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Disappointment '98
From U.S. to Spain, World Cup had its share of flops
Posted: Friday July 10, 1998 12:16 AM
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Steve Sampson (left) is one of the seven coaches that lost their jobs after the World Cup performance (AP) |
PARIS (AP) -- Seven coaches lost their jobs. One team fell
from potential semifinalist to first-round casualty. And two three-time
World Cup winners couldn't get out of the quarterfinals after barely
getting there. France '98 was
filled with flops, from Europe to Africa to Asia to America. The biggest
disaster, of course, was the U.S. team's performance. After
impressive victories over Brazil and Argentina
since the last World Cup, the Americans seemed to have the right mixture of
experience, youth, speed and creativity. They had a coach who knew his
players well, spoke their language -- a key in American soccer -- and had
gotten them to respond. Then it all fell apart. Steve Sampson
began to tinker. He had a tiff with captain John Harkes, one of the team's
most popular players, and cut him. He also, for the most part,
ignored his veterans. Then he turned ultraconservative for the first match
with Germany.
The results were ugly: 0-3, including an historic 2-1 loss to Iran, and a
last-place overall finish out of 32 teams. Sampson resigned days later.
Still, the United
States is a relative neophyte on soccer's landscape. Powers such as Spain, Bulgaria and
Belgium
could not get out of the first round, while three-time champions Italy and Germany
went down in the quarterfinals, much earlier than they expected to get
tested, let alone lose. Spain was one of the favorites heading
into the World Cup, but when it blew a lead to Nigeria in its
opener and lost, it was left to scramble. Not even a 6-1 rout of the
Bulgarians, who never seemed much interested in being here, could save the
Spaniards. "We expected more. But we're going out with our heads
high, because although we didn't go through, we fought to the end,"
defender Miguel Angel Nadal said. Bulgaria looked weak
throughout two losses and a tie, four years after a sensational World Cup
in which it upset Germany and finished fourth. "My morale didn't
allow me to stay around any longer," said coach Hristo Bonev, who resigned
when the team got back to Sofia. Bonev joined Sampson and the
coaches of Saudi
Arabia (Carlos Alberto Parreira, who led Brazil to the championship in
1994), Japan,
Tunisia, South Korea
and South
Africa in being fired or resigning. Several others said before the
tournament they would not remain in the job. The Italians, who
lost in a quarterfinal shootout to France after a lackluster second-round
win against Norway, seemed
to lose focus after the first round. They got too cautious, not playing up
their strength at striker, and it cost them. Germany was the
oldest team in the field with more than half its starters 30 or over.
Nigeria, the Olympic champion and a 1994 quarterfinalist, got off to
a rousing start, then sputtered. Denmark blew
away the only African team to get out of the first round 4-1. That was a
big disappointment for that continent, which had five representatives --
two more than in '94 -- and for FIFA, which pinpointed Africa as the future
of soccer. Scotland, for
the eighth consecutive time, couldn't get out of the opening round; South
Korea failed for the fifth time. Cameroon, once
a budding power in Africa, was eliminated after three games. Saudi Arabia,
which went to the second round in the '94 World Cup, fizzled here, as did
Belgium and perennial underachievers Colombia and
Austria.
England came to
the World Cup primed to go far with a solid defense, steady scorer Alan
Shearer and rising star Michael Owen. But by blowing a first-round game to
Romania in
the final moments, it was relegated to second in its group. That meant
Argentina in the second round, and despite a valiant effort playing a man
down for more than 73 minutes, the English lost in a shootout.
"There was such a strange emotion, a feeling among us about how well we'd
done and what we should have achieved," England coach Glenn Hoddle said.
"That's the saddest thing. It wasn't that we'd lost to Argentina or that we
had been knocked out, bt that we'll never know what we could have
achived. "I felt we would have gone from strength to strength
and perhaps gone all the way and won it."
Copyright 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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