Month: August 2020

First Division. The short championship was called ‘Mexico 86’ and had the following structure: the league was divided into two groups of 10 teams each. The teams played only against the teams of the same group, the top 4 teams of each group proceeded to quarterfinals, semifinals, and final. It can be argued that some leading clubs, especially those with national team players, were affected and weakened by the coming World Cup, but a championship is a championship and excuses are only for whiners. Of course, some traditionally strong teams were down – particularly UNAM, which ended 9^th in Group II with 13 points. Only one team played worse than them. No matter, rules are rules and some were eliminated in the group stage:

CD Neza was 5^th in Group I and out,

Necaxa – 7^th in Group II.

In the quarterfinals more casualties fell down: Atlante lost to Monterrey 0-0 and 0-6.

Atletico Morelia lost to Tampico-Madero 2-2 and 0-2.

Cruz Azul – to America 0-1 and 0-1.

Puebla – to CD Guadalajara 2-3 and 1-1.

In the semi-finals, CD Guadalajara was gone, losing twice to Monterrey 0-1 and 0-1. America also lost – Tampico-Madero almost survived the first leg, losing only 2-3, but got big revenge at home: 4-0.

Thus, Monterrey and Tampico-Madero met to decide the 1986 champion of the country. In the first leg Tampico-Madero prevailed 2-1, but the result benefited Monterrey – they were hosting to second leg. And made the best of it, winning 2-0. Monterrey was the stronger finalist – they opened the result in Tampico with a goal by Hector Beccera and Tampico-Madero struggled to prevail: thanks to own goal scored by unfortunate Rito Luna, they equalized, but managed to score the winning goal only in the 79^th minute, thanks to Eduardo Rergis. Monterrey’s victory was not easy at all – Reynaldo Gualdini gave them the lead in the 30^th minute, but only from a penalty. The winning goal was scored in the 93^th minute by Francisco Javier Cruz. Difficult or not, victory was theirs.

This may be a picture of Tampico-Madero from 1986 – certainly it is from their ‘Brio’ period, named after their sponsor. It was bitter-sweet time, though: succesful, but not entirely succesful – they finished second in the short 1985 championship, then second in 1986, both times beaten at the final. Sure, they took revenge for their first loss by thrashing America in the 1986 semi-finals, but still failed to win at the end. Came close, yet – second best.

Monterrey was most deserving champion, for they were consistently strong during the whole championship: they ended with the best record in both groups at the end of the opening stage. Back then they lost only two games, got wonderful +25 goal-difference – five goals better than second-best, Tampico-Madero’s, which trailed them in Group II also by 5 points. Monterrey proceeded unbeaten to the final, producing the biggest victory at the direct elimination rounds – 6-0. They lost minimally the first leg of the final, then won the second by the nececarry margin. Certainly better than Tampico-Madero overall.

One more look at the champion squad. Difficult to tell who is who, but here are the names of the winners: Gueldini, Gamboa, Campa, Contreras, Bahia, Garcia, Munoz, Ortega, Becerra, Cruz, Luna.

Mexico. Hosting the 1986 World Cup led to changes in the domestic championship – the top league played two short championships, one counted in the 1985, and the other – in the spring of 1986, counted for the same year. Second Division, though, was not affected and played its normal 1985-86 season. Thus, there was no promotion-relegation in the 1985 short championship of the First Division, the same teams appeared in the short 1986 championship, and only then a team was relegated. Meantime Second Division went through its own season and the winner was promoted to the top league for the 1986-87 normal season. How much attention the Second Division got this season is hard to tell, for the whole interest was focused on the World Cup, so it would suffice to say that at the end Cordoba and San Mateo Atenco were relegated to Segunda Division ‘B’, the third level. As for the winner of the championship, Cobras (Queretaro) and Pachuca reached the final. Cobras won 2-0 at home and managed a 1-1 tie in Pachuca.

Pachuca tried to climb back to first division, but was unable at the end. Most unfortunate, for they were the strongest team during the season.

Cobras played their best when mattered most and triumphed with promotion – their first! In the Mexican context, their victory was easily understood: it was a new club – or franchise – founded in 1983. That meant there was solid financial back-up and clear aim to go higher. For the moment, at least. As long as money was plentiful, success was guaranteed. Long-term existence was another matter – Queretaro did not have top league team at the moment, but had older club playing in the second division: UA Queretaro. It was not bad – for a second division team – and chances were locals preferred the long established team to the newcomers. As many newly created clubs, Cobras tried to attract fans – not only with the name, thought attractive, but also with their uniforms, which were noted for provocative and avantgarde designs. But it was not enough and eventually the franchise had to relocate to another city – but this happened in the future. Presently, the plan worked fine: the new club won the Second Division championship and was going to debut in the Primera Division in the 1986-87 championship.

