The World Cup in Spain had a lame draw and a bad role of “La Roja” in it, but it left some sublime moments in the old Sarria stadium.

The 1982 World Cup was held in Spain. It was the first one with 24 finalists. There were brilliant moments, especially in the Sarria Stadium, already in the second round, where Italy (future champions), Argentina (a drop-out champion) and Brazil (a big front-runner) met. The colours of the tiers and the tension on the turf (Gentile’s man-to-man marking on Maradona, a hat-trick of Paolo Rossi, the finesses of Zico and Socrates) were crack pages. But the 1982 World Cup started bad and ended even worse for Spain.

“This big ceremony of the 1982 World Cup captured the attention of the global sports community”, a journalist Jose Maria Casanovas proclaimed it at the draw ceremony that was watched by a crowd of nearly 500 million. The World Cup draft on 16 January 1982, the ceremony of which was held in the Congress Palace of Madrid, went down in history as the worst. The journalist told about an unfortunate new feature: instead of containers with balls they used the National Spanish Lottery rollers and invited the children from the Colegio Mayor de San Ildefonso. The balls simulated a small football balls and consisted of two parts. They hid a paper with the name of one of the finalists inside. It looked lovely. But they were very big.

Journalists, managers, the members of the Federation told that during the solemn act Prince Felipe (he was 13 years old then) was sitting in the front row. He welcomed the guests and walked out at the first chords of the national anthem of Spain. President Joao Havelange (FIFA), Pablo Porta (the Spanish Football Federation), Hermann Neuberger (the Organizing Commission) and young Sepp Blatter were responsible for the disaster in the first place. In front of the whole football world.

He explained that Peru and Chile couldn’t meet in one group and there were Argentina and Brazil as the highest seeded teams, so he started the draft from the second roller B (Scotland, Northern Ireland, Belgium, France, Chile and Peru). The first ball was Belgium, and they allocated it in the first group, which was headed by Italy. Then Scotland appeared and ended up in the third group, the one with Argentina in the lead. The third ball came into the hands of Neuberger… and they were aware that it wasn´t square that they would be in the same group as the Southern Americans. The confusion at the table, we didn't say it on TV (in this case Spanish Radio and Television Corporation commentators Mari Carmen Izquierdo and Matias Prats Jr. were overtaken by surprise). The manipulation started: the third ball, without opening, was reintroduced in the roller, at the same time the children of San Ildefonso were exchanging the gazes between curious and fun. Blatter explained that “nothing here, nothing there”. Scotland skipped to the 6th group (the one with Brazil), and Belgium went to the 3rd with Argentina.

Another scandal happened in the roller C. At that moment the spectators had already found out that the balls were allocated in the group order, from 1 to 6. Four had already been taken out and assigned as a rival in the fifth group, in which there was Spain. But the ball clogged up. Trying to put it out, someone opened and divided it into two parts. Smiles of the children, shifting the camera focus and finally the reconstructed ball returned to Blatter, who announced that the rival of Spain was Honduras. And there was more. And worse. The mess started to grow.

The last roller A, the one with the USSR, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary, Yugoslavia and Austria, had another mischievous ball. The most difficult was that one half was outside the roller and the other inside, where had already been other four balls. And a series of manipulations for extracting the half that was still in the lottery roller started. Someone put some fingers into the crevice in the ball, the other tried to remove the balls. Nothing. Finally they opted for extracting the balls one by one till they fell on the desired place. But there was another ludicrous situation. While the balls were falling down through the channel, one of the kids was picking them up and reinstalling on the other part of the roller, and the problem started with that.

It was a pathetic draw, foreboding of Spanish poor performance in the tournament. Full of nerves, blocked by some extreme security measures (they were scared of the attack of an armed leftist Basque nationalist and separatist organization “Basque Homeland and Liberty”), with a stupid dispute over Arconada’s socks (because they were white and not read and yellow). And as a result of it, eleven Spaniards sent by Jose Emilio Santamaria failed.

In the first phase they just could have a tie with Honduras (with a penalty), won Yugoslavia (with another penalty, which was scandalous) and lost to Ireland. But they passed and then, in other group with Germany and England, the Spanish team only equalised without any significance, because they had already been eliminated. “In these conditions, even Pele would have failed”, Jesus Mari Satrustegui, one of the six team players of Real Sociedad, explained.

Source: La Vanguardia