FRANCE 98 – Germany 1974
World Champion: Germany FR
The 16 Participants:
| Argentina Italy Australia Netherlands Brazil |
Poland Bulgaria Scotland Chile Sweden |
GDR Uruguay Germany FR Yugoslavia Haiti Zaire |
20 years on…
West Germany, after a somewhat shaky start to the tournament, eventually ran into form to win “its” World Cup. In the final, led by the “Kaiser”, Franz Beckenbauer, the Germans were at the top of their game to beat a brilliant Netherlands side. |
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| The 10th World Cup tournament in Germany in 1974 was marked by the arrival of colour television! And as if to highlight this cultural revolution even more, the “Welt Meisterschaft 74” featured two other major changes. The first was a change in the tournament rules. The first round group system followed by knock-out in the second round was replaced by a group system in both rounds. The second change was the replacing of the Jules Rimet trophy – won outright by Brazil four years earlier after winning the World Cup three times (1958, 1962, 1970) – by a new solid gold statuette known as the “FIFA World Cup”.
Like its predecessor, the new trophy, sculpted by Silvio Gazzaniga, was coveted by many, and 98 nations taking part in the qualifiers. Notable first-time qualifiers for the finals were East Germany, Haiti, Australia and Zaire, the first sub-Saharan African nation to reach the World Cup proper. But Hungary, Spain, France and most surprisingly England all failed to make it through. As a prologue to its vanguard tournament, FIFA appointed itself a new President, the first non-European, when the Brazilian Jo‹o Havelange replaced Englishman Sir Stanley Rous, who had held the post since 1961. On the field, the favourites, West Germany, qualified for the second round, if rather unconvincingly. And following a defeat at the hands of East Germany in the first round, there was even a minor revolution: Beckenbauer, the team captain, was begged by his Bayern Munich team-mates, unhappy with the general performance, to urge coach Helmut Schoen to make changes in the team’s line-up and tactics. For the team from the Netherlands, however, which included in its ranks Cruyff, Neeskens, Rep and Rensenbrink, it was all plain sailing as they qualified from both the first and second rounds, beating Argentina (4-0), East Germany (2-0) and Brazil (2-0) by playing the brand of “total football” made famous by the Dutch club side, Ajax. The revelation of the tournament proved to be the multi-talented Polish team which finished third, with its ace marksman Gzregorz Lato crowned as the competition’s top goalscorer (7 goals). The Poles, however, couldn’t stop the Germans from reaching the final everyone had hoped for, against the Netherlands. The Final, which unlike earlier games in the tournament, was played under blue skies, began dramatically as Cruyff was brought down in the German penalty area following a solo run. The Dutch took the lead from the ensuing Neeskens penalty before the Germans had even touched the ball and with just a minute gone on the clock. German pride was stung. Maier, Beckenbauer, Vogts – who thereafter stifled Cruyff’s influence – , Hoeness and Overath soon fought their way back into the game and finally triumphed 2-1 with goals from Breitner and Muller. This was the Germans’ second world title, twenty years after their first victory in Switzerland in 1954. |
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