Month: November 2018

Venezuela – so obscure, out of sight and out of mind, it is difficult to present without notes. Shaky championship so far – must have been a problem with sound professionalism. Not every year teams were relegated from the top league or promoted from the lower level. 1983 had no promotions and relegation, but there were 2 teams going up in 1984.The exact formula, leading to promotion is unclear – there is second level champion, but how this scheme was played? On what grounds the second team was promoted? No idea.

UCV FC was the second promoted team. Fine.

Caracas-Yamaha FC was the champion of second level. Rightfully promoted. Or so it appears.

May be this was the winning squad. May be… However, no such name appeared in the next season – it was changed. Yamaha was dropped and it was just Caracas FC.

First Division had two-stage formula. 11 teams participated in 1983, same teams played in 1984. The first stage – regular league formula – was important only for relegation: the last 3 were going down. Mineros de Gayana (Puerto Ordaz) ended last, Petroleros del Zulia (Maracaibo) was 10th, and Deportivo Carabobo (Valencia) – 9th. Only Deportivo Carabobo put a fight – the other two were too weak for anything.

The top 8 teams started the second stage afresh – no points were carried over from the first stage, so everybody had a chance to win the title. Of course, no weak team in the first stage suddenly came to life – the battle was between the leaders in the first stage: Deportivo Italia and Deportivo Tachira. The only relative surprise was the drop of form of Atletico San Cristobal – they were 2nd in the first stage, but played no role when really mattered, sinking to 6th place in the final table. On the other hand, Atletico Zamora improved – they were 5th in the first stage, but challenged the leaders in the second stage, finishing with 19 points – the same as Deportivo Italia. This gave them 3rd place at the end, not bad at all, but the feeling is, that they were not really able to go higher.

ULA Merida had relatively weak season – traditionally, one of the strongest clubs in the country, but this year not a factor: 6th in the first stage, 4th in the second stage and in the final standing.

Deportivo Italia won the first stage by 2 points, then lost the title by 2 points. Fairly equal performance, so it was to a point losing a battle of equals.

Deportivo Tachira prevailed – they were 3rd in the first stage, 5 points behind Atletico Italia. But this stage did not matter… in the second stage they were stronger and finished on top with 21 points – 9 wins, 3 ties, 3 games lost. Great! Third title – the club was rapidly establishing itself as a leading Venezuelan club. One can say that foreigners were the big reason – 5 players: 3 Uruguayans, 1 Argentine and one Brazilian. No familiar names at all, but enough for lowly Venezuelan football.

May be not the most comprehensive formula, but at least a stable one. After the group stage one thing was clear: Union de Curtidores had the least points and was relegated. The club was the weakest in the league by far – no other club was even remotely in danger of relegation this season. But not very strong were many.

Leon finished 5th – last – in Group 4 with 32 points.

Oaxtepec – 4th in Group 4 with 33 points.

Puebla – 5th in Group 3 with 34 points.

Atletico Morelia – 4th in Group 3 with 39 points.

Tampico-Madero – 3rd in Group 3 with 41 points.

Toluca – 4th in Group 2 with 38 points.

America was the best team in the first phase with 51 points. The unlucky one was Tampico-Madero – they missed the play-offs with 41 points. More points than two teams, which qualified with 40 points and equal with the winners of Group 4. But they were grouped with stronger teams and finished 3rd in Group 3.

In the quarterfinals

Monterrey lost to America 1-1 and 0-1.

UANL was eliminated by UNAM 1-0 and 0-3.

UAG lost to local rivals CD Guadalajara after dramatic battle – 1-0, 0-1, overtime, and, finally – 8-9 penalty shoot-out.

Similar was the Mexico City derby between Atlante and Cruz Azul:

Atlante won ‘away’ 2-1, then lost at home with the same result, extra-time changed nothing and at last Atlante lost the penalty shoot-out 2-4.

In the semifinals played 3 teams form the capital and 1 from Guadalajara.

Cruz Azul lost to America 0-2 and 0-0.

UNAM also lost, but dramatically – after the opponents exchanged home wins by 2-1, UNAM was unlucky in the penalty shoot-out 3-5.

Thus the final was not only between Mexico City and Guadalajara, but also between the historic bitter rivals and most popular clubs in the country – America and CD Guadalajara. The first leg was played in Guadalajara and ended 2-2. Back at home, America won the second leg 3-1 and the Mexican title was theirs.

CD Guadalajara lost the final and the title after a strong season, but a close look objectively favoured their rivals – Chivas, as the club is perhaps better known, was 2nd in their original group and were Mexican league ‘normal’, they would have been 4th at the final standings. After that, they reached the final after extracting penalty shoot-out victories in both ¼ and ½ finals. Lastly, they were unable to win their home leg at the final. Small differences, but not in their favour.

