A rare guest post with a, hopefully, tongue-in-cheek assessment of half a century of failures by the England football team.
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I blame Carlos Velasco Carballo.
‘Who’s he?’ I hear you ask.
He’s a referee of course. He’s the referee that stopped
England from winning the World Cup in Brazil this summer. You may think, having
seen the England team fly home after three winless games, that this is
stretching the imagination too far, but you’re wrong. In fact let me add some
more names: José Roberto Wright, Jorge Larrionda, Ali Bin Nasser. There are
others, but in my very humble opinion these are the four worst offenders.
It’s Tuesday 19th June, twenty eight minutes past eight here
in Woodstock, not sure what time that is in the Corinthians stadium Sao Paulo
but never mind. Daniel Sturridge is roaring down the wing when he gets elbowed
off the ball by Uruguay captain Diego Godin. It’s a yellow card, anybody could
see it’s a yellow card. REFEREE, It’s clearly a yellow card. Now, any other
time I’m sure it would have been given, but twenty minutes earlier Godin had
already been booked for handball, and Carlos Velasco Carballo, yes you Mr
Carballo, bottled it. No second card, Godin stays on the pitch. Ten minutes
later Suarez scores the first of two goals to send us on our way out of the
cup, and home to unfair ridicule in the press.
‘So what if Godin had been sent off?'
Well, naturally England would have won. And the momentum
would have carried us forward to glory. We would have beaten Costa Rica in the
next game, topped the group, gone on to trounce Greece in the following round,
and stormed past a fading Holland in the Quarter Finals. After coming out on
top in a tough tight game with Argentina in the Semi’s, the nation would bask
in the glorious sunshine of victory over arch rivals Germany in the final. In
the bag, our fifth World Cup victory.
‘Fifth?’ I hear you say, ‘Surely Bob you’ve got that wrong,
its 48 years of hurt since England last won the World Cup in 1966.’
Well yes, technically it is nearly half a century, and
counting, since we won the cup but if it were not for Messrs Wright, Larrionda
and Bin Nasser, and of course Mr Carballo, I feel pretty damned confident we
would today be on the verge of winning our fifth World Cup. I have a fairly
strong sense of injustice about a couple of others, and two or three European
Championships too, but for now I’ll concentrate on making the case for five
World Cup wins.
I’ll start with the closest that we
got. The one that hurts the most for me personally. It’s 1990. ‘Italia 90’, I
loved it. Pavarotti singing ‘Nessum Dorma’ and John Barnes rapping on ‘World in
Motion’. After a very slow start, England were playing great football. Platt’s
last minute goal against Belgium was the best of the tournament. Lineker was on
form, Gazza was at his peak. It was a brilliant World Cup. And suddenly we were
through to the Semi-finals.
You remember it? Of course you do... the penalty shoot-out
versus West Germany. Waddle whacks his penalty over the bar, hangs his head in
despair, and the nation joins Gazza in floods of tears. Okay, fair enough. I
don’t blame Chris Waddle (well I do a bit). Anybody can miss a penalty,
especially the fifth penalty of five in a World Cup semi-final, but in the
minutes leading up to that shoot out, the referee, José Roberto Wright (Yes
you, Mr Wright), made two key decisions that went against us.
I’ll start with the second one. Nine minutes from the end of
extra time, Platt scored a goal which, had it been given would have put us 2-1
up. He was flagged offside and okay, maybe he was offside, but it was s-o-o-o
close and it could easily have been given couldn’t it? I’d have given it. That
was bad enough, but the real reason that Mr Wright cost us the 1990 World Cup
came a few minutes earlier.
It was the ninth minute of extra time and Paul Gascoigne, who
had collected a yellow card earlier in the tournament, and knew he would miss
the final if he got another one, tackled Thomas Berthold. I’m not denying it
was a foul, but, was it a bad foul? Was it worthy of the 428 rollovers that
Berthold managed to perform, before lying dead at the edge of the pitch? Was
it? No it bloody wasn’t.
If anybody deserved a card, it should have been Berthold for
behaving like an arse, Instead the ref waves the card into Gazza’s face, and
that was that... I was very nearly sobbing myself.
‘And, the point is Bob?’
