Passarella, son of a bitch!!!” Those of us who were fortunate enough to witness the matches between Argentina, Italy and Brazil in the 1982 World Cup in Sarrià are convinced that we saw the best football of the tournament. And the cry of a Brazilian journalist standing up in the middle of the press gallery to recriminate the umpteenth violent attack by the Argentine central defender on Zico was another magical moment, an incomparable anecdote.
Barcelona, ??Sarrià in particular, was fortunate to bring together three sensational teams that played the future of the tournament in one week. The World Cup in Spain was won by Italy at the Bernabeu, against Germany and the uncomplicated smile of Sandro Pertini, but it was decided in Barcelona, ??venue for the opening ceremony and seven other games. Three were magical, one of the best in the history of the World Cups.
The exaggeration of football that overflowed Barcelona, ??the figures (Maradona, Sócrates and Paolo Rossi, to name just one from each team), the color and atmosphere in the streets and in the stands was the reward for a World Cup that started badly and ended worse for the interests of the organizers. From the pathetic spectacle of the group draw, broadcast to the whole world, with the balls getting stuck in the lottery drum, Sepp Blatter’s manipulations to modify the starting order of the balls and adapt them to the previous conditions, to the painful role of the Spanish team, unable to beat Honduras in its debut, the most pessimistic calculations spilled over.
As a result of the complicated ticket sales system (they had to be purchased by packages, not by specific matches), the Camp Nou, remodeled to hold 120,000 spectators, was not full or giving away tickets at the last minute for the opening match, an Argentina-Belgium game that It was Maradona’s first official meeting at the Camp Nou, a few weeks after joining Barcelona. Argentina lost, by the way.
The president of FIFA, João Havelange, was momentarily blocked from accessing the Camp Nou because he did not appear as accredited. The president of the Chamber of Commerce, Josep Maria Figueras, denounced the chaos “organized by Iberia” in the airlift that was to transfer authorities and numerous members of the national teams to Madrid the morning after the inauguration.
The opening ceremony of the tournament, which culminated in a gigantic Picasso-style dove of peace and a boy, dressed in the kit of the Spanish national team, opening a soccer ball from which a white dove flew out, received praise in the chronicles of the foreign press. The only criticism, it was pointed out in this newspaper two days later, “has come from Spain and its geographical center, from where labels have rained more than critics, contemptuous”.
The editorial in El País, titled “The World of Horrors”, was especially corrosive, where it was pointed out that “it is almost impossible to overcome the levels of bad taste, lack of beauty and emotion that the ceremony reached”. And he concluded: “Because if even the tacky have the right to live and express themselves in a democracy, it is not necessary, however, to submit the forty million inhabitants to their dictates.” The pressure reached such an extreme that the creators of the opening ceremony, Víctor Sagi and Leopoldo Pomés, had to show their faces at a press conference to detail how much it had cost and remember that in their day they decided to give up any fixed benefits. And they concluded in unison: “We will never do something like this again.”
Between hits, some, and mistakes, the World Cup went ahead. And it keeps intact the memory of the magical days that were lived in the now-defunct stadium on the Sarrià highway. Passarella and the Brazilian journalist included.
