Nearly 70 Years Of World Cup Wisdom

By GIOVANNI AGNELLI

iovanni Agnelli, 77, is former chairman of Fiat and head of the family that owns Juventus, the Turin team that has won a record 25 Italian league championships. In addition to the Italian title this season Juventus finished runners-up in the Champions league for the second year in a row.

"I have followed all 15 World Cups since the first in 1930 in Uruguay. I was a child of nine, but I still have memories of that tournament where the hosts beat Argentina 4-2 in the final at Montevideo's Centenary Stadium. The captain of the victorious team was Jose Nasazzi, known as El Terible because in the penalty area he called all the shots. The Uruguayans were great football players; together with the Hungarians and the Brazilians they taught the whole world to play.

Players today know that they are performing to a planet-wide audience and this certainly makes them start each game with a psychological approach that is different from a few years ago.

Two triumphs for Italy were Rome in 1934 and 1938 in Paris. It was the height of the Fascist era; Mussolini watched all the matches in Rome and Italy's wins became affairs of state and national prestige. There were some great players on the Italian team in those days, including some who also formed the Juventus team that won five consecutive Italian league titles between 1930 and 1935: Combi, Monti and Orsi.

Then the World Cup was interrupted by the War. I remember the finals of 1954 very well. The great favorite was the Hungarian team of Puskas, Kocsis and Hidegkuti, which had humiliated England 7-1 not long before. Hungary reached the final where it met Germany, which it had already beaten 8-3 in a preliminary round. On paper it should have been a walkover, but instead the Germans won 3-2 with a goal by Helmut Rahn. Nazism had been defeated a decade earlier and this unexpected victory helped the Germans feel they were part of the civilized world again. In a sense it was a symbolic, almost historic, victory.

That Argentina won the Cup in 1986, or Germany in Italia '90, left no particular mark, nor did Brazil's win in U.S.A. '94, because it was too hot and they were playing at midday, which is no time to play soccer.

There are five players whom I have particularly enjoyed watching, men who could do incredible things with a football: Schiaffino, Bobby Charlton, Pele, Maradona and Platini. Platini is the only one of these who never won a World Cup. I wish him every success in Paris this year."