What a week in Australian football! Maradona confesses that he and his La Albiceleste teammates took drugs against the Socceroos before a second-leg World Cup qualifier in 1993, and two of the Socceroos participants couldn’t give a flying fox.
When Australia played Argentina during the second leg of their World Cup qualifier in Buenos Aires, a few mates and I jigged school to watch the game at the Sydney Olympic Club. I was in Year 11 and I remember missing a crucial maths class.
Watching the game was a frustrating experience because with the Socceroos down 1-0 late in the game, striker Carl Veart scored what everyone thought was an equalising goal.
The noise and jumping were so loud and thunderous that the projector failed and we lost the picture. We waited a couple of minutes while staff at the Sydney Olympic club tried frantically to get the projector to work again, while the punters screamed. Once the picture was fixed we found that the goal was ruled offside. Failure to qualify yet again was a crushing feeling.
So I was astonished to read that Paul Wade and Robbie Slater have given muted responses to the news Maradona and Argentina cheated. Anytime that game or Maradona’s name is brought up in Australia, Paul Wade and Robbie Slater are always the go to guys to get a quote, even though they were not the only players on the pitch.
Robbie Slater’s response when asked if it tarnishes the experience was that “It certainly won’t for me, it was a magical three weeks, it was mythical. In spite of this coming out … those two games, despite us not qualifying, rest as one of the best memories in my career.”
And Paul Wade’s response is even weirder. No outrage, no feelings of being cheated. Instead he takes the news as a compliment.
Chatting to the Sydney Morning Herald‘s Sebastian Hassett, Wade said ”I was absolutely shocked when I heard about it. But, wow, in a bizarre way, what a compliment to us. They must have been very scared that we’d knock them out of the World Cup qualifiers.”
News that the Argies had been talking happy pills is not any new discovery. Before the World Cup last year I read Jimmy Burns excellent book on Maradona’s Hand of God. In it he claims that during the 1978 World Cup, the eventual winners were as high as Charlie Sheen on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday ,Thursday, Friday, Saturday and/or Sunday.
An excerpt from the book reveals that: “According to other reports Mario Kempes and Alberto Tarantinoi were so ‘high’ after playing one particular World Cup match that they had to keep on going for another hour before they came down again.”
Another most extraordinary episode of the World Cup involved the pregnant wife of the Argentine’s team waterboy, after it was revealed that her urine was used as to cover for an Argentine player in one of the competition’s dopes test.
At least on this occasion they had dope tests!
Surely someone from that Socceroos team has to feel cheated and robbed.
To think of being literally cheated out of playing at a World Cup and taking the news as a compliment, or one of the best memories in a career. I wonder if, indeed, they really wanted to go to the World Cup in the first place?
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What if we celebrated all of the achievements big and small, and weeded out those hell-bent on bringing down a game that is doing a hell of a lot right?
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