Well, the point is, that had the referee not been sold a very
smelly salmon by Berthold, who by the way got up and was absolutely fine, Gazza
would, I’m sure, have driven England forward into the final.
‘And when we got there?’
We would have brushed aside Argentina, who had lost half
their first choice team to injury and suspension, and the cup would have been
ours.
‘And there are two more World Cups we
should have won?’ I can hear the hint of scepticism in your voice. Well, yes
there are. When I remind you, I’m sure you will remember them as clearly as me.
1986. The year of the ‘Hand of God’. I’m not going to dwell
on this for too long but the plain straightforward simple truth is that Diego
Maradona handled the ball to beat Peter Shilton. Referee Ali Bin Nasser managed
to miss the incident, and instead of sending Maradona off, he let the goal
stand. Maradona scored again later to secure a 2-1 win. Argentina went on to
win the World Cup. As we were definitely better than them, it’s clear that, had
Mr Magoo not been the referee, after only 20 years of minor discomfort, we
would have won our second World Cup.
2010. The year of ‘the goal that wasn’t’. If I’m entirely
honest, I’m not absolutely totally completely and utterly sure that we would
have beaten Spain, had we met them later in the competition, but for the sake
of my claim, let’s not dwell on that. What I am clear about, is that referee
Jorge Larrionda did his very best to make sure that we would never find out how
things would have gone had we taken on the Spanish.
I’ll take you back to June 27th 2010. The game is against
Germany (again). Remember? The stadium is full, the vuvuzelas are driving
everybody loopy, and England have started very badly. After conceding two early
goals it looks like we might get over run, but first Matthew Upson gets a goal
back, and then, just before half-time, Lampard beats the goalkeeper with a shot
from thirty yards. The ball hits the bar, drops a full yard behind the line,
and here in Woodstock we are bouncing round the living room. But, and it is a
very big bastard of a but, somehow Mr Larrionda and his linesman appear not to
notice that Frank has scored… at the same time as the big screens are showing
the ball bounce behind the line, Larrionda is waving play on. 45 minutes later
it’s all over, and it’ll be another four years before Carlos Velasco Carballo
comes along and spoils yet another World Cup for us.
So there you go. If history were not full of bloody awful
referees, next Sunday we’d be celebrating England’s fifth World Cup win.
‘And the linesman?’ Ah, good. You haven’t forgotten that the
title features five officials. It’s the marvelous Mister Tofiq Bahramov, of
course.
‘Who is he?’
Who is Mr Tofiq Bahramov? He is the very best, the most
competent, lineman ever to wave his flag in a World Cup final. Mr Tofiq
Bahramov is the wonderful wonderful man who spotted that Geoff Hurst’s shot had
so clearly gone over the line in the World Cup Final at Wembley in 1966. Mr
Tofiq Bahramov is without doubt the greatest match official of all time.
For the record, the other World Cups
we might well have won, and who deserves the blame for failure:
1970 – Alf Ramsey’s fault for taking Bobby Charlton off, at
2-0 up versus Germany. We lost 3-2.
1974 – Brian Clough’s fault. We fail to qualify after he
calls Polish Goalkeeper, Jan Tomaszewski, a clown. No need to ask who was man of
the match.
1982 – Ron Greenwood this time, brings on Keegan and Brooking
too late against Spain. We need to win, draw 0-0 and come home unbeaten.
1994 – The FA take the blame, for giving Graham ‘Do I not
like Orange’ Taylor the job of taking the team that should have won in 1990,
and failing to qualify four years later.
1998 – Complex one this one: Hoddle for not picking Gazza,
Danny Baker and Chris Evans for getting photographed getting pissed with Gazza
and giving Hoddle the excuse not to play him, and Eileen Drewery for trying to
get God on our side. Maradona had already established whose side the almighty
is on 12 years earlier.
2002 – David Beckham’s second metatarsal on his left foot.
2006 – Christiano Ronaldo’s fault for encouraging the referee
to send off Rooney. And the resultant wink to camera was unforgivable… well I
haven’t forgiven him, maybe you are a better person!
Just in case you are wondering, I haven’t forgotten 1978, but we were
just crap that year!
