First published by Ace Magazine on-line. May 2014.
It was all about England having qualified for the World Cup for the first time since I had started following football with passion in 1976 that led me to watching nearly every match in the 1982 tournament with a grin and in equal measure, painful despair, etched all over my face.
I remember fragments of the World Cup in Argentina, however by and large the 1978 World Cup was something that by-passed me in much the same way as every other lad in my year at school developing a love of cars and engines, I knew it existed, but I had other past-times to pre-occupy me.
For any child with a taste for football in the 1970s, the international scene was a barren wilderness if you were an England fan. 1978 for many an England fan would have had them purring with delight at the skills and team ethic of the mighty Dutch side that went so close in ’74 and again in 1978. Johan Cruyff would go onto be many a football fan’s favourite footballer of all time because of the way they played a brand of football that really struck a chord with the down at heel fan that went through the gates of grounds such as Villa Park, Anfield and Maine Road.
1980 though was the first time an England fan was able to get excited about having a couple of weeks of end of season football to watch on the television. However just as the 70s were marred by the rise of football hooliganism, so the 80s began in a similar and terrifying fashion and it followed all the way to Italy. The first game that England had played in an international finals competition since losing to West Germany ten years earlier was tarnished by the use of tear gas by police in the game against Belgium. To many a young fan this was not what they wanted to see, they wanted to see the king of English football at the time Kevin Keegan play on the international stage, the immense footballing brains of Glenn Hoddle and Trevor Brooking, who had been pivotal in a great West Ham United’s season and who had also won them the F.A. Cup with a certain degree of fortune over a wonderful Arsenal side. Wonderful goalkeepers in which the England side would love to be able to call on now, a great defence in Viv Anderson, Dave Watson, Mick Mills and Phil Thompson and of course the fighter Ray Wilkins.
The excursion of Italy 1980 was ended too soon for England but there was hope that at long last the nucleus of this team would see them qualify for the World Cup in Spain two years later and perhaps make amends for the dismal showing in qualifying for 1974 and ’74.
What that fledgling eight team tournament, a fairly small minnow compared to the circus being imagined in years to come by U.E.F.A., bought to the attention of the young England fan, starved of cheering on the likes of Brooking and Keegan, were the players that could dominate the game in Spain two years later.
Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, undoubtedly one of the best players to have ever played for the West German side, stood shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Jan Ceulemans, arguably one of the finest goalkeepers to ever strap on a pair of gloves, Dino Zoff, Harald Schumacher, Marco Tardelli, Barasi and Hans-Peter Briege in a tournament which might easily go down as one of the most dull in the history of football.
Not that the English side were outclassed by any stretch of the imagination, certainly not in terms of players who were used to winning trophies. With the likes of Ray Clemence, Phil Neal, Phil Thompson, Viv Anderson, perhaps one of the best players under Brian Clough at Nottingham Forset, the flamboyant style of Steve Coppell, Peter Shilton, the terrier like Emlyn Hughes, Glenn Hoddle, the young but tremendously resolute and gifted Kenny Sansom and of course Trevor Brooking and Kevin Keegan in the squad, they should have gone further than they did.
Much of the squad that went to Italy in 1980 were to set the imagination racing over the next two years. Great results against Hungry home and away, including one of the finest England goals ever seen and a personal favourite for many until Paul Gasgoine’s sensational solo effort against Scotland in 1996, by Trevor Brooking, bizarre losses to Norway, Switzerland and Romania meant that England actually qualified for the World Cup for the first time, discounting as holders and hosts, for the first time since 1962, a whole generation of football fans had never seen it happen and yet England were going to be there.
Like many an 11 year old in the country, this was something to really get into and apart from the World Cup in 1990 there really hasn’t been a month of football like it since.
Many of the squad that went to Italy survived the further passing of time, Ray Clemence and Peter Shilton fighting it out game by game for the right to wear the England number 1, and with the other complete goalkeeper of the time, the sturdy giant from Manchester City Joe Corrigan keeping them on their toes. Viv Anderson, Kenny Sansom (alongside Stuart Pearce, arguably the best left back to play for his country, Tony Woodcock, Glenn Hoddle and Steve Coppell all retaining the Ron Greenwood’s faith. There was however new blood running through the squad, the dependable Terry Butcher, unfashionable Brighton’s Steve Foster, Graham Rix who had learned so much playing alongside the very talented Liam Brady and Aston Villa’s Peter Withe who had just won the European Cup with Aston Villa.
