Fat Eck’s World Cup build-up (Part 2 - Deadly Deutscher derby!)

Awright, so Peter is off to Schalke “Noool Feeeeer” to be the next Fritz Szepan. Fair enough - he was brill in the Champions League and did the biz for us against Semllik in Eck’s first 18 moinths in charge but he was also posted missing for three-quaters of his Rangers on-field career. At least he’s taking a step up - so he’s not been treated shabbily by The Teds and that means he leaves us with all due reward for his major part in our 2nd best ever Champions League run - everyone’s consciencse is clear and we’ll be able to follow follow his progress on Setanta next season. In Germany.

Who mentioned Germany?

Ow aye …

When Portugal face Angola in Cologne on Sunday 11th June 2006, that old commentator’s favorite will be wheeled out by every journalist in the Rhine Energie stadion. “There’s more than World Cup points at stake here”, they’ll say. As much as that’s true for every international football match ever played - national pride is, after all, always at stake - those hacks and pundits will, in this case, be hinting at something else, something “jucier”, something other than the football, which will keep the neutral glued to his TV set.

A quick glance at the team-sheets will offer a major hint as to the nature of this Group D fixture’s “X factor”: Among the players expected to be available in this Europe v Africa clash is goalkeeper Joa Ricardo, defenders Jacinto and Delgado, midfielders Gilberto and Figueiredo and strikers Santana, Flavio and Maurito. And all of these Latino-sounding names will appear on the team sheet of … Angola.

Portuguese is the official language of Angola. The West African nation only gained independence from its former colonial rulers in 1975. The whole process was steeped in bloody conflict. One reminder that three decades hasn’t been long enough to cure the bad blood felt on the Angolans part came when they had four players sent off during a “friendly” defeat in Lisbon in 2001. The game was abandoned. This summer, in their first World Cup finals appearance, the Angolans may feel fate has paired them with the Portugese, that they can prove a point to the whole world. They wouldn’t be the first to use FIFA’s premier tournament as an outlet for political and cultural grudges.

In fact, when Portugal made THEIR first appearance at the World Cup finals they were drawn in the same group as their most famous former colonial subjects - Brazil. At Goodison Park, Liverpool, Pele was kicked out of the 1966 World Cup by by the country which gave him his language. The Samba stars were the holders and, in fact, were going for their third consecutive World Cup. On paper it looked as though the country of Vasco Da Gama the explorer would take a fooballing lesson from the country of Vasco Da Gama the football club. Eusebio’s two goals and Morais’ repeated assaults on Pele, ensured the Europeans eventually went on to the semis while the holders went out.

The non-footballing aspect to certain matches has coloured almost every World Cup to one extent or another. Even the very first final, Uruguay versus Argentina in 1930 saw “derby rivalry” taken to extremes. The debut World Cup tournament came to a conclusion in Montevideo’s Centenario stadium, so called because, that summer, the Uruguayan hosts were celebrating 100 years of independence from Brazil. Their fellow Spanish-speaking neighbours, whose captal city is only celebrated from Montivideo by the width of the River Plate, were also little more than 100 years independent. The nationalist sentiment upped the ante: Argentine fans arriving for the final by boat were searched for guns and knives at Montevideo harbour. The Belgian referee had to settle a pre-match argument over which kind of ball should be used - an Arentine brand or a Uruguayan brand - and, when the hosts ran out 4-2 winners, the Uruguayan consulate in Buenos Aires was besieged by a mob of locals who had to be dispersed by police gun fire.

The tournaments of 1934 and 1938 were darkened by the build-up to World War II. Ideologies split the competing nations into one of two political camps. Italy, who lifted the Jules Rimet in both these years, wore a badge on their shirt which depicted an axe wrapped in wooden sticks - this is the “fasces”, the root of the word Fascist. Mussolini’s hysterical nationalism dominated the 1934 finals, played in Italy, with the Rome final in the PNF, or National Fascist Party stadium - nowadays the Stadio Flaminio, home of the Italian Rugby Union XV. One of only two players to take a winners medal from both tournaments was the great Giuseppe Meazza - his sarcastic fascist salutes at the end of each tournament proved that Il Duce had many enemies within his own country too.

