Word: cups
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Weighing in at 11 Ibs., the solid-gold trophy, worth $4 million and resting safely in a Madrid bank vault, is not really a cup at all. Whoever wins it on July 11 at the long-awaited final game will have to swig the celebratory champagne straight from the bottle. No matter. Two years of elimination matches among 107 nations have left only 24 survivors, including sentimental favorite and host Spain, and defending champion Argentina, to settle Mundial '82: soccer's global championship. And for more fans around the world than watch almost any other organized activity, professional...
This 1982 World Cup-the twelfth summit meeting in 52 years-may be the largest, richest and possibly the most grandiose athletic contest in history. The Cup's only real competitor is the Olympic Games, also a quadrennial event. But, as soccer fans point out, the comparison is unfair-to the Olympics. After all, the World Cup has a single, dramatic, inexorable focus: 22 men, eleven on each side, mostly well-paid professionals, speeding around a patch of grass, chasing a black-and-white ball called a tango as quickly and as cleverly as their feet can carry them...
Spain's World Cup organizers were pleased. Barcelona's magnificent 120,000-seat Nou Camp stadium was nearly full for the inaugural contest, and many worrisome possibilities that could have spoiled it for host Spain did not come to pass. Highly regarded Argentina, which is the defending champion by virtue of beating The Netherlands in the 1978 final on its home ground in Buenos Aires, had decided to come despite the Falklands war. Great Britain's three doughty qualifiers-England, Scotland and Northern Ireland-had appeared after similar rumbles to the contrary. The Basque terrorist organization...
...Cup begin. In the second half of the opening game between Belgium and Argentina two weeks ago, a Belgian forward, Erwin Vandenbergh, the former European scoring champ, got the World Cup off on a brand-new foot. A pass from Teammate Alex Czerniatynski landed at Vandenbergh's toe. He had slithered through the Argentine defense like a British SAS unit, and stood alone before the goal. The crowd of 95,000, including Spanish King Juan Carlos, quieted for a moment: tradition hung in the balance. Ever since the single opening game was instituted back in 1966-five World Cups...
Adios, as well, almost all traditions at this Mundial '82 Cup. In what the French are calling "le mundial des surprises," a handful of low-ranked national teams are generating shock waves and upsets. This year, for the first time, the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), soccer's Swiss-based, iron-fisted ruling organization, expanded the number of qualifying first-round teams from 16 to 24. The soccer heavyweights complained. The inclusion of nations such as El Salvador, Northern Ireland and Algeria would merely prolong the first round, they muttered privately. Teams like Cameroon and Kuwait would...