My favourite sportswriter at the moment is a guy called Mike Wilson, a sports hack from Edinburgh who, late last year, had the fiendishly simple idea of commemorating the twentieth anniversary of Scotland s 1978 World Cup disaster by writing a book about the whole sorry shambles.
The result is Don t Cry For Me Argentina, which for some reason has been unavailable in this country till now. It is a book which, in terms of contributing to the sum of human knowledge and spirituality, may eventually come to be seen in the same light as works such as Das Kapital, The League Of Nations, and Are You Somebody?.
One glance at the cover a snapshot of four tartan-bedecked bumpkins with acoustic guitars, presumably caterwauling their way through the Scottish squad s official World Cup single and the reader instantly knows what to expect from the text within. Through a mixture of in-depth interviews with all 22 squad members and Wilson s own withering prose, Don t Cry For Me Argentina unforgettably chronicles what must be the most inept World Cup campaign ever to have been staged by an established footballing nation.
After the squad had been given a bizarre send-off by a delirious crowd of 20,000 at Hampden Park, they arrived in Argentina to face the might of Peru, Iran and Holland. Even for a Scottish side with delusions of grandeur (they honestly thought they were going to win the thing, thanks to the hype stoked up by team manager Ally MacLeod), the opposition should not have been too taxing.
It was the Peru game which came to be seen as the symbol of all that went disastrously wrong for Scotland in Argentina. Following an early goal by Joe Jordan, things refused to gel and a sloppy equaliser was conceded. Then, at 1-1, Scotland gained a dubious penalty. Don Masson of Derby County stepped up, cocked back his famous right foot . . . and weakly bumbled his shot into the hands of Peru goalkeeper Quiroga.
It wasn t the end of the world at that point, says Masson in the book. Obviously, it changed when they went ahead. I try to be lighthearted about it now. It s not so easy.
The Masson penalty miss and the subsequent effect it had on Scotland s whole campaign can best be summed up by the recollections of journalist Ian Archer, who was present in the press box in Csrdoba on the day.
Bill Greig was doing a piece for radio along the lines of, We are at the decisive moment of the match, and Don Masson, who has never missed a penalty for Scotland, is about to take the penalty. This is the goal that can take Scotland into the quarter-finals. Masson versus Quiroga. There is then this deathly silence for a moment, and then Bill s microphone hurtles past me, and he s up there shouting, You bastard, I always knew you would fucking miss! This whole Scottish madness was there in that ten seconds.
Scotland then fell apart, losing 3-1. The ensuing fiasco included recriminations between MacLeod and his players for the lack of sufficient background information on the Peruvian team; a bust-up between MacLeod and Trevor McDonald, who was working in Argentina as a reporter for ITN; a positive drug test for winger Willie Johnston ( I should never have played against Peru . . . I was ill, I had a cold, I was dying. And when I played, I was crap. Contribution nil ); and complaints from the Mexican squad, who were sharing Scotland s hotel, about late-night drinking and parties on the premises.
The 1-1 draw that the team ground out with Iran in Csrdoba a few days later is regarded as the ultimate embarrassing low point of Scottish football. The day after the match, writes Wilson, comedian Andy Cameron s World Cup single was being sold for 1p in a Dundee shop which was also offering the free loan of a hammer.
Almost overnight since the Peru game, all faith in the team had completely evaporated. A crowd of less than eight thousand turned up to see the Iran game, and even Scotland s goal was a mess, with Iran defender Eskandarian inadvertently shovelling the ball into his own net during a goalmouth scramble. Several Scotland players described it as the worst game they had ever participated in.
Midfielder Asa Hartford commented: There was an occasion, when it was 1-1, and a ball was knocked through towards our goal. Kenny Burns turned round to chase it back with this Iranian bearing down on him. There was that fat arse of Kenny s chasing back, and the Iran player looking as if he was going to beat him to the ball. Fortunately, Kenny got the saving tackle in. But I thought, Christ, we could lose this one .
Holland were up next. What we need is players, after playing their worst two games, to play the best game of their lives, and then we could still win, said MacLeod. They duly stuffed the Dutch 3-2, the Dutch of Rensenbrink, Rep, Krol, Jansen and van de Kerkhof. Unfortunately, a margin of three goals had been required from the outset, and so home went Scotland, taking their dingbat manager and their infuriated fans with them.
If all this wasn t enough incentive to buy this book, there s a picture of Alan Rough s bubble perm on the back cover. You know what to do.
Don t Cry For Me Argentina is published by Mainstream at #9.99