World Cup’s Strangest Moments
by Peter Seddon
Summary
The World Cup has been called The Greatest Show on Earth. And if 90 minutes plus overtime and penalties is just the sort of entertainment you like, this book is guaranteed to score. Along with a supporting cast of dodgy refs, eccentric mascots, and manic managers, there are shameful fixes, outrageous cheats, and the most unpronounceable team of all. From Uruguay 1930 to Korea-Japan 2002 and beyond—here are the famous, the infamous, and the downright bizarre.
Excerpt
When the first FIFA World Cup kicked off in Uruguay in 1930 it was by way of a bold experiment. Organisers, competitors and spectators alike entered a strange new domain, where anything might happen. The entire event could prove an almighty flop never to be staged again. Or it might catch on.
My overview of that inaugural World Cup ("The Die is Cast") leaves little in the balance. The novel event caught on. More than seven decades later, the glittering spectacle continues its four-yearly cycle as millions of football fans around the globe anticipate, then enjoy--or endure, depending on the fortunes of their favoured teams--another mondial. They can’t all be wrong. No wonder the World Cup has been dubbed “the greatest show on earth.”
If the eighteenth World Cup follows the pattern of its predecessors, it will serve up all the ingredients that any great show would crave--drama, excitement, passion, colour, emotion, comedy, tragedy and breathtaking twists. Grand stages are guaranteed; so too are moments of unscripted genius. And of course the occasional clown. It wouldn’t do to forget referees.
It’s that heady mix that I have set out to present in The World Cup’s Strangest Moments. This isn’t a history of the World Cup. That’s been done. What I aim to do is to capture the tournament’s flavour, and above all to entertain. As for what I regard as “strange,” the stories that made the cut all have one thing in common: their theme is “uncommon,” a departure from the expected.
I have included events both on and off the field. And I decided very early on to embrace the qualifying competition. Such is the desperation of teams to be part of the World Cup
Finals that the very pursuit of “getting there” has produced some odd moments indeed.
Spectacular failures in that category include some not particularly famous Belgians ("A Famously Unlucky XI"), a very famous Frenchman ("He Wasn’t Worth It") and a famously comedic Englishman with a manic aversion to root vegetables, the color orange, and all things vaguely Dutch ("Did We Not Like That"). Never offer to cook carrots in hollandaise sauce for Graham Taylor…
This book contains more than a hundred stories in chronological order. But they can be dipped into and out of at random. I am grateful to the personalities who made their telling possible and to all the writers whose own accounts of “the greatest show on earth” have proved invaluable in my research..
Author's Biography
Peter Seddon is a football (soccer) expert and author. He is the author of three books on football, including ‘Football Talk’ (ISBN 1861056834). He also wrote ‘Tennis’s Strangest Matches’ (ISBN 1861053797) in Robson’s Strangest series. He lives in Derby, England.