In the context of a dictatorship that made opponents disappear daily, the 1978 World Cup was held in Argentina, an embarrassing chapter in the history book of football. “I knew what was happening to those who governed, but I could not imagine that cruelty towards the disappeared,” he said. would justify years later César Luis Menotti, Argentine coach from 1974 to 1982.
While the Videla regime used the championship as propaganda Facing the outside world, the Albiceleste team, immersed in the competition and oblivious to the country’s political climate, was overcoming rounds supported by an enthusiastic public. In the decisive match against Peru, Argentina needed four goals to reach the final. He scored six and the controversy that that result raised is still alive today.
Since the dawn of the World Cup, Argentina had pursued its organization. Finally, at the FIFA Congress on July 6, 1966, the South American country was chosen as the host country for the 1978 edition. At that same meeting, it was agreed that West Germany would host the 1974 World Cup and Spain would host the 1982 World Cup. Argentina had 12 years ahead of it to properly prepare the event. However, two years before the World Cup was held, events were going to take an unexpected turn.
Football to whiten infamy
On March 24, 1976, Jorge Rafael Videla carried out a coup d’état that overthrew the democratic government of María Estela Martínez de Perón, popularly known as Isabelita. Videla assumed the head of state at the head of a Military Junta, initiating the cynically called National Reorganization Process, which included a systematic plan to remove anyone suspected of dissidence from circulation.
Videla swearing in as president of Argentina in 1974. (Eduardo Di Baia/AP)
At first, the blow put the celebration of the championship in check. Belgium and Holland offered themselves as alternative venues, but the time margin was limited and FIFA estimated the show had to go on. Like Hitler at the 1936 Olympic Games or Mussolini in the 1934 World CupVidela used the World Cup for propaganda purposes. The tournament was an instrument to convey to the world the image of an open, advanced and plural Argentina, of a thriving football and political nation.
No expense was spared for this: it is estimated that the organization of the tournament ultimately cost ten times what was budgeted, although no accounts were ever rendered.
However, the situation in the country was far from the happy Arcadia that the military intended to portray. Kidnappings, torture and murders They were common in the development of relentless repression directed at all those suspected of not being sympathetic to the regime. It is estimated that up to 30,000 citizens He made the Military Junta disappear during those years.
On June 1, 1978, a speech by Videla inaugurated the championship: “Within the framework of friendship between man and people, and under the sign of peace, he officially declared this eleventh (sic) World Football Championship 78 officially inaugurated.” At the same time that the ball was rolling in the opening match between West Germany and Poland, The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo metlike every Thursday at 3:30 p.m., to cry out for their missing children.
While the Argentine people celebrated Kempes’ goals, thousands of people were silently retaliated against. The screams from the River Monumental Stadium reached the Navy’s Higher School of Mechanics, converted into a detention and torture centerwhich was a few blocks from the stadium. There are many detainees They faced a contradiction: His fan heart longed for the victory of his team, but reason dictated that victory would serve to consolidate the dictatorship.
Finalists after beating Peru
In terms of football alone, the Argentine team passed the first phase without problems and reached the last game of the second tied on points with Brazilwith Kempes becoming progressively more toned as the tournament progressed. According to the strange format of that World Cup, the winners of the two groups of the second phase went directly to the final, without semi-finals.
The Netherlands won in group A, reaching the final for the second consecutive World Cup, despite the enigmatic absence of Johan Cruyff. In group B, Brazil and Argentina played everything on one card in the last match, but the locals played with the advantage of playing their match three hours later, and thus knowing the result of Brazil (FIFA had not yet unified the schedules of the first phase, a measure taken after the El Molinón pact).
Brazil did its job and won 3-1 against Poland, a result that forced Menotti’s team to win by a margin of four goals against Peru. The Peruvians had had a formidable first phase, achieving first place in their group ahead of the Netherlands, but they had deflated in the second group and reached the last game without anything at stake.
The Argentines dominated the match from the beginning, and at half-time they were already winning 2-0. After the restart, the Albiceleste team came out in a rush and 5 minutes into the second half they had already achieved their goal (4-0) against a Peru that seemed knocked out. Two more goals still fell and, midway through the second half, the scoreboard already showed the final 6-0. Objective achieved: Argentina was in the final of his World Cup.
