User:Mparra179/1978 FIFA World Cup

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The 1978 FIFA World Cup was the 11th edition of the FIFA World Cup, a quadrennial international football world championship tournament among the men's senior national teams. It was held in Argentina between 1 and 25 June.

The Cup was won by the host nation, Argentina, who defeated the Netherlands 3–1 in the final, after extra time. The final was held at River Plate's home stadium, Estadio Monumental, in the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires. This win was the first World Cup title for Argentina, who became the fifth team (after Uruguay, Italy, England, and West Germany) to be both hosts and world champions and the third South American team to win a World Cup. Argentina, the Netherlands, and Brazil were the gold, silver, and bronze medalists, respectively. Iran and Tunisia made their first appearances in the tournament. The defending champions, West Germany were eliminated in the second round (finishing third in their group). This was also the last World Cup tournament to use the original inclusion of 16 teams. Since the first World Cup in 1930, only 15 teams (plus the host, who automatically qualified) had been allowed to qualify (the reigning title holders also received automatic qualification from 1934 through 2002); but for the next World Cup, in Spain, FIFA expanded that tournament to 24 teams.

This tournament was marred by flagrant controversy, domestic politics, and alleged interference and match-fixing by the Argentine authoritarian military junta government, who were using this tournament as an opportunity for nationalistic propaganda, and for the relatively new military junta to seek legitimacy on the world stage. During the months before the start of the World Cup, the junta was intending to dismantle those who were against them and mitigate criticism from the public on their policies.

The official match ball was the Adidas Tango.

Controversies

A controversy surrounding the 1978 World Cup was that Argentina had undergone a military coup of its democratic government only two years before the cup, which installed a dictatorship known as the National Reorganization Process. Between the time that the military junta took over the government and the time the World Cup started, foreign journalists were concerned about how Argentinian newspaper reporters and editors were being treated by the regime, in attempting to get leftist members out of the picture. The new government targeted any parts of society that they saw were trying to undermine them. Less than a year before the World Cup, in September 1977, Interior Minister General Albano Harguindeguy, stated that 5,618 people had recently disappeared. The infamous Higher School of Mechanics of the Navy (known by its acronym ESMA) held concentration camp prisoners of the Dirty War and those held captive reportedly could hear the roars of the crowd during matches held at River Plate's Monumental Stadium, located only a mile away; prompting echoes of Hitler's and Mussolini's alleged political manipulation of sports during the 1936 Berlin Olympics and 1934 FIFA World Cup. Also, the junta practiced censorship since it was established, which encouraged less reports on the real situation in Argentina. This was done as an attempt to change the character of the Argentinian people.

Just months before the World Cup, the Argentinian regime launched a campaign to silence any disapproval of the government from the people. However, over the course of the tournament, the regime ceased the operation to avoid giving off their authoritarianism and receiving criticism from all over the world, but international newspapers and human rights organizations have already criticized Argentina as host for the next World Cup. Because of the political turmoil, some countries, most notably the Netherlands, considered publicly whether they should participate in the event. Despite this, all teams eventually took part without restrictions. However, most notably, Dutch star Johan Cruyff, who won the Golden Ball in the previous 1974 FIFA World Cup, refused to take part in the 1978 World Cup, even though he earlier participated in the 1978 FIFA World Cup qualification. Allegations that Cruyff refused to participate because of political convictions were denied by him 30 years later—he and his family had been the victims of a kidnapping attempt a few months before the tournament. Several criminals entered his house in Barcelona at night and tied him and his family up at gunpoint. The only player who missed the tournament for political reasons, was the West German Paul Breitner. One player, Ralf Edström, was arrested for speaking to a person in Buenos Aires; however, the Argentine military released him upon recognizing that he was a Swedish footballer, not an ordinary person. More controversy surrounded the host, Argentina, as all of their games in the first round kicked off at night, giving the Argentines the advantage of knowing where they stood in the group. This issue would arise again in Spain 1982, which prompted FIFA to change the rules so that the final two group games in subsequent World Cups (as well as in every other international tournament, starting with the UEFA Euro 1984) would be played simultaneously.

The military forces that had control over Argentina at the time wanted to hold that power for as long as they could, but with a different perspective. The use of repression, torture, kidnapping, and assassination was becoming an everyday reality, with 30,000 people murdered between 1976 and 1983, the end of the dictatorship. People wondered why FIFA would allow the World Cup to go on under these circumstances and that 15 other countries, most of which are old democracies, would participate in the tournament. However, it is simply because of the dominant notion that football or soccer, or any sport for that matter, belong to civil society, giving the assumption that state policies wouldn't interfere with the passion and enthusiasm of fans.

Argentina's controversial and favorable decisions in their matches have caused many to view their eventual win as illegitimate; many cite the political climate and worldwide pressure on the Argentine government as the reason for these decisions. Desperate to prove their stability and prominence to the world after their coup two years earlier, the government used whatever means necessary to ensure that the team would progress far in the tournament.

Suspicions of match fixing arose even before the tournament began; Lajos Baróti, the head coach of Argentina's first opponents, Hungary, said that "everything, even the air, is in favor of Argentina". He also talked about the financial imperative to have Argentina win the World Cup: "The success of Argentina is financially so important to the tournament".

From Will Hersey's article "Remembering Argentina 1978: The Dirtiest World Cup of All Time":

The other teams in Argentina and Hungary's group were the much-fancied France and Italy, establishing the tournament's toughest qualifying section. After the victory against Hungary, one junta official remarked to Leopoldo Luque that "this could turn out to be the group of death as far as you are concerned." It was delivered with a smile. "Uppermost in my mind was that earlier that day, the brother of a close friend of mine had disappeared", recalled Luque. "His body was later found by villagers on the banks of the River Plate with concrete attached to his legs. At that time, opponents of the regime were sometimes thrown out of aeroplanes into the sea."

In their second group stage game against France, Argentina were the beneficiaries of multiple favourable calls. After France were denied what looked to be a clear penalty in the first half, an anonymous French player said he had heard the referee tell Daniel Passarella (the player who committed the foul), "Don't do that again please, or I might have to actually give it next time."

Protests

Amnesty International announced their strategy for Argentina in 1978. After their awareness that urging people away from the World Cup could produce counter-sympathy for the junta, they launched a campaign that would teach journalists to write about the tournament but based off the regime, along with the slogan "Football yes, torture no." They hoped that the journalists would turn their eyes away from the matches and look at what's going on in their society to educate their readers on the reality of Argentina. Paris was a center of unanimity for the victims of the Argentinian dictatorship, which launched a campaign to boycott the 1978 World Cup. In the city, they made posters, publications or any kind of information that expressed opposition to the World Cup under a dictatorship. The first calls to boycott were published in the daily Le Monde in October 1977. Later, a boycott committee was organized, which brought together human-rights militants and left-wing activists. This organization came to be known as COBA, a French acronym for, "Committee for the Boycott of the World Cup in Argentina." It wasn't long before the COBA had established a strong base of unity and protest throughout France, with more than 200 local COBA committees created in major cities and provinces.