World Cup Stars

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Continuing our series of the world’s best footballers, languagecaster.com takes a look at a player who would be in most people’s top five best players ever – Hendrik Johannes Cruijff. Check out previous posts on great footballers here.

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Recently, a debate has started as to whether or not Messi is the best player ever, better than Pele or Maradona, the traditional choices of most people for that accolade. It’s probably too early to answer yes or no, but one thing is certain, he is a kindred spirit of Johan Cruyff (common spelling), perhaps the best proponent of attacking football, and close ball control, ever (watch a compilation of his dribbling skills here). he gives a name to a famous football move, ‘The Cruyff Turn’, and is forever linked with the term, ‘Total Football’.

Cruyff’s career can be divided into three broad periods: playing for Ajax, for Barcelona, and then his time as a coach.

First at Ajax. Cruyff joined the Amsterdam team as a youth player of ten-years old. The Ajax team of the late sixties and early seventies introduced the style of play known as Total Football, where players positions were fluid and interchangeable, and the focus was on quick passing, movement and attack. Cruyff was perfect for this style of football, as he could turn on a sixpence, continue

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This week’s main report continues with our series of profiling football super stars. Earlier this week we saw the retirement of one of the greatest strikers of this generation, O Fenômeno, Ronaldo. Explanations of key vocabulary (in bold) can be found at the foot of the post.

Introduction

Ronaldo started his career at Cruzeiro in Belo Horizonte before moving to the Dutch League with PSV Eindhoven as a 17 year old. There, despite not winning a league title, he scored a very impressive 66 goals in only 71 appearances before moving on to Barcelona under English manager Bobby Robson. That 1996-7 season at the Camp Nou made Ronaldo a star as he netted an amazing 34 goals in 37 games and though he did not win a league title with the Catalan side he did pick up the first of two World Player of the Year awards – making him the youngest ever recipient - along with the European Cup Winners Cup and the Spanish Cup. After only one season there, however, he moved to Serie A and to Inter Milan where he scored another 59 goals in only 68 games.
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Our fourth spotlight on World Cup Stars looks at one of Germany’s finest – der bomber! Check out previous posts on World Cup Stars here.

“(He) was short , squat, awkward-looking and not notably fast”, wrote David Winner in Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football. This description does not sound like one you would expect of a World Cup great, but the player described won a European Championship, a World Cup, is second all time top scorer in the competition and has one of the best goal to match ratios of any player – ever! 489 goals in 565 games. Gerd Müller, born in 1945 in Bavaria, was a deadly finisher, a fox in the box, and was simply know as der bomber – the bomber!

He has already established his fearsome reputation as a goalscorer at Bayern Munich, the team that dominated German club football in the late sixties and early 70s. Playing alongside Sepp Maier and Franz Beckenbauer it wasn’t long before Muller, initially believed to be too short and stocky to be successful, was called up to the national side, and in his first international competition, the 1970 World Cup in Mexico, he scored 10 goals and won the Golden Shoe. His haul included hatricks against Bulgaria and Peru, a winner in extra time against rivals England, and two against Italy in a match the Germans lost 4-3. Müller himself believed this competition was the most important in his career and it certainly propelled him into the international spotlight.

A European Championship title in 1972, culminating in a 3-0 win over Russia – two goals for der bomber and the top-scorer award – was followed two years later with West Germany’s successful campaign in the 1974 World Cup in front of their own fans. Müller’s West German side were up against most neutrals favourites, Holland. The Dutch, led by legend Johan Cruyff, were playing what became known as ‘total football’ a fluid approach to the game freeing players to change position in combinations that defied traditional thinking about line-ups and tactics. The West Germans had been solid in the tournament but not outstanding, unlike the Dutch who most pundits thought claim the trophy. The game became a tight, tense affair and the difference between the sides was  der bomber and his goal that put the Germans up 2-1 and ended up being the winning goal, and Müller’s last for his nation. This is how he described it, “I ran forward with two Dutch players then checked back because the pass was behind me. The ball jumped off my left foot, I turned a little and suddenly it was in.” ‘Suddenly it was in’, if any phrase describes the short, squat, stocky, slow striker from the south of Germany, ‘suddenly it was in’ is perhaps it.