America triumphed after having splendid season. They won their 8th title – 4 in the amateur era, and 4 in the professional. It was also their first win after 1975-76, quite a long wait for the most popular club in the country. There was more to the victory, especially when time passed – Los Aguilas (the Eagles) lost the semi-final against their arch-rivals the previous season, so it was wonderful revenge. Historically, it was more than winning ‘El Super Clasico’ – the old enemies never met at the final before. And they never met again so far – so this final was eventually dubbed Final del Siglo (the final of the century). America was unquestionably the strongest team in the country this season, a testimony of the great work of their Chilean coach Carlos Reynoso. The squad was good too, helped by three Argentinians – Hector Miguel Zelada, Daniel Brailovsky, and Gustavo Echaniz.

Mexican Second Division – a mystery back then, a mystery now. According to the rules – one promotion. Of course, buying a first division franchise was the other way. Who played in the second level? Frequent changes make it not that tough to find, but rather meaningless.

Santos Laguna may be – a club more familiar to non-mexicans today, not so in the 1980s.

Irapuato was likely member – a club frequently moving up and down.

But all boils down to one thing: the championship final, deciding the league champion, getting promotion. Jalisco and Zacatepec reached the final. Jalisco lost 0-2 in the first leg and managed only 1-1 tie at home in Guadalajara.

So, Jalisco was unable to return to top flight.

Quite confident victory for Zacatepec and they joined First Division again. Well done.

NASL. 1984 was the end. The last season. It was not surprising, the struggle to keep this unrealistic league working was going on for years. Of course, at the beginning of the year plans were made for continuation, but they unrealistic as all previous plans – on one hand, a new and more interesting for the public league came into existence – MISL (Major Indoor Soccer League), the indoor league. Interests overlapped – many players moved from one championship to the other and many clubs participated in both championships. The outdoor game, however, was already the big loser, so the plans were pretty much in terms of amalgamating both championships – but not everybody was interested. More clubs folded and NASL had only 9 teams for the 1984 championship. Jumping a bit ahead, only 2 clubs – Toronto and Minnesota – wanted to play in the 1985 NASL season, so the whole balloon just called it quits. As for the last season, its format was changed a bit in some weird hope to schedule more games – the big change was the final: no more grand one-game final, but best of three matches final, similar to the scheme used by the other major American leagues. Money were short, however. Fort Lauderdale Strikers moved to Minnesota, becoming Minnesota Strikers – the reason was not that much money, but the amalgamation with the indoor football: Fort Lauderdale had no indoor venue at hand. Whatever you want, 9 teams are too few for big and complicated championship – the play-offs were reduced to what elsewhere is known as semi-finals, only the top 2 teams of the 2 Division qualified. Perhaps even this was too extravagant at the moment.

Tampa Bay Roadies finished last – 4th – in the Eastern Division. They lost all of their away games.

New York Cosmos was 3rd. Display of old silverware did not hide the reality – Cosmos at the beginning of 1985 Cosmos withdrew from both NASL and MISL. Of course, there was big talk early in 1984 – they tried to convince Pele to put the boots again, but he was not interested.

Toronto Blizzard finished 2nd and qualified. Chicago Sting ended on top. The weird rules placed them on top with 120 points – their ‘normal’ record was not that impressive – 6 wins and 6 losses at home; 7 wins and 5 losses away.

Western Division.

Golden Bay Earthquakes was last. They were the team the least wins this year – only 8.

Tulsa Roughnecks was 4th. Just looking at their squad one sees the end – no more famous big names. The most famous was their coach Wim Suurbier, and his name was misspelled, so there.

Minnesota Strikers – 3rd and out. They shared the season’s record for most wins with 2 other teams, but that was all.

Vancouver Whitecaps ended 2nd and San Diego Sockers won the Division.

In the semi-finals – or play-offs – the drama was in one of them: Chicago Sting and Vancouver Whitecaps exchanged wins and went into the third match. Which ended 4-3 Chicago. Bobby Lenarduzzi scored the quickest goal in the whole history of NASL play-offs – in the 46th second of the game – but at the end Chicago prevailed.

In the other semi-final Toronto Blizzard won the first two games and qualified.

San Diego Sockers lost both matches by a single goal difference – desire was not enough. However, long live indoor socker – here is the team getting ready for the ‘other’ championship.

Eastern Division final – Chicago Sting vs Toronto Blizzard. The 1st vs the 2nd. The finals changed nothing, except they were another example why the league had to fold: a bit over 8000 attended the opening match in Chicago – twice as many the second game in Toronto. But the team without support was stronger… Chicago won at home 2-1 and away 3-2.

