What started with 203 teams on 15 June, 2011, now boils down to 32 in Brazil. Yes, the FIFA World Cup finals start today, with the winners sure to be feted when they return home with the trophy after the final on July 13, even more so if the hosts win on home soil for the first time.
Whether the Netherlands finally manage to break their duck, Spain become the first side to retain the title since Brazil in 1962 or Germany win their first World Cup since 1990, what is sure is that the winners will be treated as heroes.
However, the history of the World Cup shows that as well as heroes, individual players, teams and even officials can often return as villains or in bizarre circumstances, and we do not have to go too far back for a good example.
Photo: AFP
When Nicolas “Le Sulk” Anelka told France coach Raymond Domenech to “go screw yourself, dirty son of a whore” at halftime during his side’s 2-0 defeat to Mexico at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, it became a national incident.
Nobody would have been any the wiser, except French daily L’Equipe ran the story on its front page, Anelka was sent home and the players went on strike.
“We are the only team at the World Cup who aren’t playing for their country’s pride. We need to push out some of these little shits,” said Bernard Saules, a senior member of the French Football Federation.
The situation soon escalated, with politicians getting involved and Thierry Henry summoned to the Elysee Palace for a meeting with then-French president Nicolas Sarkozy on his return to Paris.
French Minister for Health and Sports Roselyne Bachelot took the moral high ground.
“I told the players that they are perhaps no longer heroes for our children,” Bachelot smarmed.
The Italians have also had their hearts broken, usually by those pesky Koreans.
Back in 1966 in England, a shamed Italy lost 1-0 to North Korea at Ayresome Park in Middlesbrough and crashed out of the World Cup in the process.
Embarrassed and fearing a backlash from their supporters, the Italian bigwigs did their best to conceal their plans for the journey home — the flight home was scheduled for the most antisocial time possible and they refused to disclose in which city it would land.
However, back in the days before Facebook and Twitter, the supporters still found out. Hundreds were waiting in the early hours of the morning at Genoa airport armed with rotten fruit. They chased the players out of the airport, pelting rotten tomatoes (oh yes, a fruit, dear reader) and pursued, presumably Benny Hill style, the team coach for several kilometers.
In 2002, Italy were again bundled out by Koreans, this time South Korea 3-2, but there was no angry mob waiting when they touched down at Milan airport, nor any rotten tomatoes.
In the eyes of all Italians, their team had not been beaten, but instead robbed by one man — tubby Ecuadoran referee Byron Moreno.
With Moreno Italy’s public enemy No. 1, RAI TV hatched a plan to invite him to Italy for a visit. The station had threatened to sue FIFA over loss of earnings, citing incompetent officials, but it settled on a different way of getting even.
Moreno got to repay the debt by helping to promote the station’s new (obviously highbrow) comedy show, Stupido Hotel.
On one surreal evening, referee Moreno hung out with scantily clad dancers (boo!), engaged in a staring contest with former Brazil and Italy player Jose Altafini (erm...), and listened to the audience sing a song in which he was pushed under a train (hooray!). After that, he had a bucket of water tipped over his head (he had it coming).
Later, he returned and appeared at the Carnevale di Cento in Ferrara, where the crowd heckled him and pelted him with eggs. He then served as guest referee at an Italian seven-a-side tournament. This time, as well as eggs, Moreno had a glass of wine thrown over him.
That was the last anyone heard of Moreno until 2010, when we was arrested at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York trying to enter the country with heroin strapped to his body. He was sentenced to 30 months in prison for drug smuggling.
As well as Moreno, the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea is also remembered for an incident which, for a brief moment in time, meant every Irish schoolkid could identify the island of Saipan in their atlas.
Manchester United bulldog-in-chief Roy Keane became so exasperated by a rock-hard training pitch, the failure to get the squad’s training kit to Saipan and a row about five-a-side goalkeeping arrangements, he decided to pack it in and go home.
Roy the Rant claims that, having been given time to cool down, he changed his mind, only to be ambushed at a team meeting called by Ireland manager Mick McCarthy, who accused him of faking an injury to avoid playing in the second leg of the team’s World Cup playoff against Iran. That, according to Keane, was the last straw.
“You’re a fucking wanker. I didn’t rate you as a player, I don’t rate you as a manager and I don’t rate you as a person. You’re a fucking wanker and you can stick your World Cup up your arse,” ranted Roy, before flying home to Manchester.
Less amusing, back in 1994, six bullets fired in a Medellin nightclub car park rocked the world.
In Colombia’s match against the hosts at the World Cup finals in the US, at full stretch in an effort to cut out a cross into the penalty area, Andreas Escobar made contact with the ball and sent it rolling past the hopelessly wrong-footed goalkeeper and into his own goal.
Colombia were eventually eliminated and Escobar returned home to enjoy a few drinks at a Medellin bar when a few people began insulting him, sarcastically cheering his own-goal.
Escobar left the premises, but the group hurling abuse followed him. Upset, he drove his car across the car park to reason with his detractors.
Six bullets ended Escobar’s life as he sat at the wheel of his car.
Then there’s the tale of the squad from civil-war-ravaged El Salvador, who traveled to the 1982 World Cup in Spain as national heroes, suffered the worst-ever finals defeat, 10-1 to Hungary in their first group match, and returned home to threats of violence, or Brazil goalkeeper Moacyr Barbosa, who failed to save Uruguay’s winner in their 2-1 victory in the 1950 World Cup final at the Maracana in Rio de Janeiro.
Barbosa never got over it. He only played once more for Brazil and was shunned by his teammates for the rest of his career.
“In Brazil, the maximum penalty for a crime is 30 years — I’ve spent 44 years paying for a crime I didn’t even commit,” he said in 1994.
However, you have to go all the way back to the first World Cup in Uruguay in 1930 for the most bizarre homecoming.
Ahead of the age of the jet engine, the Europeans faced a long journey back home by ship across the Atlantic.
Romania’s Alfred Eisenbeisser Feraru (take a bow) was unfortunately taken ill during the voyage and was diagnosed with pneumonia. When the ship reached Genoa, Italy, he was left behind to recuperate. The medical staff even called a priest because they were so worried about his health.
There are two versions of events when the rest of the squad returned to Romania, to huge crowds. One is that the other players announced Feraru’s death, while the other is that Feraru’s absence started a rumor in Bucharest that he had died in South America.
What is certain is that, after the squad dispersed and returned to work, a distraught Mrs Feraru, who obviously believed her son to be dead, organized a wake.
Right on cue, on the morning of his own wake, a recovered Feraru returned home. His mother took one look at him and fainted.
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