It’s the World Cup! But it’s November! Everyone’s excited! Ignore all that other, troubling stuff! World Cup! YEAH! And everyone is particularly excited about the opening game between *checks notes* Qatar and Ecuador. It’s sure to be a cracker that takes its rightful place in the pantheon of great World Cup opening games.
Ever since England invented the World Cup in 1966, the opening game has been a crucial part of the fun, fun that was not remotely dampened by a ludicrous 16-year wait for an actual goal to be scored in an opening game.
While we count down the hours, minutes, and seconds until all our football heroes from Qatar and Ecuador step up to write their own page in history, let’s look back at the great games and names they are about to join:
1966: England 0-0 Uruguay
England kicked off their march to World Cup glory with an instantly forgettable goalless draw against Uruguay. No people were on the pitch, nobody thought it was all over, Geoff Hurst was on the bench.
It was the first time England had failed to score at Wembley since 1945, and at the final whistle the disappointed home fans booed the Uruguayans for their dirty foreign tactics of frustrating the hosts with what football scholars now refer to as “defending”.
1970: Mexico 0-0 Soviet Union
It goes on like this for a while. It does get better, I promise. The 90-second YouTube highlights video is not action-packed, at times bringing to mind the legendary match many years later that would determine once and for all which is the greatest nation on earth, Mexico or Portugal.
In a fine piece of early squad number banter, Soviet goalkeeper Anzor Kavazashvili was wearing the No. 2 shirt, thus successfully annoying Yer Da even though he was only about nine at the time or whatever. I don’t know how old Yer Da is.
1974: Brazil 0-0 Yugoslavia
This feature is starting to look like a bad idea. Should’ve just started in 1990. Too late now. Anyway, in a blatant attempt to change the opening game’s dismal fortunes, it was the holders rather than the hosts who kicked off proceedings in West Germany.
It didn’t work, with Brazil spending much of the time trying to score from 40 yards for some reason, while Branko Oblak (no relation) somehow smacked a header into the post from a yard out for Yugoslavia in the second half. Both teams settled for a point in the closing stages, to hoots of derision from the German crowd.
1978: West Germany 0-0 Poland
By now, serious…
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