Countries have decided their groups on other tactics since 1930, but there is no simple way to break a player’s heart.
By Chris Evans for The Set Pieces
It sounded like the kind of soulful delight a victim of a mob attack might remember. In the middle of the night, a sinister knock on the door of a men’s organization would mean it’s time to leave. to us.
This is how the rejections of Cameroon Italy 90 of their dismissal from the selection for this summer’s World Cup were informed. Russian coach Valery Nepomnyashchy would be the one who would cut and execute the maximum brutal “knock-tac” with his coaches, cutting the numbers little by little. until a final of 22.
“We arrived at breakfast and you could see that one or two players were not there, two other players [were not there]. The players disappeared one by one,” recalls midfielder Emmanuel Maboang. “Every day I counted ‘one, two, 3Array. . 27”, “one, two, 3Array. . 25” and you heard that someone came back here last night. You may not communicate much because it may be you, while everyone sleeps, who is sent back. until the evening. Then one morning at nine o’clock in the morning, he [Nepomnyashchy] said, “Congratulations,” and you saw that you were in the 22nd. »
Nepomnyashchy’s unorthodox technique for team variety might seem like the kind of thing he wouldn’t do much for team morale, especially since he refused to divulge the reasons he left out the players, but didn’t hurt the Indomitable Lions as they beat champions Argentina. in the first match of the tournament and have become the first African quarter-finalists. The coach would claim that this kept his players on guard.
The history of the World Cup is marked by other tactics of letting down abandoned players and there is no smart way to know that they will not make it to the tournament. Fortunately, advances in generation mean that the dreaded phone call is a much more painless approach. of sharing bad news.
The news did not come from the coach. For Romanian players at the first World Cup in 1930, their fate lay in the hands of King Carol II, who chose the team that would spend two months betting and traveling to and from the inaugural tournament in Uruguay.
However, the monarch’s involvement would possibly not have been as appalling to Chief Costel Radulescu as it might seem through fashionable standards. King Carol made the decisions, but in part because his international political relations were necessary to secure the release of a giant organization of gamblers who, in the first place, had been denied the license of the English oil company for which they worked.
Radulescu isn’t the only one who didn’t decide on his own team. It’s not unusual for a variety committee representing the country’s FA to make the calls in the early years of foreign football. Italian Vittorio Pozzo, one of the first coaches to resist this order, is the only coach to have retained the World Cup, even though his two successes in 1934 and 1938 fell under the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini.
While there were rumours that the government preferred that only members of the fascist party be selected, Pozzo insisted that it was better to make diverse decisions on the basis of football. He even received a waiver to use players of Italian origin, not nationals of Italian origin.
In contrasting circumstances, Sir Alf Ramsey made a similar request for full control of the variety before taking over as England manager in 1963. Ramsey’s predecessor, Walter Winterbottom, would select his starting eleven through a nine-man committee.
This paved the way for more coaches to adjust to their needs in the future, but shifted the onus to coaches for delivering the bad news to their players. This can be especially tricky when larger groups are taken to pre-tournament education camps only so they might not make it to the finals. Just ask Glenn Hoddle, who faced a furious Paul Gascoigne after the midfielder was cut off before France 98.
“We heard him tearing down the room; I think they threw some tables,” Rob Lee recalls. “As I walked down the hallway to Glenn’s room, there was a huge accumulation of players. There had to be four, six players and we knew something had started, and we knew it clearly, Gazza.
Hoddle had made his decision the day before, but was overdue to reveal his final variety because he wanted to talk to each player one-on-one about his decision. The challenge was that by setting up several consecutive appointments, he created an audience for the kind of explosive reaction Gazza gave.
Lee had suffered the same fate as his fellow midfielder when he was left out of Terry Venables’ Euro 96 squad two years earlier and won the bad news while in China. So he had to wait before catching a 13-hour flight to England. There is no right way forward.
“Of the 22, there are probably 15 or 16 who know one hundred percent and the rest of you think, ‘It may be, it may not be. ‘In ’96 we were all in China to play some games and the team was announced while we were and they called you to see Terry Venables. I still don’t forget that Bryan Robson [Venables’ assistant] came in and said, ‘To see you,’ and you know you’re in trouble. I had a thirteen hour return flight and it was just awful, certainly appalling.
“In 1998, [the eliminated players] were very fortunate because, the way Glenn did, the five who weren’t there temporarily flew in and left. That’s how the players looked for it. We’re not involved, so it’s a smart way to do it, and the camp is only a few hours from La Manga.
Unlike Hoddle, some coaches avoid private contact altogether and prefer to let the news settle on its own. Some are following the old path of PE teachers of setting up a roster of teams outside their desks for players to find out for themselves. Aime Jacquet, winner of the World Cup, opted for an X-Factor-style organization ad to tell defecting players en masse that they would not be on his team in 1998. For every resolution and way of announcing there are pros and cons. But, no matter how a variety goes, there will be derivative effects.
This is an excerpt from Chris Evans’ newly released How to Win the World Cup.