Have great time for them
Iâm in agreement with you. Thought it was an average match for the first 80 minutes or so, albeit I was flicking between the soccer and the hurling. It was rip roaring stuff from around the 80 minute mark until the end of extra time. The narrative that it was one of the greatest matches of all time is interesting after a largely pedestrian first 80 minutes.
Parts of the 2004 Munster Final were poor too.
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Iâd say he probably played a few of the qualifiers before he had to retire did he? He was at Barcelona about 3 months when the heart problem flared up so heâs only retired about 15 months or less.
The 18 game South American qualifying series is fantastic Iâd imagine. I used to love playing it on FIFA World Cup 2006 on the PS2.
80-90% of regulation time yesterday was very run of the mill. The lull periods in the 2004 Munster Hurling Final hardly amounted to that.
The lads here are writing off the 30 or so minutes of the first half just because its when Argentina ran riot. Because for some reason, that doesnt count.
Thereâs some gas cunts on this site.
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Also, the first 75 minutes being so one sided made the next 50 or so minutes so amazing, it added to the narrative
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some of the best football ever played in a world cup final that 30 minutes was⌠they slaughtered France
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Di Maria, De Paul and Maca ran em⌠France couldnât live with it.
The only things I can recall about June 1986 are as follows:
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Being in my grannyâs house off the Whitworth Road for dinner one Sunday night. It must have been June 15th, 1986, because I recall hearing about Gary Lineker and Maradona and that England would be playing Argentina. Or perhaps it was the 22nd of June, because on the 15th it was not yet known that England would play Argentina. Whatever, Maradona already seemed like an invincible figure, God-like. I wasnât yet properly into football at this stage- though I knew Liverpool were the team I liked - but said that I wanted/had wanted England to win the World Cup. My other granny who worked in England during the war would have had me indoctrinated. I had a Ladybird book for Mexico '86 and in the blank space where you wrote in who you predicted to win the World Cup, I wrote in England.
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Saying I wanted to stay up for the Barry McGuigan v Steve Cruz fight, which was live on RTE, but falling asleep and hearing the next day that McGuigan had lost. I was disappointed annoyed I hadnât been woken up to watch it.
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Being at the Dublin v Offaly Leinster football semi-final in Portlaoise on June 29th, 1986 with my oulâ fella and his friend and his son. We were standing behind one the goals, I think it was the goal furthest away from the town, the smaller terrace. At one stage the ball came up onto the terrace and nearly hit me. My fatherâs friendâs son wanted ice cream but his father wouldnât buy it for him. My oulâ fella offered to buy it but the friend said the son had to be taught no for answer, something like that.
I donât recall watching the World Cup final that evening â it would have been a 7pm start â but my oulâ fella later told we missed about the first 25 minutes. Maybe I watched it. He watched anyway. He wanted West Germany to win, I donât think he particularly liked Argentina. I remember hearing Argentina had won, anyway.
In the months after that I started getting interested in football and music, I was playing football on the street and listening to the Hotline with Barry Lang on Radio 2 which was playing stuff like âBreakoutâ by Swing Out Sister and âOpen Your Heartâ by Madonna. Iâm sure me and a few friends from my street watched an Everton v Liverpool game on BBC in November '86 which finished 0-0.
I definitely watched a live game on RTE between West Ham and Wimbledon which Wimbledon won 3-2 which I always thought was around Easter 1987 but was actually December 27th, 1986.
Luton v Liverpool in the FA Cup in January 1987 was the first game I consciously remember sitting down and watching wanting Liverpool to win.
About a month later my granny from off the Whitworth Road bought me two football magazines, Match and Shoot. Ian Rush was on the cover of Shoot but I preferred Match and started getting that every week. I also got two sticker albums, one produced by the Daily Mirror called âStick With Soccerâ and the Panini one. I preferred the Daily Mirror one because the stickers were action shots of the players whereas the Panini one were portraits of the playersâ faces. But there was a section in the Panini one about what had happened in Mexico '86 and this fascinated me. The colour of the pictures of the whole thing fascinated me and I became annoyed that that World Cup had pretty much completely passed me by and that there wouldnât be another World Cup until 1990, which was a very long time in the future.
It remains a deep regret of mine that that Mexico '86 passed me by. I read in Match and in the papers about Maradona playing with Napoli and they seemed invincible too, and they won the double in 1987. I developed this weird fascination with 1986 and wanted things that happened in 1986 to happen again. I wanted Liverpool to win the double and beat Everton in the FA Cup final and Cork to win the hurling All-Ireland in the final against Galway and Argentina to win the World Cup in the final against West Germany with Maradona starring.
The 1989 FA Cup final between Liverpool and Everton and the 1990 All-Ireland hurling final between Cork and Galway, where I was fanatically up for Cork (I didnât even watch the football final that year) was like a recreation of what I had missed in 1986 for me. I wanted Greg LeMond to win the Tour De France and Boris Becker to win Wimbledon and Greg Norman to win the British Open and West Tip to win the Grand National. By the 1990 World Cup I was a full blown fanatic for Argentina. I supported them in all their games â except against Cameroon, who I wanted to win. I now hated England and wanted them to lose all their games.
I was ecstatic when Argentina beat Brazil. And then Italy on penalties. God I wanted Argentina to beat Italy so badly. I cried when they lost the final to West Germany. A month later I got an Argentina jersey as a birthday present. But overall 1990 was a bad World Cup and the final was terrible and it made me still more envious of what I had missed in 1986.
