English

GAME SAYED-BUT A GREAT ’KEEPER WAS LOST

They will tell you that Spain is filled with slender, streamlined senoritas and plump, comfortable senoras.
Once you have seen one matronly mother and one foot-stamping daughter, they say, you’ve seen them all.
It isn’t quite true. And I’ve no doubt that the audience at Florence’s Medici Theatre on a late summer night in ’34 would have agreed with me.
The Barbella Sisters from Seville, for instance, were neither one nor the other. They were, in fact, a very happy in between.
They had the faces of angels, dark, liquid, innocent eyes. But they had the kind of bodies which, quite rightly, are never dished out with haloes . . .
Just how two such girls could have chosen fan-dancing as a profession remained something of a mystery.
But it must be admitted that they gave the performance a certain artistic mystique, not always found in the fan-waving world.
And as the act moved towards its climax, an electric tension gripped the audience.
The music rose to a crescendo, the tempo of the dancing quickened, the orchestra hit one final chord. The sound slowly died away.
Then suddenly, dramatically, the fans fell. And the Barbella Sisters stood there naked and unadorned, as the saying goes.
Then to the vast astonishment of all those present, they started walking towards the front of the stage.
They had already bared their bodies. Now, they were about to bare their hearts. “VIVA ZAMORA”, they cried.
An uneasy buzz, half growl, half gasp, swept across the theatre.
On that night and in that place, no one needed to ask any questions.

 

It was the ferocity of the Italian attack that steadied Zamora’s nerves

 

Ricardo Zamora the Spaniard, the greatest goalkeeper in all the world, was heading for Florence.And he held the hopes and the dreams of the city in the palms of his big, capable hands.For tomorrow, Italy, favourites to win the 1934 World Cup, would play Spain in the Stadio Berta . . . and only Zamora stood between them and glory.
Everything pointed towards an Italian victory. Italy had a poten-tially great team . . . Spain only a very mediocre one.Yet such was the legend of Zamora that a superstitious fear gripped the nation.It was no use trying to tell them that goalkeepers don’t win football matches. They would simply have answered that Zamora just didn’t obey the normal rules of the human race.Up there on the heights, the Spanish coach stopped so that the players could look down at Flor-ence, at the lights twinkling in the darkness.This had once been the stamp-ing ground for Charlemagne . . . the battlefield of the Tuscans.

 

He could be

beaten only

by a blatant foul . . .

 

Yet it is probable that no emperor from the past had ever been more supreme than was Zamora in his own domain.He had come back from the 1924 Olympiad in Paris with this mantle of supremacy and for ten golden years, he had reigned unchallenged.Look down the list of the game’s legendary keepers and you will find they nearly all have one thing in common ... the backing of a top team.Zamora is the one- glaring exception. Spain, by any stan-dards, were only a very moderate side.Yet in Zamora’s first 27 games for Spain, backed by such a side as this, he conceded only 34 goals.If you could have seen him that night, however, you might have been mildly disappointed. He looked too human to be a legend ... a dark, half-handsome boule- vadier of only average stature.If you could have looked into his heart, you might have been ever more surprised.He felt old and tired and dis-illusioned. He knew all too well that his days at the top were numbered.After all, he was 33 and ten years at the top can be a lifetime.With this World Cup quarter-final against Italy only a few brief hours away, he was filled by forewarnings of disaster.This self-doubt showed through that night at the team’s hotel.Still you can be sure he figured in the dreams of the Italian team that night.They had faced him many times before, discussed him over and over again and yet still found no ready-made tactic with which to defeat him.Tomorrow, they planned to batter him into submission by sheer power. They were well- equipped for such a task. Football has never known more rugged performers than Monti, their big, attacking centre-half, . . . veteran centre-forward Schia- vio ... or the fiery inside-left, Ferrari.And so the stage was set for Zamora’s greatest test.The crowd greeted Zamora with the kind of love-hate reception, reserved for the famous.With the match only a minute old, Monti came crunching into the Spanish keeper and, despite protests, the referee waved play on.Maybe it shook him a little.A high, floated centre slithered through his hands. And although he quickly dived on to the ball, his confidence was tattered and torn.The Spanish defenders were protecting him now as they had never needed to before.And all the while, the Italians were hammering him, sensing that the breaking-point was maybe only another charge away.But ironically the very violence of their attack did more than any-thing else to steady Zamora. For him, it was a battle for survival. There literally wasn’t time for self-doubt.Slowly, his greatness returned.Then, incredibly, Spain scored, right against the run of the play.Langara, the centre-forward, took a free kick. His inside-left, Regueiro, lunged at the ball, mis- kicked it.And with that very miskick succeeded' in beating the Italian keeper, Giampiero Combi, who had positioned himself for an orthodox shot. The Italians, roared on by the crowd, came back hotter than ever.

 

Zamora dived to snatch the ball from the very boot of Meazza to save an otherwise certain goal . . . and seconds later, at full stretch, fingertipped a scorching drive from Schiavio over the bar.Half-time arrived with the score still, Italy 0, Spain 1 . . . and for the first time, despair touched the hearts of the Italians.They had forced 16 corners, as compared to a mere two by the Spaniards. Could nothing beat this miracle man Zamora?Clearly something could. For with the second half only a minute old, Italy equalised.Pizziolo, their right-half, floated a free kick into the goalmouth. And Zamora, moving out to collect, was pulled back by anony¬mous hands.
Even then, he still managed to get a hand to the ball. But was quite powerless to do anything, as Ferrari hammered the rebound into the net.The referee surprisingly let the goal stand and a sigh swept the stands. Even the Italians there seemed to sense the shame of the moment. . . that such a player had to be finally beaten in such a way.But was there any other?Twice, in ugly goalmouth skir-mishes, he was seen to be clearly kicked. Yet incredibly brave, he played on, bloodied and defiant.
With ten minutes left, he dived on to the boot of Orsi and was knocked unconscious with the ball still clutched tightly in his arms.At full-time, the score was 1—1.
Extra-time was even more brutal than what had gone before.Then with only seconds left, their chance came at last. Schiavio drove across the face of the goal. Flat out, Zamora fingertipped the ball away only to see it roll to the feet of Ferrari.With Zamora on his knees by the far right-hand post, the goal lay open wide and Ferrari calmly rifiled a shot at the empty net.And then miraculously there was Zamora, like a bat out of hell, plucking the ball from the air.It was the perfect finale to his greatest game. They carried him shoulder high from the field that day through a wildly cheering crowd.

But the Spanish jubilation was short-lived. Back in the dressing- room, the doctor took one look at Zamora and sadly shook his head.Three ribs were cracked and his body bruised beyond belief. Tomorrow, in the replay, Spain would play without Zamora and Italy would win . . . and move on to take the World Cup too.That night at the Medici, the Barbella Sisters posed again in the spotlights, naked, Junoesque and somehow angelic too.But somewhat to the disappoint¬ment of those present, they didn’t come prancing down to the front of the stage.There was no leaping ... no “Viva Zamora’s”There was really no need. To-night, Florence belonged to their hero.And oddly enough history would have proved them wrong. For, although no one could have known it then, Zamora had played his last great game.He would play other good ones, of course. But the real magic had been rubbed away by one, long, brutal day.