Austria and Germany’s colourful footballing rivalry - Which would go on making itself known in World Cup matches throughout the century - reached its nadir during these two pre-war tournaments. With Hitler taking power in 1933, the Germans were already hated by half of Austria and a lot of Italy (Mussolini had initially threatened war on Hitler if he invaded Austria) because of ‘Der Fuhrer’s” open intention to annex his country of birth. The two nations met in the third/fourth place play-off in Italy and then, after the Anschluss, played as the SAME nation at the 1938 tournament: The French crowd hated this representation of Hitler’s dark intent and “Greater Germany’s” opponents in the first round of an entirely knockout tournament were Switzerland - another neighbour, sworn to political neutrality but disgusted and by the empire-building on their doorstep. The game ended 1-1 and in the replay the Swiss players, fired by national pride, scored four goals without reply to come back from 2-0 down against a side composed of players from arguably the two greatest national teams either Austria or Germany ever produced.

In 1962, in Chile, Italian journalists sent home disparaging articles about the local culture - some of which fatuously compared the looks South American women most unfavourably with their Italian counterparts. By the time Italy and Chile met each other in the opening round, the “Battle of Santiago” was inevitable. Two Italians were sent off, one player had his nose broken and the home side, also bearing a grudge because of the Italian FA’s long history of capping South American-born players even after they’d made several appearances for their native land, started the proceedings with a deluge of spit aimed at their opponents.

The saliva which left Frank Rijkaard’s mouth, bound for the permed mullet of Rudi Voeller during Italia 90 hinted at the long-running feud between the Netherlands and Germany. It’s mostly to do with the war and it’s mostly borne by the Dutch but most countries in Europe could muster an anti-German vibe on that score. The 1974 World Cup, which produced the famous final between Holland and West Germany, saw the German hosts face a much more pertinent and political opponent in the opening group stages: East Germany.

Jurgen Sparwasser scored the only goal of the night in Hamburg as the DDR beat their capitalist neighbours. Amazingly, this was East Germany’s only appearance at a major tournament and their first ever meeting with their separated countrymen. Just to prove the political context, the communist authorities refused to allow a second meeting, despite several requests for friendly re-matches. East germny have a 100% record against West Germany.

Many observers feel the West germans deliberately lost this match as they had already qualified and it allowed them to reach an easier second round group. However, Helmut Schoen, the West German manager had been forced to flee from his native Dresden by the constrictive Soviet regime shortly after the war - he was distraught when Beckenbauer, Muller and co failed to win the biggest grudge match of his distinguished life.

The seeds of the Warsaw Pact’s downfall were arguably sewn in Poland, by Lech Walesa’s dissident free trade union movement, Solidarity. The Communist leaders of the country outlawed the movement and imposed Martial Law from 1980 till 1983. In the middle of all this came the 1982 World Cup finals where Poland not only finished third but, as Spanish Police removed “Solidarnosc” banners from the crowd in Barcelona’s Nou Camp stadium lest they cause offence to the watching Polish authorities, Zbigniew Boniek and his team-mates helped eliminate the Soviet Union, the puppet-masters of Warsaw’s oppressive regime.

These days the USA face as many politically-motivated opponents as Germany or the Soviet Union once did. In 2002 they took part in a veritable bloodbath of a second-round match with their southern neighbours and economic supplicants Mexico. At least the US won this match, unlike the 1998 France encounter with Iran. Memories of the Tehran embassy hostages and the American government’s reciprocated hatred of the Ayatollah were supposedly put to one side in Lyon eight years ago but there’s little doubt both sides were extra-motivated.

We all know about Argentina’s confusion of the English national team with a Great British national team which led to some unsavoury scenes at the end of the Mexico World Cup quater-final in 1986 and it’s maybe best we all try to forget that Honduras and El Salvador actually went to war when the latter eliminated the former from the qualifiers for the 1970 tournament in Mexico. What has to be remembered, first and foremost during any World Cup and any game of football is that Bill Shankly was wrong: It isn’t more important than life or death - it really is just a game, which we should never allow to be hijacked.