The intercontinental qualification of the European and South American zones caused a lot of trouble. It pitted the Soviet Union against Chile, where a violent coup took place in September 1973 in which a military junta led by General Augusto Pinochet ousted the democratically elected president, Salvador Allende.
Concentration camps spread across the country, where opponents of the new regime were imprisoned and liquidated. One of them was also created at the national stadium in the capital of Santiago de Chile, where in 1962 the Czechoslovak team lost to Brazil in the final.
The first qualifying match took place in September in Moscow (0:0), the rematch was to take place in November. However, the Soviet Union refused to enter the stadium where people were tortured. FIFA, however, did not allow the move to a neutral country or at least to another city, and the match was canceled in favor of Chile.
On the day of the match, the Chilean national team ran against no one, the players made a couple of passes and then delivered the ball into the empty goal to the huge applause of those present…
Stories from the history of the World Cup
Politics does not belong in football, says the age-old rule. It’s really just wishful thinking. Seznam Zprávy brings you a series from the history of all world football championships from 1930 to the present day.
We are preparing other parts.
The 1974 World Cup – the half-open iron curtain
When the FIFA leadership knocked the organization of the championship to the Federal Republic of Germany, no one had any idea how fate would play with the football championship. For the first time, the team of the German Democratic Republic also qualified for the top event, and the lot pitted the two countries that had been defeated in the war from the occupation zones (GDR from the Soviet Union, Germany from the United States, England and France) against each other.
The Berlin Wall divided the country
The tension between the two German states, torn apart by politics and irreconcilable ideology, was still explosive. The days when they were able to send one sports team to a world event like the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia are long gone. It was demolished by the Berlin Wall, which began to be built in August 1961.
The 1954 world champions from Switzerland, the 1966 silver medalists from England and the 1970 bronze medalists from Mexico did not have a single kind word for their brothers from the east, the local press spoke of Georg Buschner’s team as a bunch of runners and jumpers who can’t kick a balloon.
Saxon native Helmut Schön
The personality of the coach of the organizing team, Helmut Schön, was also contradictory. A native of Dresden, who represented the Reich sixteen times before the war, after the end of his active career, he began training in Saxony, which belonged to the Soviet occupation zone.
In 1950, he left illegally for the western sector. He took over the free team of Saarland, which fell into the French zone and played against the Federal Republic of Germany in the qualification for the 1954 World Cup. In 1956, Saarland was annexed to it with the status of a federal state.
Schön took over as assistant coach to Sepp Herberger, making him a downright unpopular figure in his native country (now GDR). Indeed, Herberger joined the Nazi party NSDAP in 1933 and was constantly considered a loyal follower of the leader Adolf Hitler and the bearer of his monstrous theories about the Germanic superior race.
The socialist government of the GDR, under the supervision of Moscow, strongly opposed the fascist past. Coach Schön, who took over the team as head coach in 1964, became a traitor through this connection.
Shooter Sparwasser and punished Kreische
On 22 June in Hamburg in front of 62,000 spectators, a historic event took place – the first (and last) time the two German teams met at the A level of selections. The visitors won sensationally thanks to Jürgen Sparwasser’s goal. However, the hosts ran out of steam for the world championship title when they defeated the excellent Netherlands in the final in Munich.
It was only later that East German team forward Hans-Jürgen Kreische found out that he had been excluded from the 1976 Olympic squad because the Stasi secret police knew about his correspondence with West German politician Hans Apel, which was forbidden by the GDR authorities.
At the same time, the contact was not about politics at all, it was an informal bet: Kreische correctly predicted that the organizing team would win the trophy. Apel sent him some whiskey, unaware of the trouble it would cause.
The journey behind closed windows
The World Cup offered one more peculiarity in an ideologically divided world. West Berlin, which enjoyed the status of an open city and lay in the middle of the Soviet occupation zone, hosted some Group A matches with both German selections. It was the Berlin Wall that brought down the hardest iron curtain.
In order to get to the stadium, the participants of the championship had to fly or take a train through the territory of the GDR, which was always politically sensitive. “The coupe had the shutters down over the windows, we couldn’t see anything,” Stanislav Hlaváček, editor of the Slovak daily Šport, recalled the experience.
World Cup 1974 – Federal Republic of Germany
Participants (16): Chile, Italy, Federal Republic of Germany, German Democratic Republic, Brazil, Netherlands, Scotland, Sweden, Uruguay, Argentina, Poland, Bulgaria, Australia, Yugoslavia, Zaire, Haiti
Semi-final group A – standings: 1. Netherlands, 2. Brazil, 3. German Democratic Republic, 4. Argentina.
Semi-final group B – standings: 1. Federal Republic of Germany, 2. Poland, 3. Sweden, 4. Yugoslavia.
For 3rd place: Poland–Brazil 1:0 (0:0)
Finals: Federal Republic of Germany – Netherlands 2:1 (2:1)
Photo: ČTK / imago sportfotodienst
