ENGLISH BATTLE AND GLORY
                   World Cup victory is just around the corner, but when Argentina
                   play England it’s not just about playing football… 

                   Because of everything it stood for, the England game was the
                   real final for us. Though officially we were saying it had nothing
                   to do with the Malvinas War, we knew how many Argentinian lads had died out
                   there. They’d shot them like little birds.”

                   I finished (the second goal) like my brother had told me. On 13 May 1981 I’d
                   done a very similar move, I mean really similar and finished by slotting the
                   ball over to one side when the goalie came out to close me down. It ended up
                   only just going wide, by a whisker, when I’d already started celebrating the
                   goal. El Turco called me over and said, “You daft bugger! You shouldn’t have
                   tried to slot it past the goalie... You should have dummied. He’d already gone
                   down.” So I said, “You bastard! Just cause you were watching it on TV.” But he
                   was right. “No, Pelu, if you dummied, went round the outside and finished with
                   your right foot. Get it?” And the little bugger was just seven!

                   I sold Shilton the dummy and he really bought it... So I ran out of pitch and
                   just tapped it in... I’d scored the goal of my life.

                   And the other goal brought me lots of pleasure too. Sometimes I feel I liked
                   the first one more, the one I scored with my hand. [for a detailed account of
                   the Hand of God incident see “World Cup controversy”]

                   And the final was coming up against Germany. Germany. The team my dad had
                   picked out from the word go.

                   We scored two brilliant goals. First, Tata Brown’s header, which he deserved
                   more than anyone else ’cause he’d replaced Passarella and played better than
                   all of us put together. And Valdano’s ’cause it summed up how Carlos was
                   trying to get us to play and demonstrated Jorge’s physical and footballing
                   prowess.

                   I wasn’t worried when they equalised. No way... True, they got two headers in
                   against us in our area. An unforgivable mistake for any serious team but... I
                   had my eyes on the way Briegel was running and his legs were like baseball
                   bats. We knew we were going to pull it off. We knew victory was ours.

                   “Gol de Burru!” The way I celebrated that goal of Burruchaga’s. The sheer joy!
                   I remember us piling in one on top of the other, this mountain of players. We
                   could already feel we were world champions. There were six minutes on the
                   clock. The whistle blew.

                   We went to the dressing room with the cup in our hands and started having a
                   go at everybody under the sun.

                   We all hugged each other, really hugged each other and did something we’d
                   promised we’d do, the lot of us. We did a lap of honour on this little training
                   pitch all on our own! We’d taken an oath on that very pitch just after arriving in
                   Mexico. “We’re the first here we’re going to be the last out.”

                   I lived it all to the full like I do everything in my life. You had to take it for what
                   it was and it was an outstanding victory for Argentinian football, one that
                   unfortunately hasn’t been repeated since. But that’s all it was... Us winning the
                   World Cup didn’t bring down the price of bread... I wish us footballers could
                   sort out people’s problems by playing football. We’d all be a lot better off!

                   When I eventually got home there was this huge crowd trampling all over La
                   Tota’s garden and she was going nuts. They were singing, sounding their
                   horns, bringing me presents...

                   One night around that time I invited two little kids into the house ’cause I felt
                   really really upset for them. I kicked a ball around in the living room with them
                   for a while. Their mum was watching us and couldn’t believe her eyes. I reckon
                   they didn’t even realise they’d had a kick-around with me but I felt so sorry for
                   them, incredibly sorry. Deep down inside I felt it was all too much... I’d only
                   won a World Cup
 

~Chapter 6

Chapters Index~

Chapter 8~