Toronto Blizzard lost – too bad for ‘Primo’ pizza. What else to say?

Chicago Sting were the new NASL champions, but one may seriously doubt how happy the winners were – the club quickly withdrew from NASL and joined MISL for 1985. The last champions were entirely unromantic – victory did not mean money, indoor socker was the better option. And good bye NASL.

Asian Nations Cup. Why including Asia so late? Two reasons: the first is technical – it is still very difficult to gather reliable information about Asian football of bygone years. In real time it was almost impossible – African football was covered a bit, but the Asian one was entirely out of sight and mind. Things started to change more or less with the 1982 World Cup. So far, Asia attracted no interest – the surprising performance of North Korea at the 1966 World Cup was the only memorable moment of Asian football history in the European mind. The politically motivated expulsion of Israel contributed to the lack of interest – it was the only country capable of attracting some outside interest and this largely because of Israeli players going to play professionally in Europe and North America. Things, however, started to change in the second half of the 1970s, strongly connected to economic prosperity – first Iran, at least until the monarchy was replaced by religious dictatorship, then Japan and South Korea quietly went into more serious development of their game, then Arabic wealth, based on oil money, started to invest in football. Iran played well at the 1978 World Cup, Kuwait and South Korea were not just punching bags at the 1982 World Cup – the continental football was becoming serious and ready to compete equally at least with African football. It could be said that after 1982 Asia was included in the world’s football map. But the sport had already a long history on one hand and still was, on continental level, quite disorganized and amateurish, on the other hand.

The Asian championship started in 1956 and in 1984 it was already the 8th issue of it. So far, the winners were: 1956 – South Korea, 1960 – South Korea, 1964 – Israel, 1968 – Iran, 1972 – Iran, 1976 – Iran, 1980 – Kuwait. From a hindsight, tradition was already built up. Yet, it was difficult to consider such tradition – in reality, few countries were consistent participants. Compared to Africa, most Asian countries were not very interested in international football and political conflicts plagued the tournaments – Israel was banished, South and North Korea did not see eye to eye, Japan, China, and Taiwan were another cluster of problems, India and Pakistan. Vietnam was out because of the long war, Lebanon was not exactly able to play a role, because of domestic conflicts and so on. On top of political problems there was sheer size and distances – it was both difficult and expensive to travel, especially for amateur teams. The 1984 championship was no exception – Burma, Lebanon, Bahrain, Japan, Macao, Brunei, Iraq, and South Yemen withdrew from the tournament in the last minute. Malaysia had to be moved from Group 2 to Group 3 in the qualification stage and Afghanistan was included late. 21 countries played in the qualifying stage – divided somewhat geographically into 4 groups. The groups were played in Indonesia (Group 1), Saudi Arabia (Group 2), India (Group 3), and China (Group 4). The top 2 teams of each group moved to the finals, plus Singapore as hosts and Kuwait as the current holders of the title. Iran and Syria qualified from Group 1, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates from Group 2, South Korea and India from Group 3, and China and Qatar from Group 4. As a footnote, Nepal was the worst team at the qualifying stage – they lost all their games with goal-difference 0-30.

The finals were played in December 1984.

Group 1:

1.SAUDI ARABIA 4 2 2 0 4- 2 6

2.KUWAIT 4 2 1 1 4- 2 5

3.Qatar 4 1 2 1 3- 3 4

4.Syria 4 1 1 2 3- 5 3

5.South Korea 4 0 2 2 1- 3 2

Group 2:

1.CHINA 4 3 0 1 10- 2 6

2.IRAN 4 2 2 0 6- 1 6

3.UAE 4 2 0 2 3- 8 4

4.Singapore 4 1 1 2 3- 4 3

5.India 4 0 1 3 0- 7 1

A moment from China vs UAE. Seemingly, UAE was attacking, but China won 5-0.

In the semi-finals Saudi Arabia met Iran.

The match ended 1-1 and the Saudis prevailed only in the penalty shoot-out 5-4. Lucky to a point, for they equalized in the 90th minute.

In the other semi-final China beat Kuwait 1-0 in overtime.

Iran and Kuwait played for the 3rd place and the match ended 1-1. Kuwait got bronze medals after winning the penalty shoot-out 5-3.

There was less drama at the final between Saudi Arabia and China.

One must put aside political tensions here – the clash between a communist country and staunch anti-communist one was peaceful.

The Saudis scored early – Shaye M.S. Al-Nafeesah in the 12th minute and generally dominated the final.

