1982
Remarkable year, many will agree. But remarkable in a way few wish to think of – in 1982 football died and its death was announced from very unusual voice, to make it really sinister. Yes, there were excellent moments, games, players. There was the new World Cup. But death was everywhere. Not just the rampant and spreading plague of hooliganism. Not just the ugly scenes on the field and brutal games. It was fundamental shift – seen on the field and verbally expressed. It came in the last stages of the World Cup finals, when Brazil and then France were eliminated: it was clear sign that it was not enough to play. Rather the opposite – if you play creatively, if you are trying to be attacking, imaginative, crowd pleasing, you are going to lose. Even when you have the best players. Football skills were no longer valid argument. Just the opposite – the team using brutal and cynical approach to the point of murder will win. It was not like that before, even during the ultra-defensive 1960s. There was new philosophy, justifying every mean – from the fake match between West Germany and Austria through the torn to pieces shirt of Ardiles to Batiston sent to hospital for months by Schumacher. The winners were cold, brutal, scheming, they stopped at nothing – and they were not particularly great players. What counted was only the result at the final whistle. The new ‘philosophy’ was made painfully clear: ‘Football is war and only winning is important, no matter how achieved’.
Paul Breitner said that and it was not merely ironic, but outright scary, that an elegant, creative, imaginative, and generally clean player became the voice of the new ‘philosophy’. It was painful by now to see him surrounded by plain robots entirely unable to grasp his ideas, it was frustrating to see him trying to pass the ball to someone and not finding anybody able to make use of the pass. And it was scary to hear his words. Which were, unfortunately, a plain fact. The war was on and only winning counted. The game was the casualty – Brazil and France suddenly became a negative example: to play meant to lose. Don’t do it. Sportsmanship was for loser – winners killed. They were strong, had no emotions… they were on their feet and you were down. Who was down was also out. War is about murder – the winner is the one killing all others. The winner is only one. Second best? Losers. Dead. Third place? Meaningless… losers all. Effectively, the new ‘philosophy’ meant to trample to the the final through the bodies and make the last kill. The sheer horror and ugliness of the process made everybody instantly forgetting everything else and just been happy there was a winner and the war was over. Football was dead. Of course, it was not the end of the game yet – football agonized for years, reaching the bottom in 1990. Only then the importance of Breitner’s words and 1982 became entirely clear – then the game had to be artificially revitalized, rules had to be changed in attempt of bringing it back to life.