English

SACKED!-THE IDOLS OF SPAIN

HELINO HERRERA lay on his bed and listened to the night sounds of the city.
A radio blared in the next apartment. A drunk cannoned into an ashcan in the alleyway below and from far off came the wail of a saxaphone.
Across the street, the neon-lit sign flashed above the billiard saloon. It bathed his room in a brief amber glow, gave him back his darkness and then flashed again.
He lay there in the hinterland between waking and sleeping, a tough, barrel-chested man with wavy-black hair greying around the edges.
He felt suddenly old and sad and lonely. He had good reason. For no man was ever more alone than Herrera in Vin Del Mar on that summer night in ’62.

 

It was being freely whispered around the city that he was finish-ed as a manager . . .
That he had defied the million-aire grandees who rule Spanish football. . .
Trampled upon the heroes of Madrid and Barcelona . . .
Chosen a Spanish team so weak that it would, on this coming day, become the laughing-stock of the World Cup competition, as it faced the champions, Brazil.
For this, it was said, he would be broken.
Herrera began to remember the game against Mexico that had gone.
On that day, Suarez and Del Sol, a half-a-million pound com-bination, had been in their most celestial mood.
Suarez crossed himself and
60.0 crossed themselves in unison.

He caressed his way past three desperate Mexicans, laid on the perfect ball for Puskas and saw the centre-forward blaze high and wide into the stands.

Gently Suarez shook his head, turned his palms upwards and
60.0 sighed.
He was something, this Suarez, to fill the eye of a man. A ballet- dancer of a fellow with hair as black as night and dark, flashing eyes.

 

It took courage for Herrera to drop such talent. His plan might have worked but for

 

They idolised him in Barcelona and no doubt they were right to do so.
Certainly he was the greatest of all the natural-born Spaniards, a ball-playing genius, a European Pele.
There was tremendous talent in this Spanish team. The big, rug¬ged centre-half Santamaria, Pus¬kas and the flying winger Gento, for instance, were all candidates for any World XI.
But there was one man in the stadium that day who didn’t share in the universal adulation, namely Herrera.
He had sat there, scowling, growling, as all this artistry failed to break down the rugged defens-ive barrier set up by these men of Mexico.

 

Neither side had scored or ever looked likely to do so and the Mexicans, after all, had been rated the also-rans of the competition.

With just a minute left, Suarez broke clear from his own penalty area, linked up with Gento and together they went the length of the pitch, before feeding the perfect pass to Peiro.
Peiro dutifully hammered it into the roof of the net and Spain had literally won on the stroke of time.
Five minutes later back in the dressing-room, the mood was still with them. In strode Helino Her-rera. The hubbub ceased.
Del Sol turned round to the manager. “Wasn’t that a wonder¬ful goal?” he said.
“It was a goal” admitted Herrera without enthusiasm.
“The game, it lasts 90 minutes.

 

You exert yourself for fifteen. For this,” he asked seemingly in unbelief, “you are worth a quarter of a million?”
It was always this way between them. Suarez coldly polite. Her¬rera unimpressed, arrogant, al¬most contemptuous of the nation’s idol.
It was a strange thing this. For at Barcelona, it had been Herrera who virtually discovered Suarez. And it had also been Herrera who coached him along the path to greatness.
Could it be, men asked, that he had actually grown jealous of the very thing he had helped to create.
That night, the bombshell exploded.
Santamaria, Del Sol and Suarez were dropped from the Spanish team for the most important game of all, against Brazil.
If Spain could have won this one, they would have gone through to the quarter-finals and the world champions would be out of the competition.
The task would have been awe-some with all their top performers on parade.
With this parody of a team, such hopes were surely pie in the sky.
For in addition to the axing of the heroes, Herrera had made no less than nine changes from the side that had first filed out for Spain.
Only Puskas and Gento had survived the blitz and the rest of the team were mostly fledglings. . . men who had little more than a vast enthusiasm to substitute for talent.

 

Yet lying there, listening to the night sounds of the city, Herrera told himself once again that he had been right to choose them . . .
For the whole history of Spanish football was filled with frustration.
She suffered, said Herrera, from a surfeit of stars.
Herrera hated stars or, at least, the idolatry which so often sur-rounded them. And this possibly accounts for the strange love-hate relationship he enjoyed with Suarez.
Just two blocks away, the dusky, husky Amarildo had been watch¬ing the lights go out, one by one, over the city.
Tomorrow.

