Five centimetres to the right

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the message was lost.
For want of a message the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

Argentina vs Netherlands, World Cup Final, 1978. The score is 1-1 and in injury time Rensenbrink, the Dutch forward, gets onto the end of a long pass and this happens:

Five centimetres to the right and The Netherlands score the goal that would have won them the World Cup. How would things be different if the ball had gone in?

Of the many things you hear said about football, one of the most common is the cliché about it being ‘only a game’. Which factually, is perfectly true. It’s also true that Michelangelo’s painting in the Sistine Chapel is only a ceiling, and Stonehenge is only a few rocks. It’s the value placed on these things by others that gives them their worth.

Throughout the world, football is a potent force in the lives of billions of people. Football focuses national, political and cultural identities, and is the medium through which people’s hopes and fears, passions and hatreds are expressed. This was particularly true for Argentina when they hosted the World Cup in 1978.

The Junta

In 1978 Argentina was ruled by a military dictatorship or Junta led at time by General Videla. He had come to power two years earlier in a coup and immediately began martial law and detentions of political opponents. Opponents to the military were not only detained, but many were killed. This is how Videla described his philosophy of leadership:

As many people as necessary must die in Argentina to ensure the country will again be secure

During the years of the Junta, which lasted until 1983, up to 30,000 people were ‘disappeared’ by the regime. Unsurprisingly given their methods, the Junta did not have popular support in the time up to 1978, its power came from fear and brutal suppression. But the World Cup was seen by the authorities there as an opportunity to build popular support and increase power. An Argentine journalist Ezequiel Fernandez Moores said:

The 1978 World Cup was the most obvious political manipulation of sport since the Olympic Games of 1936 in Nazi Germany

The people who were organising mass murder were now going to organise the World Cup. The tournament was manipulated to get the result they wanted - Argentina crowned as world champions.

The tournament

Argentina’s matches during the tournament were always suspiciously refereed. Argentina were treated leniently while their opponents were penalised for minor infringements. In their penultimate game Argentina had to beat a very good Peru team by at least four goals to make it to the final. In the match Peru played their worst match of the competition and lost 6-0. Years later it was revealed that before the match General Videla visited the Peruvian players in their dressing room to intimidate them; and also just before the match, Peru’s financial debt with Argentina was annulled. So Argentina made the final and met The Netherlands. Before the final the referee was changed at the last minute at Argentina’s insistence. Also the team bus taking the Dutch players to the stadium was driven to a rough part of Buenos Aires where the bus was parked for half an hour while locals banged on the bus shouting abuse at the players inside. Given the circumstances it’s amazing how Holland came so close to winning the final.

The butterfly effect

Needless to say the Junta milked the team’s victory for all it was worth. The popular support that the Junta had been missing before the World Cup suddenly materialised. It is estimated that the Junta was extended for several years thanks to Argentina’s 1978 World Cup victory. Back to Fernandez Moores:

I think if Argentina had lost that final, the military would have fallen.

As it was, the popularity of the military generals in Argentina soared in post World Cup euphoria. But by 1982, the Junta’s popularity under a different leader, General Galtieri, had waned. The invasion of The Falklands in 1982 was largely an attempt to rekindle that euphoria and popular support generated by the 1978 World Cup.

In early 1982, Margaret Thatcher was also unpopular. Until 1982 she was regarded as the least popular Prime Minister in the history of Great Britain. The war in The Falklands gave her enormous popular support and, arguably, was the springboard which allowed her to win the election in 1983. Defeat in that election would have meant the end of Thatcherism, as it was the 1983 election which gave her the manifesto to make some of the most controversial policies of her time in power. Her defeat in 1983 would have meant no miners’ strike, no mass privatisation of public utilities, and no ‘Big Bang’ - deregulation of UK banking industry, i.e. allowing banks the freedom to do what they wanted.

This freedom for the banks ultimately led to the global financial crisis - which is widely seen as an unintended consequence of the Big Bang. Nigel Lawson, one of the principal architects of banking deregulation in the 1980s, said that UK investment banks, previously very cautious with what was their own money, had merged with high street banks putting depositors’ savings at risk. The Big Bang deregulation in the UK led US banks to follow suit. Financial deregulation has resulted in a financial sector in the western world which is focused on customers only inasmuch as how much money can be got out of them. The modern bank’s main focus is short term profit and bonuses. A focus which led banks to take bigger and bigger risks while building bigger and bigger credit. But the financial sector is so important to the economies that they function within, that financial companies are ‘too big to fail’. The Big Bang was about exposing banks and financial institutions to the free market, but ironically, they are one of the few industries exempt from the punitive effects of market forces. The cost of bailing out banks has been huge and has resulted in the biggest and longest recession since the 1930s.

There is a lot of conjecture in this article. The laws of cause and effect are never so simple, but it’s interesting to hypothesise as to what would have been different if in the 1978 World Cup final, Rensenbrink’s shot in the dying seconds of normal time had been five centimetres to the right.

Five centimetres: not much for a man, but a lot for mankind. But ‘hey’, it’s only a game!

Bibliography:

Winner, D. ‘But was this the beautiful game’s ugliest moment’ The Financial Times 21 June 2008

Kuper, S. (2011, Hatchette) ‘Football against the enemy’