World Cup Mexico 86 : In Recent Years, World Cup Has Not Been a Barrel of Laughs

MEXICO CITY —  Just when and where the World Cup lost its innocence, no one really knows.

Perhaps it never had it. Perhaps it is just in retrospect that the tournaments of old seem to have been a lot more fun than those of today.

Certainly the soccer games were just as fiercely contested on the field, just as bitterly debated in the stands. But there was also another side to them, one that is missing now.

Somewhere between Montevideo and Mexico City, the laughter went out of the World Cup.

For instance, could what happened to the U.S. trainer during the 1930 semifinal against Argentina in Uruguay possibly happen today? No, but at the time it had all the earmarks of a Charlie Chaplin skit.

The trainer, whose name is best forgotten, ran onto the field during the game, stumbled, dropped his medical kit and broke the bottle of chloroform it contained.

As he bent to retrieve his supplies, he met the rising chloroform fumes head-on and slowly crumpled to the ground. As he was carried from the field, he was the only one who wasn’t laughing.

In the same tournament, there was a great debate over the ball. Each finalist, Uruguay and Argentina, insisted that a ball manufactured in its own country be used in the championship game.

Belgian referee John Langenus, whose sphere of influence, as it were, covered such matters, decided that Argentina could use its ball in the first half and Uruguay could use its in the second. The Uruguayans trailed at halftime, 2-1, but won, 4-2.

Langenus, incidentally, almost did not make it to the match. He was in Buenos Aires overnight and took a boat across the River Plate on the morning of the game. Fortunately, he made an early crossing. Eight of the 10 boats that tried to cross were fogbound, and their passengers did not reach Montevideo in time to see the game.

A historic footnote to that first World Cup competition took place more than a decade later, when one Alex Villaplane was shot by French Resistance fighters during World War II for allegedly collaborating with the Nazis. In the opening game of the 1930 tournament, between Mexico and France, the French were led onto the field by their captain, Alex Villaplane.

Before the war intervened, however, there were two other World Cups played, and each contained their share of the fascinating, the bizarre.

The 1934 tournament in Italy, for instance, had as one of its highlights an astonishing goal scored by Italy’s Raimondo Orsi. In the title game against Czechoslovakia, Orsi dribbled through the Czech defense, faked a left-footed shot, then struck the ball with his right foot.

The ball, swerving in a particularly odd manner, eluded the Czech goalkeeper, and the Italians, having tied the score, went on to win in overtime. The next day, Orsi tried more than 20 times to repeat the shot for the benefit of photographers. Even though there was no goalkeeper in the nets, he failed to score each time.

Four years later in France, it was the Brazilian, Leonidas, who grabbed the headlines for his unorthodox behavior.

Playing against Poland on a muddy field in Strasbourg, Leonidas decided that he would feel more comfortable playing bare-footed, so he removed his boots and tossed them toward the sideline.

The referee didn’t think much of the idea and ordered Leonidas to put the boots back on. He did and subsequently scored four goals as Brazil won, 6-5.

The last of the prewar tournaments had all sorts of strange moments, oddities that seem to have disappeared from the game. In some cases, it is just as well.

What happened to Italian captain Peppino Meazza in the 1938 semifinal between Italy and Brazil, for example, is something he would rather not have experienced.

As Meazza fired home a penalty kick that put his country into the championship game, his shorts, torn earlier in the match, disintegrated entirely, leaving him exposed to the elements, not to mention the fans in Marseilles. Meazza’s teammates covered up for him until a new pair could be found.

Meazza and Italy went on to win the tournament, beating Hungary in the final, and that provided a story that might be apocryphal but has endured through the years nonetheless.

It seems that when the Hungarian goalkeeper, Antal Szabo, reached the locker room after his team’s loss, he was not overly disappointed.

“I have never felt so proud in my life,” he said. “We may have lost the match, but we have saved 11 lives.”

Asked how he had come to this conclusion, Szabo replied: “The Italian players received a telegram from Rome before the game which read, ‘Win or die.’ Now they can go home as heroes.”

Since Mussolini was in power at the time, Szabo’s story of the telegram might not have been too far-fetched.

It was also in 1938 that French sportswriter Emmanuel Gambardella did what colleagues around the world have longed to do ever since.

Watching Sweden thrash Cuba, 8-0, in the most lopsided of games, Gambardella suddenly abandoned his typewriter and announced that he had seen enough.

“Up to five goals is journalism,” he said. “After that, it becomes statistics.”

One player who almost became a statistic was Yugoslavia’s Rajko Mitic, who was felled before he even reached the pitch during a 1950 tournament game against Brazil in Rio de Janeiro.

Leaving the Maracana Stadium locker room with the rest of his teammates, Mitic walked straight into an iron girder and knocked himself out.

The Yugoslav players had to begin the game with only 10 men and were a goal behind and on their way to a defeat by the time Mitic rejoined them, his head wrapped in a huge bandage.

Another knockout blow was struck by the Uruguayan team in the 1954 semifinal in Switzerland. When Uruguay’s Juan Hohberg tied the game against Hungary with a goal in the 87th minute, he was so mobbed by teammates that he passed out. Incidentally, Uruguay lost in overtime.

There have been other items through the years, incidents that helped add color to the World Cup tournaments, but they have become increasingly rare.

In 1954, for instance, Switzerland was beaten by Austria in Lausanne, 7-5, and afterward complained that it had lost because its goalkeeper had been suffering from sunstroke.

In 1962, Chile’s Eladio Rojas was so elated at having scored a goal against the Soviet Union that he first hugged Soviet goalkeeper Lev Yashin and then Dutch referee Leo Horn. Neither was particularly taken with the idea.

Finally, in 1970, the West Germans were so pleased at having advanced to the quarterfinals that they threw their coach, Helmut Schoen, fully clothed, into their hotel swimming pool.

“It is not so good for me, but very good for team spirit,” a dripping-wet Schoen said afterward.

Perhaps that is what the 1986 World Cup needs--a little more spirit, a little more laughter.

It is not too late. West Germany will play Argentina in the championship game Sunday. There is still time.

Perhaps if Diego Maradona decided to play bare-footed. . . .