Best World Cup

I thought 2002 was decent enough with plenty of goals and some pretty good games, some golden goal winners and of course, the extra excitement with Ireland's games.  Plenty of shocks as well with Argentina, Portugal and France going home after the group stages with their tails between their legs though the tournament as a spectacle paid a price for that later on with quite a few underwhelming knockout games like Senegal-Turkey and USA-Germany - at the stage of the tournament when you would normally expect those big names to be going head-to-head.  The only real traditional head-to-head knockout games were England-Brazil and the final between Brazil and Germany.

 

 The main downer about that tournament though for me was the time difference - early morning and lunchtime is such an un-natural time to be watching live football and then there was the issue of trying to get time off work to watch certain games.

I’m sure the earlier ones were even better as this was the stage to see the best players in the world and see new stars for the first time. Nowadays you know the majority of the players through the champions league etc.

I must find some highlights of the 82 World Cup.

 

Italia 90 will always be hard to beat. Was just getting into football, Ireland broke through and the nation was on a buzz like never before.

2002 was very enjoyable too, going to the bar at 7am to watch football was great craic, and we had a fine team then too.

 

 

 

I certainly couldn't believe what was happening - things like that aren't supposed to happen in semi-finals.  Most other world cup semi-finals have usually been fairly cautious cagey affairs with the France-West Germany in '82 being the exception that proved that rule.

The Kuwaiti Sheikh coming down from the stands at the 82 WC and calling the Kuwait team off the pitch has to be up there too 

Wasn't crazy to me as I had €100 on Die Mannschaft at 7/1 to the WC.

 

Aah loads of crazy things happened over the years ;

 

70 - Gordon Banks getting Montezuma's Revenge

74 - Zaire-Brasil your man breaking the wall and kicking the ball away before Brasil could take a free kick

78 - The Argies beating Peru 6-0

82 - Kuwaiti sheikh walking on to the pitch and the Ref then disallowing the goal

82 - Schumacher

82 - Paulo Rossi v Brasil

82 - Gentile murdering Maradona and then Zico. Ramos would hide under his bed if Gentile came looking for him

86 - La Mano de Dios

 

 

Not quite crazy but honourable mentions for:

 

94 - One of the goals being damaged (one of the players made a clearance off his goal-line but held on too tightly to the netting to stop himself falling in the process that he broke the stanchion) during the Mexico-Bulgaria match - and a brand new goal being brought on to replace it. 

 

98 - Blanco of Mexico holding the ball between his ankles and jumping past 2 Korean players.

Forgot about that - comedy gold. .