David Miller goes on to say about Gerhard Müller, “he had lethal acceleration over short distances, a remarkable aerial game, and uncanny goalscoring instincts.” Der bomber, goal-scoring machine and World Cup great. continue

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This week’s main report looks at the newly-crowned Ballon D’or winner, Leo Messi. The transcript can be found below, while vocabulary support can be found for the words in bold at the foot of the post.

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Recently I was involved in a discussion with some friends over whether Brazilian star Kaka was a better player than his Real Madrid team mate Ronaldo. Who cares shouted another member of our group, they are only fighting for the title of second best player in the world. Discussion over. We all knew who is the global number one: Lionel Messi, no argument. continue

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Transcript

Goalkeepers can often be overlooked when talking about the best football players, but a great goalkeeper can inspire the rest of the side to play with confidence and help them perform better than they look on paper. this was surely the case with Lev Yashin, quite arguably the best goalkeeper at any World Cup. The Russian, born in 1929, possessed a great physical presence, he was 189 cm tall, was agile, had great reactions and the positional sense to ensure he was where he needed to be to snuff out any danger.

Known later in his career as the Black Spider – he wore an all black kit and seemed to posses eight legs, or the Black Panther – for his quickness and ability to pounce on the ball – Yashin played for Dyamo Moscow  throughout his playing days. He was given his international cap for the Soviet team in 1954 and went on to play 78 times for Russia appearing in three World Cups: 1958 in Sweden, 1962 in Chile and in 1966 in England. Particularly in 1962, it is doubtful that the Soviet team would have progressed as far as they did in the tournaments: two quarter finals and a semi final in England without Yashin. continue

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The dust from the World Cup qualifiers has settled, and this week we have Part III in our series on the World Cup greats – the Russian, Lev Yashin.

• Read our football news review in the good, the bad and the ugly
• Check out a new football expression in English for Football
• Follow the weekly predictions battle between Damon and Damian in the Predictions competition
• For learners of English check out our Football Language Resources page with:
• Football glossary (a huge collection of football vocabulary, football cliches and football phrases)
• Worksheets and transcripts from previous podcasts
  

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This World Cup Stars post features possibly the greatest player of all time, Diego Maradona. To help you understand a little better there is a vocabulary list containing the words in bold at the foot of this post

TRANSCRIPT

Pele may have won more World Cup titles, Ronaldo may have scored more goals, Lothar Matthäus played more games but no one has dominated the World Cup as much as Diego Maradona. He won the trophy in 1986, scored 7 goals in 21 consecutive appearances over four tournaments from 1982 to 1994 and was never far from the centre of World Cup controversy. The sad departure in 1982, the ‘Hand of God’ and subsequent wonder goal against England in 1986, the tears in the final of 1990 and the drug scandal in 1994 have all meant that Maradona is a definite part of World Cup history. continue

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Transcript

Each era has its heroes and stars. Today’s football world is dominated by players like David Beckham, Cristiano Ronaldo, Messi, who are role models to many young players, but I wonder how long their influence will last.

There is one player that has stood the test of time and is the greatest World Cup player of all time. Pelé appeared in four World Cups, 1958, 1962, 1966 and 1970, scoring 12 goals – the third most by any player – and creating many more. It was his first and last tournaments in Sweden and Mexico respectively that cemented his reputation as a world great.

In 1958, Pelé was 17 and had been playing for Santos and Brazil for one year. No one could imagine what an impact the boy from Três Corações in the south of Brazil would have on the tournament, but by the time he had scored four goals, including a hatrick against France in the semis, on the way to reaching the final everyone knew he was special. In the final, he scored one of the goals of the century – a precise chest-down, a deliciously weighted lob over a defender, polished off with a clinical volley. Pelé scored another as Brazil overcame Sweden 5-2 He became and the youngest player to score a hatrick in a World Cup, and appear and score in a final. continue