My earliest football memories are from 1974. These include the FA Cup Final of that year (Liverpool v Newcastle); Manchester City's League Cup Final defeat to Wolves; Man Utd's relegation and the World Cup of that year. These were the days when there were only a handful of live football matches broadcast every year, this increased when there was a World Cup year as matches from this tournament were also broadcast live. This resulted in every live football match being an event all of it's own to all football fans. As a boy growing up in a football loving family, this would result in most of the family crowding around our black & white telly and it would escalate beyond football to more of a general social event.
I remember certain games from the '74 World Cup, including the final, but the tournament as a whole largely went over my head as the quality of the games appeared to be poor and it always appeared to be raining onto sodden pitches. Watching it in black and white also probably didn't help. Fast forward then to 1978. I was 11 years old and in the prime of my boyhood football loving life. The World Cup had come around again and this time it was to be held in South America. This alone excited me, as it sounded exotic and almost mystical. England hadn't qualified, neither had the Republic of Ireland; Northern Ireland or Wales. Scotland had, but none of this mattered to me at the time
2 months before the World Cup started I invested in a Panini sticker album. This album became THE most important thing in my life for several months during 1978. Every team at the upcoming World Cup was featured with a few facts about each player. I poured over it every day and collected the stickers feverishly. I got into an agreement with a few of my mates at school that we would do "swaps" on any that any of us already had. The players names alone seemed magical; Causio; Bettega; Zoff; Kempes; Van Der Kerkhoff; Luque etc etc. These were the days when there were virtually no overseas players in the English game so this all added to the mystery and excitement.
When the tournament started I wasn't disappointed. We now had a colour telly and the first game featuring Argentina was something I had never seen anything like before. The ticker tape cascading down from the stands, the colour and the noise all added to my open mouthed wonderment. The first couple of weeks saw the best football matches I had ever seen on TV. There seemed to be spectacular goals in each game (rarely seen in the English First Divison at the time) and the skill of all the genuine world-class players on show was something that I couldn't comprehend at first. I remember watching an evening group game between Argentina and France and to that point in my young life, it was the best game of football I had ever seen. Next day at school, that was the only topic of conversation amongst an over-excited bunch of 11 year old lads.
Older readers of this blog have every right to disagree with my appraisal of this World Cup, of course, as I am too young to have witnessed first hand both the 1966 and 1970 World Cups which, I'm certain, are also favourites for many people. However, I have watched every World Cup tournament closely ever since 1978 and, apart from Spain '82 and, to a lesser extent, Mexico '86, no other has come close to matching Argentina '78 for me. It had style, it had panache, it had controversy; it had an unprecedented array of world class players from almost every competing nation playing at the very pinnacle of their game. In my opinion, no World Cup since has quite scaled these heights. I do, however, have some hope for the Brazil World Cup in 2014. If any country has the potential to outdo the 1978 Argentina tournament then it is the football mad country of Brazil.
*Footnote - I never did collect the full set of panini stickers for this World Cup, but once the tournament started it didn't seem to matter as I was seeing them all play in glorious colour television.
**Further Footnote - I think Brazil 2014 may just have outdone it for me!
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