Clearly the stronger team, they scored a second goal – Majed Mohammed Abdullah in the 47th minute and that was pretty much all.

The Saudis celebrated in manner quite unusual from today’s perspective and won.

Saudi Arabia won its first Asian title. Great moment, indeed. True winners too – they did not lose even one match during the whole campaign, ending with 7 wins and 3 ties. Their most difficult match was the semi-final against Iran.

China was worthy second – its team had wonderful campaign and at the end was the most awarded squad: awarded for sportsmanship, best player, and sharing the ‘Go for goals’ award. But it was rather incidental performance – the power was Arabic football: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Qatar. Iran was riding on old glory – looked like the country’s football was in decline, because of the new political situation in the country. South Korea was perhaps a disappointment. Yet, the main protagonists of the Asian ascent were all in the finals – South Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait. Only Japan was missing – but they did not participated in the tournament, and China’s success may be considered as an early sign of development from today’s point of view.

African Player of the Year. The captain of Cameroon Théophile Abega Mbida, nicknamed Doctor, was voted the best.

Known to the world as Abega, but the Doctor in Cameroon and Africa, the midfielder became known at the 1982 World Cup. And he stayed on top of the game, just like the whole Cameroonian team. He was 30 years in 1984 and arguably this was his best year. Well, in terms of success, it was – Cameroon won the African Cup of Nations, Cameroon played at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games, Canon Yaounde played at the final of the African Champions Cup. The Doctor undoubtedly contributed a lot to both his club and country, scoring a goal in the victorious African Nations final.

It was only proper to vote the captain of the continental winners number one. And there was more – he was hired to play for the French side Toulouse – the move to professional European football was certainly a recognition of his talent, although one may argue it came a bit too late for achieving true stardom.

Here is Abega with his eventually much more famous Canon and national team teammate Joseph-Antoine Bell. Unfortunately, sports are like that – Bell, a goalkeeper, would have much longer career and thus would reach big recognition. A field player, already 30 years old, had no real chance – Abega still had a few years to play and age did not have to be a big factor, but injury would cup his playing days shorter. But misfortune was still in the unknown future – in 1984 he was the best African player.

The Cup Winners Cup was another Egyptian triumph. On the way to the final, there was one more African freak addition to the usual withdrawals. The government of Gabon disbanded CAP Owendo before the first round was played; the death of Guinea’s President Ahmed Sekou-Toure led to withdrawal of Horoya AC, just like Hafia in the other torunament – the country was in mourning, so no football. The other two withdrawals were bizarre… the first happened in the preliminary round. The second leg between GD Lage and Avia Sports (Central African Republic), played in Equatorial Guinea, was abandoned in the 80th minute, due to… darkness. At the time, GD Lage was leading 1-0 and thus qualifying, but – darkness. Avia Sports was awarded the victory. The other darkness was political and huge it was, for it involved the final of the tournament. After overtime and penalty shoot-out Al-Ahly (Tripoli) eliminated Canon (Yaounde, Cameroon). But playing the final was not in the books and this was certain much earlier: Lybia and Egypt did not see eye to eye politically. Two of the semifinalists were Egyptian clubs – if the ‘enemy’ was avoided by sheer luck in the semi-finals, it was certain to appear at the final… and, for political reasons, the Lybian club withdrew. Which effectively meant no final? Apparently the problem was well known and announced in time, for the final was played – Canon (Yaounde), the losing semi-finalist, went ahead.

In the other semi-final the Egyptian derby between Al-Ahly and Al-Mokaoulun ended without winner – 0-0 and 1-1. But Al-Ahly scored away goal and thus the 1983 Cup winners were eliminated. No second cup for them…

The final was tough, as expected – Canon reached the final by default, but it was one of the strongest African clubs for years, so it was hardly the underdog. Al-Ahly won at home 1-0, then lost in Yaounde 0-1. As names go… the Egyptian scorer hardly rings a bell (Magdi Abdelghani), but the Cameroonian soccer was much more familiar – Dagobert Dang. The 1982 World Cup was fresh memory. But familiar names were not going to win – the Egyptians prevailed in the shoot-out 4-2.

Perhaps it was only fair that Canon lost – they were not to play the final at all. But they lost both semi-final and final only on penalty shoot-out, so they were not some lucky team: they were strong and also confirming the solid and stable state of Cameroonian football.

Al-Ahly, for many – the most popular and the strongest Egyptian club – finally won international trophy. A great moment, no doubt. And also telling – in two years, Egyptian clubs won 3 African club trophies – it was not Cameroon staying consistent: a new chapter of African football was finally starting: it looked like old predictions were becoming reality at last – the continent was bursting with football talent and now serious professional approach was establishing too.