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Brendan Crossan: A wonderful trip down memory lane with Brazil '82

Stuart Horsefield's book on the Brazil team of 1982 is a real triumph
Stuart Horsefield's book on the Brazil team of 1982 is a real triumph Stuart Horsefield's book on the Brazil team of 1982 is a real triumph

ALMOST 40 years on, I can remember every single moment of the 1982 World Cup game between Brazil versus Italy. I remember every syllable of John Motson’s commentary too.

Probably because I'd recorded the game on VHS and watched it hundreds of times in my youth.

Like most kids, and indeed adults, by the time Tele Santana’s star-studded Brazil team had reached the knock-out stages of the World Cup in Spain, I was already hooked on them.

It all started with a balmy night in Seville and Eder’s stupendous late winner against Soviet Union.

Paolo Isdoro’s simple pass from the right wing, Falcao’s nonchalant dummy and Eder’s flick and incredible volley that was in the back of the net before Soviet ‘keeper Rinat Dasayev could move a muscle.

Eder’s piece of genius had eclipsed Socrates’s own wonder strike a few minutes earlier. This was the inspiring beginnings of 'futebol arte'.

It was the first time I’d laid eyes on Zico, Junior, Falcao, Leandro, Socrates and Cerezo when they weren't in a Panini sticker album.

They were truly mesmerising footballers.

I remember the crowd in the compact Sarria Stadium seemed to be on top of the Brazil and Italy players and feeling envious of the residents who lived in the high rise flats around the ground who'd migrated to their tiny balconies to capture one of the greatest matches ever played.

The Italians had stumbled through to the knock-out phase after three limp displays in the group stages. They improved considerably to see off an out-of-sorts Argentina but everyone – including match referee Abraham Klein who was allocated the Brazil-Italy fixture – expected Santana’s men to stroll into the semi-finals.

In Stuart Horsfield’s brilliant book: ‘1982 Brazil: The Glorious Failure’, the author managed to track down Romanian-born Klein, now 87-years-old.

Klein tells Horsfield: “I made the calculations that I would get the third game between Italy and Brazil and it would be three, four, five-nil, because Italy were so bad in the first round.

“I was sure this would be an easy game and it was my last World Cup tournament and I thought that nobody would remember my last game in a World Cup tournament!”

He couldn’t have been more wrong.

Indeed, Klein’s reflections are one of countless engrossing aspects of Horsfield’s account of the brilliant Brazilians of ’82 – the kind of book that football lovers the world over are continuing to devour, and should thank the author from the bottom of their hearts for lightly transporting them back to the summer of ’82.

With a wonderfully innocent writing style packed with rich layers of research and back stories of the players, Horsfield’s book is a real triumph.

You get an immediate sense of how he went about this daunting task by the opening page.

“For everyone,” he writes, “who ran home from school to watch them play.”

In the sun-splashed Sarria Stadium, I remember Bruno Conti being a box of tricks on the flank and firing the ball cross-field to left back Antonio Cabrini and his fantastic back post cross being nodded home by Paolo Rossi, who up to the Brazil game was terrible.

I remember Zico turning away from the fearsome Claudio Gentile and slipping Socrates through on the blind side of the Italy defence.

The puff of chalk on the goal-line, Dino Zoff grounded, and Socrates arms aloft, smiling the widest of smiles.

“Socrates,” shouted Motson, “scores a goal that sums up the philosophy of Brazilian football. How to play when you’re behind.”

Of course, Brazil’s problem was they played the same way regardless of the score-line, which was ultimately their downfall that day.

Cerezo gift-wrapped Rossi’s second of three goals before half-time until Falcao’s dummy that sent three Italian defenders the wrong way as the Roma midfielder hammered the ball past Zoff to draw the game 2-2.

It was a score-line that was enough to book Brazil’s place in the last four – until they let their opponents in for a third goal that saw Italy advance and send Santana’s stars on an early plane home.

In conversation with Horsfield, I ask him: ‘Was it all Serginho’s fault why Brazil didn’t win the World Cup?’

Serginho was the rather cumbersome centre forward Brazil opted to play following Careca’s withdrawal through injury before the tournament began.

Careca, as it turned out, took the World Cup by storm four years later in Mexico – but Socrates, Falcao, Zico and Junior hadn’t aged well in the intervening four years and Brazil were knocked out by France in Guadalajara at the quarter-final stages.

Had Careca been fit and found himself in some of the scoring positions Serginho found himself in back in ‘82, would Italy have been a mere footnote in Brazil’s fairytale World Cup win?

“Listening to some of the interviews the players gave,” Horsfield says, “Tele Santana had picked Serginho to kind of occupy two centre backs, which he did incredibly well, and allowed the others to play.

“If Careca had been fit, I think he would have started. But if you watch the five games back, Serginho wasn’t as bad as people make out, but no-where near as good as the rest.”

And what if Brazil had a better goalkeeper than Waldir Peres? If.

In the early pages of the book, Horsfield recounts the careers of each Brazilian player. Sadly, Peres passed away in 2017 from a heart attack, aged 66.

Anyone who loves football and has memories of the Brazil team of 1982 will love this book.

Each of the 255 pages is an important archive in the life of one of the greatest teams never to have won the World Cup.

Was Santana’s team’s legacy greater for their glorious failure in Spain than had they won the cup?

Horsfield says: “I think their legacy will last longer for not winning it.”

In the book, he concludes: "They are the very embodiment of the beautiful game. Ultimately their legacy is failure. But what a glorious failure."

Thank you, Stuart Horsfield.