Much focus to many a young fan was placed upon the strength of character of Trevor Francis, the injured Kevin Keegan and the aging gracefully Trevor Brooking. This was truly a squad brimming with desire, capability and the will to win.
Unlike the squad that is flying out to Brazil for this year’s World Cup, Ron Greenwood’s side didn’t particularly reflect the average football fan’s thoughts on who should be on the plane to Spain. Today’s squad pretty much picks itself, with a couple of exclusions, as the depth of English players playing in the highest division in which Roy Hodgson can call upon is a micro-faction in which Ron Greenwood could have placed trust in.
In 1982 the thought was not just on those lucky enough to represent England but also those left by the way side. Two of the most naturally exceptional players in Alan Devonshire and Tony Morley, his fellow Aston Villa team mate Gary Shaw, Paul Cooper, Sammy Lee, Peter Barnes, Tommy Caton, Kevin Reeves, Phil Parkes, Gary Owen, Garth Crooks and Steve Perryman who had led a very successful Tottenham side to back to back F.A. Cup wins; all talented players who could have easily fitted into the squad with ease.
The squad was picked, a record made, actually not a bad piece of recording history compared to so many other sporting musical efforts, the merchandise flew off the counters quicker than you could say spend the country out of recession and the imagination of many a football fan under the age of sixteen was gripped.
The tournament itself was one in which I was fortunate to see virtually every single game on television. There were moments in which I had to be peeled off the floor with my notebook and pencil clumsily falling to the floor as my father tried desperately to get me to have at least some rest during that month of football.
The 1982 World Cup will rank alongside 1990 for me as the best feast of football I have been privileged to watch. The complexity of the tournament far too laborious to go into in such a small article of reminisce but seeing Bryan Robson score for England against France before I had barely managed to get comfortable on the floor was a highlight, as was watching the great Paolo Rossi play for Italy after coming back from an international ban die to being involved in an alleged match fixing and betting scandal, seeing countries enter the tournament that made me scurry for my atlas such as Cameroon, Honduras and Kuwait, a country that sadly had many reaching for the atlas in a completely different state of affairs less than ten years later. The weird feeling of watching two teams give a farcical display of football so that both would qualify out of the group stages, from that moment on any thought in my young mind that West Germany should win the competition as paramount as England or Italy winning the Cup. England’s fellow qualifiers from the initial group stages of the previous two years, Hungry, demolish with absolute superiority a shell shocked El-Salvador team, the wonderful Northern Irish side brightening up the whole tournament and shaking my head at the surrender of Scotland whilst glorifying in a Brazil side that blew my mind.
Heartache as a fan to see England crash out due to the utter madness of not losing a single game, realising that one of my early footballing heroes, Kevin keegan was never going to be the same player again as he spent much of the World Cup on the side lines, a tremendous, riveting game between Brazil and Italy and having to choose between watching Italy V Poland or France V West Germany as my young body grew weary and my father deciding enough was enough and ordering me, quite rightly, to forgo one game. Even now I still feel as though I chose the better game, even it was one of the despairingly ugly games of football I have ever seen. The game between France and Germany still resonates down through the years as one of high passion and brute force prevailing over the beautiful football that the Netherlands had employed four years earlier and the sexiness that Brazil had bought to Spain.
Despite having been a football fan for six years by that point, having seen my own team lose the 100th Cup Final, my father’s side win the league and the European Cup, wishing that Kenny Dalglish could have played for City, being in awe of Bob Paisley, Kevin Keegan, Trevor Francis, Paul Power and Brian Clough and the imagined memory, fuelled by reading books and watching old footage of Bobby Moore, Francis Lee, Johan Cruyff and Bill Shankly, football came of age for me and many others in the summer of 1982, only to be repeated once more internationally in 1990. As a fan of the beautiful game, you can only hope that Brazil 2014 is as great a tournament, as memorable for all the right reasons as Spain in 1982 and Italy in 1990. Rio deserves a carnival and feast of exceptional football.
Ian D. Hall