The shadow of a fix
From the first moment, Argentina’s massive victory against Peru was surrounded by a halo of suspicionwith different and complementary versions, and crossed accusations between some protagonists. The passivity of the Peruvian defense during some goals raised suspicions, as did the signing of Peruvian defender Rodulfo Manzo for the Argentine team Vélez Sarsfield at the end of the World Cup.
The first to raise the hare was Ramón Quiroga, the goalkeeper who defended the Peruvian goal that afternoon at the Gigante Stadium in Arroyito. In an interview with the newspaper La Nación in 1998, Quiroga, Argentine by birth but naturalized Peruvian, revealed his misgivings about the referee (“I think he was retouched“), some of his teammates (“of those who must have grabbed money, several died, and others died for football”) and the Peruvian coach himself (“that game was played by players who had not been in any other game”).
José Velásquez, starter that afternoon against Argentina, is another member of the Peruvian squad who has expressed his distrust with what happened that afternoon in Rosario. Velasquez accused the leaders and six of his former colleagues of having sold out and discussed his coach’s decisions: “It seemed strange to me that he sent the player to the stands. Cholo Sotil and Guillermo La Rosa, even more so considering that we were not going to play another game. If one reviews history, in the previous qualifying rounds and in the World Cup we never played without 9.”
According to most theories, the defeat took place in a treatment between military dictatorships sisters from Argentina and Peru. in his book How they stole the gameDavid Yallop defends that the Peruvian government agreed to allow itself to be beaten in exchange for 35,000 tons of grain for the Argentine people and 50,000 dollars for the Peruvian players involved in the conspiracy. Yallop affirms that only some of the players on the squad were involved and exonerates goalkeeper Quiroga.
The sinister Operation Condor
However, the most sinister version of the 6-0 It was presented by former Peruvian senator Genaro Ledesma Izquietain the course of a trial against Videla in 2012. According to Ledesma, Peru allowed itself to be won in exchange for sending thirteen Peruvian prisoners to Argentinaamong whom was Ledesma himself. In this way, the Peruvian dictator Francisco Morales Bermúdez would get rid of the dissident prisoners and Videla would get closer to winning a World Cup that would help him cover up his massacres.
The macabre deal between Videla and Morales Bermúdez involved the prisoners, once in Argentina, being thrown into the sea from a plane, a common practice used by the Argentine military dictatorship to get rid of some subversive elements.
Kempes scoring in the final against Holland. (AP)
The operation would be framed in the breast of the Condor Plana strategy agreed upon by various South American military dictatorships to collaborate in the persecution and execution of opponents on a transnational scale. The ideologue is considered to have been Henry Kissinger, United States Secretary of State under President Richard Nixon, although this has not been proven.
Several members of the Peruvian team testify that Videla visited the locker room of the Peruvian team before and after the game. According to Juan Carlos Oblitas told FIFA TVthe most surprising thing was the presence of Kissinger accompanying the Argentine president. “What is Kissinger doing here?” Oblitas asked himself.
Although in the football imagination, with the passing of the years and periodic revelations, the suspicion has crystallized almost into certainty, it is difficult to affirm if there was actually an arrangement and, if there was, on what scale it occurred and what the compensation was.
In your article Legend and reality of the 6-0 to Perujournalist Jorge Barraza recently showed himself skeptical of the fixing theory: “There are journalists who have eagerly investigated, books have been written, they never found proof or a consistent version that the party was bought. The recurring comment is “there were strange things”; no serious testimony. They cling to an idea, to a desire.”
In any case, the possible fixing is only a marginal event, although perhaps revealing, within the murky framework in which the 1978 World Cup was played, with football and politics intertwined in the most sinister way. As Estela de Carlotto denouncedpresident of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, “while the goals are shouted, the screams of the tortured and the murdered are silenced.”
Finally, on June 25, under a deluge of papers, the goals of Kempes and Bertoni In extra time they defeated the Netherlands and made Argentina world champions for the first time in their history. A meritorious triumph in football, but punctuated by ignominy and suspicion.
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