22 MEN AND A BAG OF WIND
The Ultimate History of the World Cup
TIM PARNHAM and STEVE HAINES
About the Authors
TIM PARNHAM was born in 1963 in Dronfield, Derbyshire and educated at Dronfield Henry Fanshaw School before spending two years at Teesside University reading Business Studies before moving on to Leeds Metropolitan University to specialize in Hotel and Catering Management. He then took a teaching degree at the University of the West of England at Bristol for two years before taking up his present post as Head of Business Education at Windsor Girls' School. He saw his first game was at Bramall Lane, aged seven, a Blades reserve game against Coventry, but because his Granfather and best friend were Wednesdayites, he started supporting the Owls. He first went to Hillsborough as a ten-year-old on a wet and windy winter's day, the season Wednesday went down to Division Three for the first time in their history. Seeing the "Boxing Day Massacre" when Wednesday beat United in front of Division Three's largest ever crowd, was something, but perhaps his finest memory came when Wednesday beat the Blades in the 1993 FA Cup semi-final at Wembley. The victory was made even sweeter by the fact that he was sat in the middle of the United fans. Steve was sat next to him wearing his Rovers scarf.
STEVE HAINES: was born in 1955 in Haslingden, Lancashire and was educated at Accrington Grammar School, before spending six years studying at London (Royal Holloway and Birkbeck Colleges) and Reading
universities. He then taught history at St. Crispin's School in Wokingham and later became Head of History at Windsor Girls' School. He played football at an very amateur level regularly until his knees gave way and has supported Blackburn Rovers from a very young age. He attended his first game at Ewood Park against Wolverhampton Wanderers and for years after watched the Rovers tailspin into what he thought was terminal decline, until "Uncle Jack" Walker picked them up and made them champions. That was a great day, but sweeter
were the two victories against Burnley in the 2000-01 season.
Preface
This book was conceived on a summer afternoon in June 1998. Steve had been looking around for a book that would guide him comprehensively through the forthcoming World Cup Finals in France, but all he could find was a lot of gloss with very little substance. It was then that we got together and decided to fill the need for such a book ourselves. We had always said that we would write together, but it would be economic history rather than football that would have been the topic - Steve is a history teacher, Tim teaches economics. After several informal meetings over a beer we decided what would go into this encyclopedia of the World Cup. We were looking for something that could be both read and could also be dipped into and used as a reference book. It could therefore be enjoyed by the general reader and by the football nutcase as well. However, neither of us had any experience of writing and getting a publisher was something quite alien to us. Fortunately, we had friends who work in television and related media, and they were able to give us a very helpful kick-start.
We ran our initial synopsis by Jamie Doran, a filmmaker with Atlantic/Celtic Films, and Martin Parsons of Reading University introduced us to his publisher - DSM Technical Publications. In October 1999 the deal was signed and the book is now due for launch in readiness for the Korea/Japan tournament in 2002. Our thanks go DSM for taking us on.
Our book, about the 'bag of wind' and the demented beggars that try to get it between the two sticks, covers a history of the development of football from ancient times to the founding of the English football league in 1888. It gives a history of international football from the first internationals between England and Scotland through to the inception of the World Cup in 1928 and charts the history of each World Cup tournament from 1930 to 1998. Each World Cup has its own section. They includes a general historical background, the story of that World Cup, full reports on all the best games, biographical sketches of the stars of each tournament, and all those little but interesting stories that happen around the World Cup that make it the tournament that it is today. It also looks at the build up to Korea/Japan 2002, including the teams taking part, the characters to look out for, the qualifying tournament and the politics that surround the media frenzy that is the World Cup. We also managed a number of contributions from major personalities in the game. Archie Gemmil recalls his experiences
in 1978, the late Bryon Buttler talks of the enormity of the World Cup and Alan Green expresses his joys and disappointments in 1982. Kevin Keegan recalls England-Spain in 1982, Brian Labone remembers Mexico in 1970, Sammy McIllroy talks about his experiences with Northern Ireland and John Inverdale paints a picture of what it was like to be in Paris the night France won. David Turner gives a fans recollection of the 1966 World Cup semi-final between England and Portugal and Marvin Andrews of Trinidad and Tobago expresses his pride in scoring the first World Cup goal of the 2002 series. Finally, there is a full statistical section for each tournament.