By the spring of 1991 I went all grown up and started buying World Soccer. Because of this I knew the names of all Argentinaâs exclusively home based squad for a triangular tournament against England and the USSR. I listened to the game against England at Wembley on radio. Then Screensport showed the Copa America and I got really into it. I missed the second group stage because I was traipsing around France on a train with my granny and my Mam. But I was buying LâEquipe and La Gazzetta Dello Sport to read the results and got my oulâ fella back at home to record the matches. Argentina won the tournament and I was delighted.
By 1994 I had lost interest in Argentina and I think I wanted Romania to beat them. I definitely wanted England to beat them in 1998, and definitely wanted Holland to beat them. But the friendly between Ireland and Argentina in April 1998 still seemed way more attractive than any time Ireland played Brazil. There was a mercurial mystique about Argentina that Brazil didnât have.
By 2002 I once again developed a fascination with Argentina and Maradona, and wanted them to win that World Cup and got an Argentina jersey the same day the tournament started but they lost to England this time and got knocked out in the first round. Iâve supported them ever since and again became fanatical when Maradona took over as manager late in 2008, even going to the pub where all the Argentina supporters were congregated in Dublin to watch the quarter-final against Germany in 2010.
Messi in my mind had become a reincarnation of Maradona, or at least I wanted him to be. I think half the world had the same feeling and has had for the last 12 or 13 years. It felt like it might happen in 2014 but didnât. And now it has, at the last possible moment.
So what happened 24 hours ago did sort of feel like living history.
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the French midfield didnât know what end was up with them.
Griezmann had a poor enough final unfortunately
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âMiguelâs World Cup team
My team of the World Cup
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Emiliano Martinez
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Achraf Hakimi
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Nahuel Molina
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Romain Saiss
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Josko Gvardiol
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Sofyan Amrabat
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Alexis Mac Allister
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Antoine Griezmann
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Kylian Mbappe
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Leo Messi
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Luka Modric
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You were an early developer in terms of your sporting interests. I can only remember the All-Ireland hurling and football finals as a 6 year old. I was more into PokĂŠmon at the time. Around the time I turned 7 I suddenly became a fully fledged sports fan and had a huge edge in 1st class maths because of my ability to tot up abstract numbers based on GAA scores and tallies. Iâd have thought Irelands presence in 1990 would have made that World Cup very memorable.
Thinking back Maradona had a tremendous array of attacking talent at his disposal in 2010. Messi, Di Maria, Aguero, Higuain, Lavezzi, Diego Milito fresh from leading Inter to treble glory, Lisandro Lopez was a prolific scorer at the time too. They struggled massively in qualifying for that tournament though. I remember watching scenes on the sports bulletin on the 6.01 news on RTE the evening Maradona did a frontal slide in lashing rain after a late goal sealed their qualification. Could have been away to Peru possibly.
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If he was a hurler ye would.
There wouldnât be a lot of talent up that way beyond Ardpatrick.
The slide by Maradona was at home to Peru. Peru had equalised very late and Martin Palermo tapped in from about three yards for the winner.
Argentina still could have gone out however and needed a result away to Uruguay the following Wednesday night, which they got.
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The recent, very well-made, Italia 90 documentary on Sky was pushing the narrative that it was the last great World Cup. Maybe so in the sense that it was the last one with the older hardy annuals such as West Germany, the USSR, Czechoslovakia & Yugoslavia, but Iâd agree that it was a poor tournament overall.
Obviously, the fact that we were there for the first time made it huge here. I was doing my Leaving Cert at the time and a lot of it passed me by. I think I did Irish the day of the Ireland-England game. There was some festival in Limerick the night of the final and I ended up above in Buddyâs on Foxeâs Bow for it. It was also the first ever final in which the losing team failed to score ( subsequently repeated for the next 3 iterations and again in 2010 & 14.
I have a vague memory of 1978, but Espana 82 was the first one I was gripped with. Rossi, Tardelli, Socrates, Falcao, Marius Tresor, Rummenige, even Bryan Robson. I was below in Spanish Point on a scout camp for the Norn Iron v Spain game and missed it. The semi final between West Germany and France was the best game I had seen to that point.
Mexico was another great tournament. The night the North played Brazil, in Pat Jenningsâ last game, I was in a house with the late Eamonn Mac Thomais, whom my late father had some business with. An outstanding storyteller and historian was Eamonn and fantastic company for a young fella with an interest in it.
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1990 was a poor tournament. So poor that they had to change all the rules after it.
66, 70, 74, 78, 82 and 86 were all excellent tournaments in their own way. 90 was poor, 94 was mediocre, 98 generally mediocre except for the denouement. 02 was unremarkable, 06 was a good tournament, 10 was poor enough, 14 was remarkable for the way the Germans sent the Brazilians home with their tea in a mug, 18 was a decent tournament and 22 was the best of the lot.
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Watching montages and clips online itâs clear how humble Messi is. He appears to have a great bond with his Argentinian teammates who seemed to be thrilled for him nearly more so than themselves.
I thought Emi Martinez could have done slightly better for Mbappe goals 1 and 2 having got a hand to both but not firm enough to save either. That save from Kolo Muani at the end of extra-time saved us from the greatest anti-climax of all time though. He more than redeemed himself and ended up an iconic hero once again.
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