 

On this coming day, he would be playing in his first World Cup game for Brazil, trying to replace the irreplaceable, the Black Pearl, Pele.
He understood all too well the hopes that were wrapped around him, understood the size of the task ahead.
Amarildo was twenty-two.
He wished he could jump for-ward in time to the next night. Then he could get some real sleep.
No personal disaster, no dis-grace, he reasoned, would ever seem quite so bad once it was'past.
Herrera’s alarm sounded at 7.30, chasing away the last chance of sleep.
The breakfast room of the hotel seemed unnaturally quiet with no one over anxious to meet his eye.

 

The jackals who lurked on the fringes of the Spanish team wanted no part of him.
In their eyes, he was already dead and they had no wish to share his fate.
Herrera treated them all with a lofty contempt. Nothing much showed in that hard, poker face of his. There was certainly no sign that he cared.
He was just leaving the dining room when the three axed heroes arrived.
Santamaria and Del Sol studi-ously looked the other way, but Suarez paused for a moment.
“Do you think you’re going to be lucky today?” he asked.
Herrera hesitated before answering, as though searching Suarez’s words for some hidden meaning. Then seemingly satisfied that there was none, he said:
“I believe in making my own luck.”
But, of course, they both knew it would need a lot more than luck to bring down Brazil. For even without the great Pele, they were still a team of giants.
They would line up . . . Gylmar, Djalma Santos, Mauro, Nilton Santos: Zito, Zozimo: Garrincha, Didi, Vava, Amarildo, Zagallo.
And only Amarildo looked out of place.
Yet down at the stadium, Her-rera talked tactics to his fledg¬lings, as though Brazil were just another side from the Costa Brava or Valencia.
Some of his faith must surely have rubbed off on the players, for incredibly it was Spain who took command of the opening minutes.
With Puskas leading the line, they began to hammer the famed Brazilian defence.
Twice Gylmar was forced to save at full stretch and once Djalma Santos headed out from under the bar.

 

The Brazilians in the crowd waited patiently for the fire to die down.

They were still waiting, when in the thirty-fifth minute Abelardo shot Spain into the lead.
Half-time arrived with the score still, Brazil 0, Spain 1, and panic began to creep into the ranks of Brazil.
Could their four-year reign really be drawing to a close? Could they really be falling before this unlikely looking team of Herrera’s?
Brazil came out for the second half with a new look of determina¬tion, as if to say “All right, boys, you‘ve had your fun. But the party’s over, the foolin’s finished.”
Yet incredibly it was still the Spaniards who called the tune.
They were fighting for every ball, chasing every half-chance. Their tackling was devastating, their support running superb. They appeared, at times, to have it nine defenders and eight more in attack.

 

On this day, they were a team of heroes controlled by the hand of a master.
Never before had the genius of Helino Herrera flared so brightly. Never before had he been proved so right.
But Brazil was to have its hero too. For Amarildo, if not yet a Pele, was proving a brilliant second best.
And with 72 minutes gone, he equalised for Brazil.
Now surely the Spaniards would break. But, no. They came back stronger than ever and, with just five minutes left, were presented with the chance of a lifetime.
Puskas and Gylmar had gone up together for a high cross and both fallen as the goalkeeper punched it clear.

 

It had rolled straight to the feet of Verges who promptly ham¬mered it, shoulder high, towards the empty net.
But somehow Gylmar hauled himself off the turf ф save again and make perhaps the greatest save of his career.
By such things are football matches lost and won.
This time, the ball bounced to Garrincha who raced upheld and found Didi.
Didi, calm as ever, flicked it to Amarildo who headed it home.
For a long moment, Amarildo could only stand and stare at the ball nestling in the back of the net. Then suddenly he was engulfed by delirious team-mates.
And so Spain lost a game they had so nearly won. But at least on this day, they had shared the glory and no one could doubt Herrera now. Soon he would be hailed as the greatest coach-cum- manager of them all.
Back in the Brazilian dressing- room, Pele was so delighted with his deputy that he had jumped fully clothed into the shower alongside him.
Amarildo would sleep soundly tonight.
And so would Herrera.