FIFA World Cup - Mexico 1970

The 1970 finals were the first to be broadcast live in colour and they're rightfully remembered for the champions Brazil's kaleidoscope of 19 goals from 6 games - including the four in the final against Italy, into the L supports at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City.



Brazil scored 15 goals in their five games at the Estadio Jalisco in Guadalajara - 16 if this one had gone in!



Away from the fiesta in Guadalajara there were notable net supports in Puebla:

World Cup - Mexico 1970

The 1970 finals were the first to be broadcast live in colour and they're rightfully remembered for the champions Brazil's kaleidoscope of 19 goals from 6 games - including the four in the final against Italy, into the L supports at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City...


.
.. and 15 goals in their five games at the Estadio Jalisco in Guadalajara - 16 if this one had gone in!



17 if this one had gone in!

World Cup Final 1970

It may not be a coincidence that what may be the most famous game ever played, may also be one of the most photographed.

As everyone knows there were five goals - two of great quality, two of more dubious quality and a rocket shot that would still be travelling were it not for the marvellous Azteca goalnets.

With close-ups of those wonderful nets, here are each of the goals.

Pele 1-0 (18 minutes)

Boninsegna 1-1 (37 minutes)

Gerson 2-1 (66 minutes)

Jairzinho 3-1 (71 minutes)

Carlos Alberto 4-1 (86 minutes)

101 Great Goals - Carlos Alberto

I've posted this goal in a previous context 18 months ago, but couldn't better the sentiment today.

So I post in full below, for the 101 Great Goals series.

Forget the melina and the elaborate build-up play against an Italy side exhausted and in disarray after the controversial late introduction of Gianni Rivera; the goal that symbolises the greatest team in history begins with Pele.

From there you'll see this famous goal described in terms of Pele's pass and Carlos Alberto's shot, as though this was a goal of two movements - pass / shot - when in fact, it has three movements - pass / shot / net.

Carlos Alberto's shot is often described as a thunderbolt or cannonball, where a firework might be a better metaphor:

Pele lights the fuse (first movement) - and stands well back - and the ball shoots from Carlos Alberto's boot like a rocket (second movement).

But rockets can be duds, can shoot into the night sky and fail to explode. At which times, two movements is insufficient and the sense of disappointment is palpable.

The last goal scored in the 1970 World Cup, the goal that came to symbolise the greatest team in history is no disappointment. Carlos Alberto's shot is no dud. It's aim is true.

But only when the ball hits the back of the net - and the net explodes (third movement) - does the celebration truly begin.

You'll have seen this goal hundreds of times - it's one of the most famous goals ever scored - but look at it now with fresh eyes and ask, two movements or three?

101 Great Goals - Gerd Muller

In the same way the Italian narrative of the 1970 World Cup final has been lost to the Brazilian fairytale, so has Gerd Muller's second goal in the Game of the Century played 4 days earlier, been lost to the story of Gianni Rivera.

Famously, Rivera - nicknamed Abatino for his clean and proper attacking style - couldn't be trusted by coach Valcareggi to track back, so played only 45 minutes in each game as part of a Staffeta, or relay, in tandem with Sandro Mazzola.

Valcareggi's worst fears were realised at the Muller goal, which was West Germany's equaliser for 3-3. Finding himself minding the near post at the set piece, Rivera let Muller's soft, if well directed, header pass between himself and the post, and into the net.  Rivera's reasoning to the screaming Italian goalkeeper Enrico Albertosi? He didn't know how to defend the post, so did nothing.

The narrative of this goal was quickly erased as Rivera scored Italy's 4-3 winner less than 60 seconds later, but I've always loved this goal, the way the ball rolls crazily up and round the seam of the Azteca net while Albertosi rolls his eyes in despair at the same Gianni Rivera.

Cagliari Calcio

Did Manchester United only start winning the league again when they replaced the Old Trafford A-frames with Continental D's?

For years Cagliari laboured between a pair of A-frames that wouldn't have looked out of place in the Eredivisie.




Then, with the peerless Gigi Riva in transcendent form, the Rossoblu's ditched the Dutch goals for a pair of Iron Man Specials and won their first and only Scudetto.

