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Late bloomers Late arrival Brazil dominates 20th Century
Posted: Sunday December 26, 1999 03:19 PM
LONDON (AP) -- The best national team -- Brazil at the 1970 World Cup. The best club -- probably Real Madrid 1955-60. The best player -- undoubtedly Pele. The best goal -- maybe Carlos Alberto's in the 1970 World Cup final. The worst major nation -- the United States. The best nation women's soccer -- also, the United States. It's all a matter of opinion for fans to argue about. But why did the world's most popular sport leave it so long to have an official world championship for clubs? The Intercontinental Cup included teams only from Europe and South America, and the inaugural FIFA Club World Championship, which embraces teams from all the other confederations, doesn't take place until next month. That means there is no official world club champion during the 1900s. But who would have been the contenders? The Hungarian team of the 1950s, Honved, beat almost everyone and with standout players such as Ferenc Puskas and Sandor Kocsis brought a new dimension to the game with bewildering passes and unselfish teamwork. When they played for Hungary's national team, they crushed England 6-3 and 7-1. Manchester United of the late 1950s, led by Matt Busby, dominated Europe until seven of the "Busby Babes" were among 23 killed at the Munich air crash in February 1958. Real Madrid, which recruited Puskas and Argentine forward Alfredo Di Stefano to join Spanish stars Francisco Gento and Luis Del Sol, won the first five European Champions Cups from 1956-60 and routed Uruguay's Penarol 5-1 in the second leg of the first Intercontinental Cup, considered the world club championship. Santos, which included Pele and Carlos Alberto, traversed the world in the 1960s and won two Intercontinental titles, while Portugal's Benfica, led by Eusebio, won two Champions Cup crowns. The Liverpool team of the 1970s and '80s, which included Kevin Keegan and Kenny Dalglish, won four Champions Cup titles and 10 English League championships in 15 seasons. AC Milan, led by coaches Arrigo Sacchi and Fabio Capello and captain Paolo Maldini, won three Champions Cups and twice was runner-up during a seven-year spell in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Many of the world's best players were on those teams, but the list doesn't include Diego Maradona, the mercurial Argentine who helped Napoli win its first Italian league title in 1987; Manchester United's George Best; Bayern Munich's Franz Beckenbauer; Dutchman Johan Cruyff, who played for Ajax, Barcelona and even in the old North American Soccer League; and Frenchman Michel Platini of Italy's Juventus of Turin. Maradona also will be remembered for his brilliant solo goals against England in the quarterfinals and Belgium in the semifinals of the 1986 World Cup, which Argentina went on to win. But he also is notorious for deliberately punching the ball into the net against England in what became known as the "Hand of God" goal and for twice being banned for positive drug tests. Because he played for Northern Ireland, Best never gained great fame in the international arena. But he was a wizard with the ball, exploding onto the scene as a 16-year-old in the mid-1960s and helping United win the Champions Cup in 1968 before leaving the game at age 26. Beckenbauer and Cruyff both led their clubs to three consecutive Champions Cup titles in the 1970s, and Beckenbauer became the first person to win the World Cup both as a player (1974) and a coach (1990). Platini was the star of a memorable French victory in the 1984 European Championship and Juventus' Champions Cup triumph a year later. Pele stands above all as player of the century. Making an impact as a raw but amazingly gifted 17-year-old at the 1958 World Cup, he also was the biggest star of the 1970 team that won the title for the third time by beating Italy 4-1 in the final. That lineup also had Rivelino and Jairzinho, both experts at swerving free kicks, and defender Carlos Alberto, whose powerful strike after being deftly fed by Pele at the end of a nine-pass move from Brazil's own penalty area, is considered by many as the best goal ever scored. He later went on to become captain of the New York Cosmos, whose 1977 signing of Pele sparked the emergence of soccer in the United States. The American century started with the United States reaching the semifinals of the first World Cup in 1930 and peaked when it stunned the planet with its 1-0 upset of England at the 1950 World Cup in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. The Americans didn't return until 1990 and while they've played in three straight World Cups, they've been knocked out twice in the first round and once in the second, going 1-8-1. Perhaps the best game of the century was the 1960 Champions Cup final. With Puskas scoring four goals and Di Stefano three, Real Madrid outplayed Eintracht Frankfurt 7-3 before 127,000 fans at Glasgow's Hampden Park. Sadly, soccer hasn't been able to get through the 20th century peacefully or without tragedies. Hooliganism, known as the British disease because it appeared to have its roots in England, spread throughout the world. Thirty-nine Juventus fans died when rowdy Liverpool fans caused a wall to collapse before the 1985 Champions Cup final at Heysel Stadium in Brussels. English clubs were banned from international competition for the next five years. The 1985 stadium fire at Bradford, where 55 people died, the 1989 Hillsborough tragedy in which 96 fans were crushed to death and the 80 fatalities in an overfilled stadium in Guatemala in 1996 left their marks among the century's most horrific disasters.
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