 in extra time. Outside the Azteca a plaque commemorates it as “The Match of the Century.” The video above combines footage of the original broadcast with Fabio Caressa’s 21st-century play-by-play commentary. Rumor has it that this clip is streaming on a loop in the Azzurri’s team hotel . . .
Come back tomorrow for part 2 of Germany’s history of football failure against Italy.
By Mohlomi Maubane
SOWETO, South Africa — “Why the f**k did he not do that at West Ham!!!” reads a YouTube comment in response to the video clip above featuring Benni McCarthy’s superb free kick in the 2011 Telkom Cup quarterfinal between Orlando Pirates and Moroka Swallows. This is the best goal I have seen in the PSL era: an extraordinary strike in a tense match Pirates were losing by a goal to nil. And while Swallows players were still scratching their heads in bewilderment, he got a second and sealed the match.
West Ham were the last European team McCarthy played for in a chequered 14-year European career whose highlight was a 2004 UEFA Champions League medal with FC Porto under Jose Mourinho. A sometimes controversial character who had endless run-ins with the South African Football Association, Benni set tongues wagging in the local football scene when he decided to return to South Africa. Some critics believed he was over the hill while others knew he still had something to offer. The man himself said he still had a lot of football in him, and with the right service, he would excel. At Orlando Pirates, he found the perfect setting to shine although he would have to do it without Dutch coach Ruud Krol who had just left after three years at the helm.
The Mighty Bucs boasted one of the best squads in the country and were brimming with confidence after winning a treble the previous season. Krol’s long term (at least in South African terms) afforded him the required time to build a team and mould plentiful talent in service of the collective. Team-play became paramount above all else, and prima donnas were booted out. The defense became mean. Opponents learned the hard way that beating Pirates meant playing to the final whistle. For example, in a November league game against Swallows. The Dube Birds looked set for a 1-0 victory, but as my friend Katiso Motaung wryly noted, Pirates managed to turn defense into attack and Jele equalized in the nanoseconds it took the referee to lift the whistle to his mouth to blow full time.
If Didier Drogba represents the image of a contemporary African hero on the global stage then who or what does Senegalese striker El Hadji Diouf represent?
Meet Digital Diouf. David Kilpatrick’s intriguing post in the New York Times GOAL blog tells us about “We Tripped El Hadji Diouf: The Story of a Photoshop Thread,” a recent exhibition at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York.
The story is about the intersection of sport, art, and digital technology. At the heart of it is a three-second clip of Diouf (at Rangers) sent flying by Hearts midfielder Ian Black’s tackle. The video was photoshopped and then posted on SomethingAwful.com, where users imaginatively molded it into extraordinarily creative and wide-ranging videos. Eventually, 35 of the videos were looped together and displayed at the Museum of the Moving Image.
“While many of the images embrace Diouf’s agony as some kind of karmic retribution for his villainy,” Kilpatrick writes, “others allow technology to revise the outcome and provide a happy ending.” Rumor has it that Dakar’s digital griots are planning a sequel.
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Goal of the Week: A Goal and…a Spare
By Simone Poliandri
To celebrate the end of the football season and awaiting the kickoff of EURO 2012, Goal of the Week issues its concluding gem with a funny twist. On May 12, Toshihiro Aoyama of the Japanese league team Sanfrecce Hiroshima scored the go-ahead goal on a 70-meter-long shot that caught visiting Yokohama F. Marinos goalkeeper by surprise. Already a fantastic feat, this goal was paired with a much creative “Bowling” celebration by the home side akin to the “famous” goal celebrations introduced and performed by Icelandic team Stjarnan FC.
For the record, Yokohama won the game 1-3.
This goal offers a smile and provides the icing on the Goal of the Week first season cake.
See you in the fall!
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How a “Nutmeg” found its way into Football
Why I won’t be using the term NUTMEG in football again. Wiki dispels the notion the term derives from the never present Tony Nutmeg of Leeds United, and in citing Brain Granville and other football scholars suggest the term probably came from nutmeg export business where unscrupulous traders slipped wooden replicas into sacks and barrels. But like Roy Hodgson’s Apartheid years (also recently missing from Wiki and currently being airbrushed from history by the BBC and others) the most likely origin of the term and how it slipped into the football narrative comes from the Transatlantic Slave Trade.