Total Goalnets - Eredivisie

Explaining the unique Dutch perspective that created total football, "Brilliant Orange"author David Winner writes that the Netherlands is the most densely populated country in Europe and that, "The Dutch think innovatively, creatively and  abstractly about space in their football because for centuries they had to think about space in every other area of their lives."

And in "The Ball is Round,"  David Goldblatt waxes long on the roots of total football, and finds them in total architecture - where Dan Roodenburgh, architect of Ajax' De Meer stadium proposed that the many separate elements in a building or project must be functionally and stylistically integrated into a whole vision - and the fine arts. Goldblatt argues eloquently that the "stripped down modern form (of Vermeer) can be seen in the abstract paintings of Mondrian who progressively reduced landscape and the natural world to the simplest elements of the visual arts - lines and blocks, horizontals and verticals, primary colours, black and white."

Both ideas can be seen to have come together in the Dutch on-field architecture of the 1970's, where simple, stripped down A-frames were designed to fit within the tight spaces of the cramped stadia that were such a feature of the Eredivisie at that time.

Total Goalnets - Eredivisie is a club-by-club review of Holland's history of goal nets of the era when the Dutch played the game in a way no-one had done before, and when Johan Cruyff was "Pythagoras in boots."

Iconic Goals - Eder

How the goal nets helped frame the most famous goals ever scored

The Brazil side at the 1982 World Cup is historically viewed as the successor to the wonderful title-winning side of 1970, so it is fitting that, since our first Iconic Goal has come to represent Brazil at the first Mexico World Cup, so our second iconic goal has come to symbolise the side 12 years later at the World Cup in Spain.

Brazil netted 15 gems at the '82 finals, the Beau Sancy among them being Eder's winner versus the Soviet Union.

The beauty of the goal is in it's simplicity, from Falcao's outrageous school-yard dummy to Eder's keepy-up and sublime half volley. It looks more like a training routine than Brazil's opening World Cup game.

How do the goal nets contribute to this goal's place in the Pantheon of Iconic Goals?

The World Cup organisers had seemingly paid little heed to the goal nets at the Estadio Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan. Hanging green coloured nets that rendered them near invisible, and pulling them taut, the nets contributed all the aesthetic of kicking a ball against a wall in training.

Yet, while the nets soured Socrates' magnificent equaliser, scored 10 minutes earlier, the "training wall" nets amplify the ease, simplicity and Joga Bonito of Eder's winner, raising it to the status of the Iconic.

Iconic Goals - Carlos Alberto

How the goal nets helped frame the most famous goals ever scored

Forget the melina and the elaborate build-up play against an Italy side exhausted and in disarray after the controversial late introduction of Gianni Rivera; the goal that symbolises the greatest team in history begins with Pele.

From there you'll see this famous goal described in terms of Pele's pass and Carlos Alberto's shot, as though this was a goal of two movements - pass / shot - when in fact, it has three movements - pass / shot / net.

Carlos Alberto's shot is often described as a thunderbolt or cannonball, where a firework might be a better metaphor:

Pele lights the fuse (first movement) - and stands well back - and the ball shoots from Carlos Alberto's boot like a rocket (second movement).

But rockets can be duds, can shoot into the night sky and fail to explode. At which times, two movements is insufficient and the sense of disappointment is palpable.

The last goal scored in the 1970 World Cup, the goal that came to symbolise the greatest team in history is no disappointment. Carlos Alberto's shot is no dud. It's aim is true.

But only when the ball hits the back of the net - and the net explodes (third movement) - does the celebration truly begin.

You'll have seen this goal hundreds of times - it's one of the most famous goals ever scored - but look at it now with fresh eyes and ask, two movements or three?

World Cups - Mexico 1970

The 1970 finals were the first to be broadcast live in colour and they're rightfully remembered for the champions Brazil's kaleidoscope of 19 goals from 6 games - including the four in the final against Italy, into the L supports at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City -


 and 15 goals in their five games at the Estadio Jalisco in Guadalajara - 16 if this one had gone in!


(spy those Stamford Bridge lookalikes. And while you're at it, (see the influence of colour TV at Manchester City).