LOCKERROOM:The Argy-bargy with Rattin and his fellow 'animals' at Wembley in 1966 moved the World Cup way beyond sport, writes TOM HUMPHRIES
THE WORLD Cup looms, an essentially televisual experience which one assumes disguises a thousand little dressingroom dramas like that played out in Casement Park yesterday. Unlike the GAA, though, those little dramas generally get played out under layers of insulation provided by officials and agents. Generally we get to hear about them later when the books are written and the blessing and the blaming gets done.
As television the World Cup is perfect. The ultimate triumph of presentation over all other considerations. Games get played at a time and a temperature which best suits television. Pitches are pristine. Refs are well briefed. Nothing happens that isn’t supposed to happen.
The World Cup is wonderful but it’s a pity the raw edges have been sanded off. North Korea’s wheeze of an idea to cut back on the number of goalies and bring an extra striker instead had immense promise and such creativity should be encouraged rather that restricted.
When I was a kid, (just a week or two before the YouTube era) the ghosts of Wembley 1966 still lingered. With everything we knew in the world back then being filtered through the English media I genuinely believed the Argentine captain Antonio Rattin had taken Alf Ramsey’s wife at knife-point and dragged her across the pitch by the hair while shouting insults at the Queen and spitting at the mother of Jack and Bobby Charlton.
The Argentinians at Wembley in 1966 was one of the great world moments, one of the great landmarks of a time when the sporting world wasn’t homogenous, bland and franchised and plastered over by public relations people.
England and Argentina didn’t like each other. The Argentinians had come through the group stage carrying a bit of a reputation. Ramsey put that shrinking violet Nobby Stiles into his line up as a human RSJ. They went at it.
The footage available on YouTube is wonderful, drawn from the official documentary of the tournament and rendered in that joyously vivid technicolour which seemed such a novelty back then.
The tackling was hard and more than occasionally dangerous and despite the branding of the Argentines as “animals” by Ramsey in the immediate aftermath, seemed to close the case for partisans of either side.
In fact, England gave away almost twice as many frees and a curiously forgotten statistic of the game is both Charlton brothers were cautioned. Jack’s name finding its way into a referee’s book seems no surprise but for Saint Bobby to be there beside him, well it tells its own story.
Thirty five minutes into the game and they entered the realm of the immortals. The German referee (there was much made outside of England afterwards that an Englishman refereed Germany’s quarter-final and a German refereed England’s. Theory being the desired final pairing were ushered through safely) brought his fussiness to new levels for what he reported as “violence of the tongue” from Rattin, the dark-haired 6ft 4in Argentine captain.
The decision might have been explicable had Rudolph Kreitlin, the man in black, possessed a single world of Spanish. He didn’t. Nor had he much English. Nor had Rattin any German. Or more than cúpla focal as béarla.
Kreitlin later said he ordered Rattin off because he “didn’t like the look” on the face of the Argentine captain. If he didn’t like it before he scarcely liked it afterwards. Rattin refused to leave the scene. A committee of very irate team-mates got behind him in a hopeless petition, all lost in translation.
On the tape you can hear somebody apparently Ray Wilson, the English full back, commenting: “I hope he sends them all off.”
Rattin was indefatigable, though. Again and again he pointed to his captain’s armband and demanded an interpreter. None arrived.
After 10 minutes, a little more perhaps, a large delegation, including policemen and officials, persuade Rattin to go. He walks, trudges down the sideline.
On the official film some brass instruments play a slightly sneering march. Rattin pauses at a flag marking the sideline. The little flag has a Union Jack on it. Rattin wipes his hand in the thing and keeps walking. Wonderful.
When the game ends it was Ramsey who shamed himself the most, running on to the field in his blue tracksuit to prevent George Cohen swapping his jersey with an Argentine player.
The game sealed a few things. Fifa introduced red cards and yellow cards soon after on the recommendation of Ken Ashton, who was among the persuaders in getting Rattin of the field. And Argentina and England never needed an excuse even before the Malvinas war to dislike each other. Ramsey’s actions at the end of the game and his description of Argentina as “animals” was regarded in Argentina , as one can imagine, as extraordinarily offensive.
By the time of Maradona’s Hand of God goal 20 years later in Mexico the Argentine animus had such a tailwind of nationalist emotion and fervour behind it one can only imagine the joy provoked by putting one over like that. For the goal to come as part of a brace with perhaps the most brilliant score ever taken in the World Cup? We can scarcely understand but as Maradona said afterwards
“I sometimes think I preferred the one with my hand.”
Why? “It was a bit like stealing the wallet of the English.”
Two years later we went to Stuttgart and Ray Houghton scored an early goal which prompted England to bombard us for the rest of the game. Somehow we got away with it. And that victory felt sweeter than if we had played flowing, controlled football for an hour and a half and outclassed them. We knew a little of Maradona’s happiness.
Rattin went on to become a politician of the far right in Argentina. Maradona has grown into a madness befitting a Shakespearean king or Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo.
The chances are Diego is going to screw up this uniquely talented Argentine squad he brings to South Africa. But the disintegration should be glorious and chaotic and full of things being said which Fifa just don’t allow people to say.
So let’s not tut tut and shake our heads. The great World Cup moments are the mad ones. It started with Rattin and probably it ends with Diego. Go to it companeros.
