Guest Post by Neil Clack
Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano are the most recent and obvious links between West Ham and the Argentina national team, but when they step onto the Boleyn Ground turf on Wednesday night, older members of the Argentinian delegation will probably recognise the two men in the giant photos at each end of the West Stand. Bobby Moore and Trevor Brooking were both involved in some famous matches against Argentina, with Ron Greenwood’s coaching methods never far from the background.
Moore played against Argentina at the 1962 World Cup (3-1 to England) and the 1964 Nations Cup in Rio De Janeiro (1-0 to Argentina) but it’s that infamous quarter final in the 1966 World Cup when the West Ham trio of Moore, Hurst and Peters won the game for England, with the help of a Greenwood training ground routine, that Hammers fans of the era will recall the most.
London was swinging at the time; the mini skirt was at its highest, and World Cup Willie, a lion in a Union Jack shirt, smiled down from London’s advertising hoardings. ‘Sunny Afternoon’ by The Kinks was in the charts, and it was indeed a blistering July Saturday when Bobby Moore in all-white, and Antonio Rattin, wearing Argentina’s traditional blue and white stripes, exchanged pennants in the centre of the Wembley pitch. They smiled for the cameras, but between the pair, about half the size of the 6 foot 4 Rattin, was the balding German referee Rodolfo Kreitlein, who had a stern face.
Thirty-seven minutes later Rattin was sent off in one of the most contoversial incidents the Word Cup has ever seen. He hadn’t commited a foul, but was given his marching orders for ‘violence of the tongue’. Although the German referee didn’t understand Spanish, he said, “the look on his face was enough”. Rattin has always maintained he was merely asking for an interpreter to explain some of Kreitlein’s decisions, which he believed he had the right to request, and when Kretilein pointed to the changing rooms he simply refused to leave the pitch. It took a full eight minutes before he was eventually led off by FIFA oficials – at one point it looked like the whole Argentina team, surrounding the referee, were going to walk off en masse – but it’s noticeable from the footage that, amongst all the confusion and chaos, Bobby Moore can be seen in the background, gesturing to his players not to get involved; Keep Calm and Carry On he appears to be saying, urging them to do a few stretches to stop the legs from stiffening.
When the game restarted, England stuggled against the 10-men, failing to carve out any opportunities, until finally, with only 15 minutes remaining, Peters from left midfield, swung in an early cross that Hurst, ghosting in at the near post, headed home for the only goal of the game.
The Argentina goalkeeper Antonio Roma is convinced that Hurst did not mean it. “I swear to this day, he didn’t head it properly. As the ball came over I shaped up for the header and had the right side of the goal covered, but Hurst was stretching and didn’t connect properly. It sort of skimmed off his head and went into the other side of the goal.”
Not surprisingly, Hurst begs to differ. "The near post cross – we’d worked on that move time and time again under manager Ron Greenwood at West Ham,.. One day Ron put down cones as full-backs and the wingers had to run and cross the ball before they reached the cone, bending the ball around the cone so it landed in the space between the goalkeeper and his back line of defenders. It was the task of the forwards to anticipate the cross and attack the ball before the goalkeepers or defenders could reach it. When we got it right, there was little the opposition could do about it.”
Greenwood himself was manager when England beat World Cup holders Argentina 3-1 on fine spring Tuesday evening at Wembley in May 1980. He described it as the night all his ideas on footbal came together, and the Daily Mirror said it was ‘a match so good that’s it’s imposible to find superlatives to describe’. The Times reporter said that in 30 years of following the national team it was best he had ever seen England play.
Incredible as it may sound today – now that domestic fixtures are halted for international breaks – but Brooking had played, and scored the winning goal, in the FA Cup Final on the Saturday, as well as playing the whole 90 minutes for West Ham in a league match at Sunderland on the Monday evening, and now he was expected to turn out for his country against the World Champions on the Tuesday – 3 games in 4 days! So Greenwood decided to start with his midfield playmaker on the bench for fear of exhaustion. Brooking came on during the 2nd half.
David Johnson (2) and Kevin Keegan scored England’s goals, with captain Daniel Passarella replying from the penalty spot for Argentina, after Kenny Sansom had brought down 19-year-old Diego Maradona. Curiously, Maradona almost scored an identical goal to his brilliant second against England at the 1986 World Cup, but this time, having dribbled past four England players, he placed the ball just wide of the far post.
Again, incredible as it may sound today the match against the World Cup holders (who were at full-strength apart from Mario Kempes who was playing for Valencia against Arsenal in the European Cup Winners Cup the next night) was not shown live on any TV channel in England, just highlights on BBC’s Sportsnight later in the evening.
More astounding is that Argentina, who were staying at the Kensington Gardens hotel decided to have an open impromptu training session in nearby Hyde Park on the Saturday before the match. Apart from a handful of Argentinian press journalists who were staying at the same hotel, there were no other cameras, and the presence of the World Champions (with Maradona included) training in Central London’s biggest park did not arouse much interest amongst the non-plussed English public, sunbathing and reading in deck-chairs.
England were on a good run under Greenwood. They had qualified comfortably for the 1980 European Championships with resounding victories over both Irelands and Denmark, and had recently outplayed Spain in a friendly in Barcaelona, winning 2-0 when it should have been much more. Greenwood’s team was an attacking one, especially down the wings with Steve Coppell on the right and Peter Barnes or Laurie Cunningham on the left, and the manger had got the best out of the Keegan-Brooking combination, who were both at the peak of their international careers.
However, speaking at the pre-match press conference, Greenwood revealed he was far from happy with many aspects of the job. Asked by English journalists about the formation of his team for the match the following day, Greenwood resignately replied, “I don’t know, really I don’t know". He then proceeded to give some quite forthright opinions on the English game, “I’ve always believed English football must change the structure of it’s leagues and I’ve asked the FA for only 18 clubs in the first division with 4 clubs relegated and promoted. It’s the only way to do things. It’s absurd that the season has finished and England have a big match against the world champions and the European Championships to prepare for, but there are still league matches being played”.
“Nottingham Forest play at Wolves tonight and West Ham are at Sunderland and I don’t know if my players will be with me tomorrow or not. Neither do I know what condition they’ll be in. I’ve asked Cloughie not to play Gary Birtles tonight but is that fair? If the public and the press of this country really want the national team to do well then first they have to respect it and treat it like a newly born baby. That’s the only way we can return to what we were”.
“Results have gone well this season and we’ve achieved our aim and qualified for the European Championship but the return of England to a major competition doesn’t necesarily mean that everything’s well in our football. In many ways it’s just papering over the cracks”
Some Argentinian newspapers printed Greenwood’s discourse in full. Clarin reported how, with the appointment of John Cartwright and Dave Sexton as youth coaches, men who shared Greenwood’s philosophy on how the game should be played, the England manager was hoping to instil his methods and ideas right across the whole of the English game, including at all the clubs, so that players arriving for the national side were all singing from the same hymn sheet. “Some of the things I hear that are being coaached at league clubs are quite shocking”, said Greenwood.
Sadly, Greenwood’s opinions fell on deaf ears in his own country and throughout the 80’s English football regressed in the opposite direction, the long ball game coming more and more to the fore. He had become quite disillusioned upon leaving football for good in the 1980’s; (hardly surprising given that, against his wishes, Charles ‘long ball’ Hughes, was appointed as the FA’s director of coaching).