Copa de Campeones y Subcampeones CONCACAF 1986. 21 teams participated, but not every country from the region – Mexico, Canada and Cuba, for instance. USA was represented by New York Greek-Americans. Hardly a competition attracting big interest and given the teams involvod, practically unnoticed outside CONCACAF. No team wihtdrew, but statistics are unreliable, as they always were: results were different, depending on the sourse – for example, Marathon (Honduras) and Alianza (El Salvador) ended either 0-1, 1-0 and 2-4 in the penalty shoot-out, or 0-1 and 3-2. The second version exists on the CONCACAF website, failing to explain why Alianza qualified to the next round, since Marathon would have be the winner thanks to more away goals. But the complicated structure of the tournament went ahead round after round, including the weirs Intermediate round, in which only one pair played and three teams qualified directly. All until the semifinals were reached and in them LD Alajuelense (Costa Rica) eliminated Pembroke Hamilton Club (Bermuda) 4-0 and 0-1 and Transvaal (Surinam) beat Trintoc (Trinidad and Tobago) in penalty shoot-out 4-3, after the legs ended 4-2 and 0-2, away goals apparently did not count. At last the final was played – in February the next year, 1987.

At home, LD Alajuelense secured solid lead: 4-1. Four days later they won again – 2-1. Both legs were played in Alajuela, another almost constant feature of this competition: small teams from empoverihsed and difficult to reach countries often prefered to play both legs at one plce, usualy in the slighlt richer country. This, to a point, pre-decided the outcome of the finals. At least the scorers of this final were preserved: Luis Fernandez, Jorge Ulate, Jose Chavez, and Juan Cayasso scored for the hosts in the first leg. Eric Gotlieb scored for Transvaal. In the second leg Regillio Doest scored for Transvaal and Luis Fernandez and Juan Cayasso for the winners.

SV Transvaal, although a recent winner of the tournament, was clearly the weaker side.

Liga Deportiva Alajuelense (Alajuela) was clearly the stronger side and triumphed with the CONCACAF trophy. Home turf undoubtably helped, but even if the final was played normally or on neutral ground, most likely the Costa Ricans would have been comfortable winners. It was important victory for the club: ‘Los Leones’, founded in 1919, are one of the most successful clubs not just in Costa Rica, but in the whole Central America, but domestic success was not enough – international victories were also craved. Mind, their opponents at the final already won CONCACAF’s Cup, lowly as they were. As for LD Alajuelense… it all depend: they won one of the first CONCACAF tournaments, in 1961, but at that time it was unofficial competition. If counted, ‘Los Leones’ won their second Cup. But even if it was counted, they lacked victory in the proper official tournaments and at last they got one. The satisfaction was full, even if most of the world turned its back to the success.

African Player of the Year. Professionalism – that was the word coming to mind when looking at the vote. African football was getting stronger, no doubt, and quality was getting associated with professionalism. Hence, European-based players occupied the top positions no matter how strong continental football was becoming: Egypt ruled continental football in 1986, but the top three players were all based in Europe. World Cup counted most, as usual, so no surprise two of the best were Moroccon. Cameroonian Roger Milla (Montpellier, France) was 3^rd with 80 points. Azis Bouderbala (FC Sion, Switzerland and Morocco) – second with 88 points.

Ezzaki Badou was voted best player of Africa, getting 125 points. Written like that, the name may sound unfamiliar – popularly, that was Zaki, the goalkeeper and the captain of the Moroccan national team.

Naturally, the Moroccan performance at the 1986 World Cup was instrumental, but Zaki was well known in Africa for quite some time and his qualities were recognized elsewhere during the World Cup finals.

Recognition moved him from Widad (Casablanca) to Spanish side Mallorca after the end of the World Cup, so he also was European based professional at the time of the voting.

Zaki was 27 years old at the time with plenty of experience on both club and national team level – he already played at the 1984 Olympic games and twice at the African Cup of Nations and, as a whole, had 10 years of top level football – he debuted in 1976 for Association Sale (Morocco), moved to the leading club Widad in 1978, and eventually found himself in Spain. Already he was voted among the top three players in Africa – 3^rd. His World Cup performance was remarkable and he pretty much deserved to be voted number one African player. He also got most points in the history of voting the top continental player to date, but this is not all that important: with time, more journalists were involved, so more points was inevitable occurance.