January 16 – Drawing Blanks | On This Football Day

January 16 – Drawing Blanks

THESE days whenever there’s a draw to be made you get a slick, stage-managed affair shown live on Sky Sports News, where the ex-pro’s are wheeled out to talk about ‘groups of death’ or ‘the magic of the cup.’ They’re normally very boring and sterile, but today in 1982 one of the most comical draws ever seen took place, as the draw for upcoming World Cup in Spain turned into a bit of a Titus Shambles.

FIFA dignitaries were gathered in Madrid for the usual complementary piss-up that they are so adapt at disguising as work, and all they needed to do was pull a few balls out of a drum or two. Sounds like something you could trust to someone of even Anton Ferdinand’s intellect doesn’t it? Well, not really, as things began to pear-shaped very quickly.

Competition rules meant that Peru and Chile, the two unseeded South American sides had to be kept away from Brazil and Argentina, but someone forgot to take the balls out. Not a good start, and it soon got more embarrassing when Scotland were picked out and placed in Argentina’s group, only to realise that Belgium had already been picked in that spot, meaning the Scots were put in with Brazil instead.

As the whole saga began to look as organised as the Newcastle back-four, one of the containers holding the balls jammed, splitting open and cascading ping pong balls everywhere. Any hopes of FIFA salvaging any self-respect from the charade were dashed when FIFA’s West German representative Hermann Neuberger accused the organisers of slave labour by using Spanish orphans to fetch the balls back and forth. Presumably they didn’t respond by mentioning the war.

Eventually, though, they got there, throwing up some tantalising match-ups such as England (who were in their first World Cup for 12 years) versus France, Spain versus Yugoslavia and Brazil against the USSR, as Italy went on to pick up the trophy for the third time.

Unfortunately, talk of Sky Sports News and red buttons was the stuff of madmen back then, meaning no footage of the comedy of errors is available, so you’ll have to make do with Marco Tardelli’s goal from the final, complete with one of the best celebration’s there’s ever been. Tomorrow we’ll let you know who had the coolest ever nickname in world football. And no, it’s not Robert ‘The Terminator’ Molenaar.