The spelling of players' names and use of accents has presented us with enormous difficulty owing to differences that appear in the various sources. We have tried to be as accurate as possible with these and apologize for any inconsistencies.
Contents
The Origins of Football
The Origins of the World Cup
The Winged Goddess Enters
The Uruguay World Cup, 1930
Fascists, Fights, Knock-outs and Replays
The Italy World Cup, 1934
Hitler, Mussolini and the Battle of the Races
The France World Cup, 1938
Pride comes before a Fall for the Mighty
The Brazil World Cup, 1950
A Heatwave, a Punch-up and the Armchair Fan
The Switzerland World Cup, 1954
Love, Losses and the Boys from Brazil
The Sweden World Cup, 1958
Drink, Drugs and a Goal Drought
The Chile World Cup, 1962
Ramsey, Ráttin and the Boy from Mozambique
The England World Cup, 1966
Altitude, Attitude and Artistry
The Mexico World Cup, 1970
Terrorism, Taylor and Total Football
The West Germany World Cup, 1974
Daniel, Super Mario and the Dutch Lions
The Argentina World Cup, 1978
Maggie, Michel and the Italian Bad Boy
The Spain World Cup, 1982
Glasnost, Nuclear Fallout and the Hand of God
The Mexico World Cup, 1986
Razzmatazz, Romario and the Divine Ponytail
The USA World Cup, 1994·
Reggae, Ronaldo and a French Revolution
The France World Cup, 1998
The Qualifying Story
Korea/Japan 2002
Chapter 1
The Origins of Football
"This is the people’s passion. It is the common denominator between nations and political and armed antagonism. It is an alternative or an accompaniment to the smile which breaks down barriers. People with no social or cultural connection may suddenly discover that the invocation of magic names such as Pelé, Real Madrid… Manchester United’can work a charm or spell."
Kier Radnedge, Encyclopaedia of Soccer, July 1998
The modern game of football (or soccer to some in the world) may have been the invention of the English, but it was not with the English that the game first began. Indeed, variants of the game were being played long before there was a place called England or a race known as the English.
There is plenty of good, hard evidence to suggest that people have been kicking bags of wind for thousands of years. The Ancient Egyptians are thought to have had religious ceremonies and fertility rites that involved aspects which can be linked to the development of the game. What is more certain is that the Chinese of the Ts’in Dynasty (255BC to 206BC) played a form of football as part of military training and that during the Han Dynasty(206BC to 220AD) a type of football called ‘tsu chu’was played in which even the emperors took part. ‘Tsu’can be roughly translated as ‘to kick’, whilst ‘chu’denotes a stuffed leather ball. By the seventh century AD the Japanese were playing a game involving the use of footballs called ‘kemari’or ‘askemari’. This was played by eight men kicking a ball on a square ground with trees to mark the corners. The four trees were a willow, a cherry, a pine and a maple, and the ground measured approximately fourteen metres square. It is possible that this Japanese game may have originated in China, especially since there were sporting links between the two cultures and records indicate that they may even have played games, the very first international matches on record.
In other parts of the world, too, games that involved the kicking of footballs developed. The Polynesians of the Pacific are known to have used a ball made either of pigs’bladders or bamboo fibres, whilst the Inuit of Alaska and Northern Canada played a game called “aqseqtuk”. This was a sort of football on ice, using a ball stuffed with grass, animal fur or moss. One Inuit legend tells of a game played between two villages, with goals ten miles apart, though quite what the rules were or how games were organised is less clear. One imagines that it had similarities to the rough and tumble football practised in England in the Middle Ages. On a like vein, tribes of North American Indians, in what is now the USA, played a game called “pasuckaukohowog”, which means “they gather to play ball with the foot”. It was often played on wide beaches, with goals up to a mile apart, and may have been played by as many as a thousand people at one time. The games certainly involved violence, like the ones played in England, and serious injuries were common. It is said that players disguised themselves so that they could not be identified for the purpose of retaliation. Unfinished games were often carried over to the next day, with a celebratory feast being organised for the end of the contest.
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