Tag Archives: World Cup

Nobody remembers two others missed as well

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On 17 July 1994, Italy lost the World Cup Final in a penalty shootout to Brazil when their top scorer of the tournament, Roberto Baggio, sent his attempt over the bar.

Simply making it to the Final was a minor miracle for Italy, who opened their tournament campaign with a first-round loss to Ireland. And, as the fourth-best third place team in the group stages, they were the last team to qualify for the knockout rounds. Baggio, who had won the 1993 Ballon d’Or and FIFA World Player of the Year award for his UEFA Cup-winning season with Juventus, shined in the later rounds, scoring five goals–three of them match-winners (against Nigeria, Spain, and Bulgaria)–to take Italy to the final.

Baggio’s scoring streak dried up in the final, as it did for Brazil’s top scorer Romário (who was also on five goals for the tournament). With the match scoreless at the end of extra time, the teams went into penalty kicks to decide the winner. After four kicks each, Brazil were up 3-2 when Baggio stepped up to the spot.

It was his second penalty attempt of the tournament, as his match-winner against Nigeria had come from the spot in the 102nd minute. But this time, he fired the ball over the bar to end the match and give the trophy to Brazil.

He returned to the World Cup with Italy in 1998 to become the only Italian player to score in three different World Cups and his total of nine World Cup goals remains an Italian record.

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World Cup Re-Vote?

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FIFA’s decision to award the 2022 World Cup hosting rights to a tiny, Sheffield-sized, almost completely disinterested, sun-scorched, oil-rich desert atoll in the middle of the Persian Gulf was a sham – you know it, I know it, Sepp Blatter knows it.

Since the Sunday Times brought to light that, shock horror, the Qatar bid team (allegedly) bribed their way to securing the tournament, there has been worldwide clamour for the vote to be recast – a proposition that Blatter has refused to rule completely out of hand.

The Swiss meatball is quoted in the Telegraph as saying:

“This is an idea circulating already around the world which is alarming. But don’t ask me now yes or no, let us go step by step. It’s like we are in an ordinary court and in an ordinary court we cannot ask: ‘if, if, if’.”

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On this day – 4 January 1909

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On 4 January 1909, representatives of several clubs met in Madrid to form the Spanish football federation. The meeting was held at the offices of Real Madrid, with club president Adolfo Meléndez serving as the federation’s first secretary.

Originally named the Federación Española de Clubs de Football, the new organization followed the model of England’s FA, with the express purpose of creating a Spanish national team. After 11 years, they finally accomplished that mission when Spain played their first full international, a 1-0 win over Denmark in the 1920 Summer Olympics, where they took the silver medal. It took them another 44 years to win their first major honor, the 1964 European Championship, which they followed with an Olympic gold medal in 1992.

In February 2007, they began a record-tying unbeaten run of 35 unbeaten matches that included the 2008 European Championship. Despite those successes, critics labeled Spain as underachievers for failing to advance farther in the World Cup than their fourth-place finish in 1950. That ended in 2010, when Spain lifted the Cup over the Netherlands in a dramatic extra-time Final.

Now known as the Real Federación Española de Fútbol, or RFEF, the federation oversees the top four levels of the Spanish football pyramid, as well as both men’s and women’s national teams and the national futsal team.

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England’s 2018 Fate Lies With The World’s Worst Footballing Nation

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The time will soon be upon us when it will be discovered whether the England 2018 World Cup bid team (as well as their Russian, Spanish/Portuguese and Dutch/Belgian counterparts) will discover whether the last year or so of flesh-pressing, lobbying, rule-flaunting, power-brokering, politicking, back-slapping, bribery, petty sniping, short-sighted optimism and the abject hemorrhaging of several millions of pounds sterling will have been worth it all when the FIFA executive committee (ExCo) congregate to vote on the destination of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups in Zurich on Thursday afternoon.

The concerted English effort has suffered some sizeable blows on their way to this week’s gala ceremony, with covert journalism, flagrant Iberian/Qatari collusion and an intense global mistrust of the nation at large thought to have put paid to their hopes of actually succeeding on several occasions.

However, it looks like England 2018 may be in line to receive a voting lifeline from a fairly unlikely source – Papa New Guinea, the joint-worst footballing nation on the entire planet.

Vice-president of the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) David Chung, who hails from the aforementioned island nation ranked joint 203rd in the world (alongside San Marino, Anguilla, Montserrat and American Samoa), is travelling to Zurich in the hope of being sworn onto FIFA’s ExCo to replace temporarily deposed OFC president Reynald Temarii – who has been suspended from his post for a year after being caught out by the Sunday Times‘ undercover investigation into the innate corruption of the current World Cup bidding process.

If Temarii withdraws his appeal and stands down from the OFC, Chung (who is apparently deemed a ‘favourable voter’ from an English perspective) may be able to take the seat by right, meaning 23 (rather than just 22) people will be voting on the bids come Thursday.

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England 2018 Plead With FIFA To ‘Ignore The Media’

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In a development that reveals just how low they now deem themselves to have sunk in FIFA’s estimations (and how far back they have fallen back in terms of the impending vote), England 2018 have written to every voting member on the organisation’s executive committee (EC), pleading with them to not to punish the bid team for the actions of the nation’s independent media and press.

Being the self-serving preservationists as they are, FIFA have been understandably irked by the ongoing investigations being made into the corruption embedded within their corridors of power, carried out chiefly by covert staff of the Sunday Times newspaper (which resulted in the high-profile provisional suspension of EC members Amos Adamu and Reynald Temarii last month).

According to reports in today’s broadsheets, the simpering letter declares England 2018‘s ‘solidarity and support’ for the way in which FIFA responded to the allegations levied at them by the Sunday Times, distances them from a forthcoming BBC Panorama exposé (that has tentatively been scheduled to air just three days before the vote in Zurich on December 2nd) and also refers to suspended duo Adamu and Temarii as ‘our (England’s) friends’.

The Guardian are also suggesting that bid insiders have informed them that the letter ‘represents a calculated risk’ by attempting to closely align England 2018 with a both a process and an organisation that are now teetering so precariously thanks to their recently highlighted vulnerabilities to exploitation.

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