Winning Ugly In Rome

His face is more gaunt, more creased than it was during his days with the New York Cosmos, but his eyes still flicker as restlessly as they did at Giants Stadium, where photographers used to complain that they could never get a good action shot of him because his peripheral vision always kept him out of entanglements. A decade later Franz Beckenbauer hasn't lost any of his old touch.

On Sunday night, after the team he manages, West Germany, squeaked past Argentina 1-0 to win the World Cup, Beckenbauer nimbly evaded any suggestion that the victory at Olympic Stadium in Rome was perhaps a little thin, that his team, up against weak opposition, was a tad lacking in imagination. Beckenbauer has always been a pragmatist. What did it matter to him that this was perhaps the ugliest, most frustrating final in World Cup history? West Germany was now Weltmeister, champion of the world.

The only time Beckenbauer showed a hint of passion was when he spoke of the probability that in the next World Cup there would not be a West German team, but a single, united German side. "We will have a broader choice of players," he began. Then, uncharacteristically, his voice grew higher. "We are Number One in the world as it is!" he said. "And—I'm sorry about this—in the future the Germans will be unbeatable."

A month earlier a giant video screen had been installed in Berlin a few blocks from the Wall. Two or three hundred Berliners, from East and West, showed up to watch West Germany's first game, against Yugoslavia. But on Sunday night there were thousands of viewers, including many East Germans wrapped in the black, yellow and red of the Federal Republic. "There is only one German team," said one fan, "and that is in Italy."

After the final whistle more than 100,000 fans poured into the central city, waving flags and dancing in the streets. Joy soon turned to panic, however, when several hundred right wing skinheads tore through East Berlin's Alexanderplatz, swinging clubs and chasing Vietnamese workers. Carrying the red, white and black banners of imperial Germany and snapping the stiff-armed Nazi salute, the hooligans smashed store windows and shouted, "Foreigners to the gas ovens." Similar outbreaks of violence were reported in Hamburg and Bielefeld. Four people were killed in traffic accidents during the celebrations, and hundreds of others were injured.

In truth, aside from the outcome, not much happened on the field to evoke such strong passions. From the start, the West Germans mounted a heavy, though largely ineffective, attack. With their Sturmduo of strikers, Rudi V�ller and J�rgen Klinsmann, leading the charge, and with Andreas Brehme tearing upfield from the fullback position, the West Germans opened up gaping holes in Argentina's defense, but they failed to capitalize on a myriad of scoring opportunities.

Before the game Argentina's Diego Maradona had said, with unjustified arrogance, "We needed a miracle to beat Brazil, but now we need no more help." The Argentines, though, were hurting. Because of the ruthless manner in which they had played in earlier games—committing 152 fouls, or one for every 3:57 of playing time—they were missing four key starters, banished for accumulating two yellow cards in previous games. They were defender Sergio Batista, midfielders Ricardo Giusti and Julio Olarticoechea, and, most important, striker Claudio Caniggia, who had scored the game-tying goal in Argentina's semifinal victory over Italy. Without Caniggia to take advantage of Maradona's scheming, Diego would have to do it all himself. That didn't seem to faze him. He's been doing that, he said, "ever since I was a kid playing for Los Cebollitas ["the Little Onions"] in Buenos Aires." How appropriate, since throughout the tournament Maradona had behaved as if he were still a child. It's a sure thing that if he had been wearing a Union Jack T-shirt last Thursday night, he would never have made the final game—the Italian authorities would have deported him as a hooligan.

That evening Maradona's younger brother, Lalo, borrowed one of Diego's two Ferraris and took Maradona's brother-in-law, Gabriele Esposito, for a ride near Argentina's training camp, Trigoria, on the southern edge of Rome. However, just outside of the camp, the carabinieri stopped Lalo; when they discovered that he didn't have a driver's license or an ID, they suspected that he had stolen the car. Lalo persuaded the police to take him and Gabriele back to the camp, where Maradona's wife, Claudia, vouched for them, and the incident seemed closed. But at that point Diego emerged from the locker room screaming something about vigilantes infesting the camp. Soon a brawl broke out as Diego, Lalo and Gabriele hurled themselves at the police. It took several people to restrain the three of them, and the police had to radio for reinforcements.

The next morning, newspapers all over the world carried pictures of Maradona being forcibly held back. A security guard had been taken to the hospital for a few hours with minor injuries, and a judicial inquiry was scheduled—after the World Cup, of course. In the meantime Maradona was seeing conspiracies everywhere. On Friday night somebody tore the Argentine flag off its pole at the training camp. It had been taken by no mere souvenir hunter, proclaimed Maradona, but by somebody with malicious intent. "We made a mistake choosing Trigoria as our camp," he told manager Carlos Bilardo.

Undeniably, though, the pressures on Maradona were huge. Four years before, in Mexico City, he had been a dominating superstar, a virtually unstoppable talent. Said Ron Greenwood, a former manager of England, before the final in '86, "Stop Maradona? First you take a small handgun...." But in Italy, Maradona was a decidedly lesser force. To his critics, even before the final, he was little more than a cripple with battered knees and ankles. He would score no "real" goals in the tournament, only a penalty kick in a shootout. And for all his flashes of brilliance, he has a tendency to cheat. In Mexico City, he knocked in a key goal with his hand in a quarterfinal match against England and got away with it. And in the first round of this tournament, he deflected a shot with his hand in the penalty area, denying the Soviet Union a goal. This is the Maradona who falls down writhing every time he is tackled and who runs into defenders and collapses, hoping to trick referees into ejecting them. This is the Maradona who has at once elevated the game and devalued it.