Michael Batson

Someone once said watching football is about bold, primary-colour emotions: the pursuit of joy and the endurance of pain. The ninth FIFA World Cup held in Mexico (31 May 1970 – 21 Jun 1970) had all these factors and is widely thought of as a seminal sporting event for lots of reasons; a World cup against which all others are measured. In many ways, Mexico 1970 was a modern event that more closely resembled the championship’s most recent edition, Russia 2018, than it did the one that preceded it, England 1966. It was a ground-breaking pioneer and a tournament of many firsts. Perhaps most significantly, it was the first World Cup to be televised live and in colour around the globe, a product of the satellite age and making it infinitely more accessible to all other World Cups that had gone before. There were replays of key moments in matches. By comparison, the tournament in England which was shown in black and white and against grey overcast skies made the scene a colourless affair, regardless of the football on show.

Mexico was the first World Cup to display advertising inside stadiums, and also the first to go commercial or at least highlight the massive financial potential of global sport. In the years since Mexico, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (known worldwide by its French acronym FIFA) and its potentates have moulded football into a global obsession and a multi-billion-dollar business. Multinational sports companies began battling in 1970 including for the branding of footwear then mainly by two rival German companies owned by brothers. It was a rivalry so bitter the brothers went to their graves not having spoken to each other for decades. Mexico was bright and bold. It was played in summer in heat in bright sunshine, and at altitude, another first. Aside from Switzerland in 1954 all other World Cups were primarily at sea level, so Mexico called for extra preparation. Sports science was coming more to the fore with the eventual winners in 1970 Brazil arriving as probably the best prepared team for a World Cup ever with attention to diet, sports metrics, physiology and psychology, custom-made boots, and tailored shirts among other things. It was a tournament staged hot on the heels of an Olympics held in the same country another first; a staggering financial and resource draining achievement for a developing country, and something that sparked civil unrest domestically at a time when the world was being consumed by widespread upheaval.

It was the first World Cup to use penalty cards; red and yellow, accepted as commonplace today. The card system was the creation of English referee Ken Aston later of the FIFA Referees’ Committee who had refereed the notorious Battle of Santiago at the 1962 World Cup where players came to blows. He got the idea, now used in other sports, from traffic lights designed to traverse language barriers. For the first time substitutes were allowed for reasons other than for injury. Mexican journalists coined the phrase “Grupo de la Muerte” (Group of Death) first used at this tournament to describe Brazil’s group, Group Two also containing world champions England, but now used at every World Cup since, and even by other sports. It was the first World Cup to be held outside of Europe or South America. Three countries made the World Cup finals for the first time, one each from Africa, Asia, and North America. It made purists unhappy being, in their view, less about ability so much as geographic democracy but reflected the rising influence of non-traditional footballing nations and was a portent of things to come.

The Final itself held on Sunday, 21 June, in the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City between Brazil and Italy, marked the first time that two former world champions had met in a Final. Both the finalists in Mexico had previously won the World Cup twice, both in consecutive tournaments; Brazil in 1958 and 1962, and Italy in 1934 and 1938. Today the Mexico City’s Azteca Stadium is still the only stadium to have hosted two World Cup finals. In the semi-finals, Brazil had played Uruguay, which had also won the World Cup twice (1930 and 1950) also in back-to-back tournaments as the World Cups of 1942 and 1946 were cancelled. Had Uruguay won in Mexico then they too could have competed to keep the trophy. Their chances of progressing, however, were hampered from the start by the injury to star midfielder Pedro Rocha, then of Penarol. After the World Cup he moved to São Paulo FC, and finished his career in Brazil. Brazil’s manager at the tournament, Mario Zagallo became the first footballer to win the trophy as both a player (1958, 1962) and as a manager. He was also the second youngest coach to win a World Cup, after Alberto Suppici (at age just 32) in 1930. Pelé, the world’s first global superstar, ended his international career as a three-time winner in Mexico, the first player ever to do so. Winning the tournament made Brazil the most successful national football team at that time.

Even the ball was special; the first made-for-television football used at the World Cup and which set the pattern of footballs for decades to come. The distinctive colour pattern is now used for logos and icons in all kinds of areas including media and graphics being instantly recognisable It was the first time an individual player would win the World Cup for the third time. For the first (and only) time one player scored in every round of the tournament. It was the tournament where the winners, Brazil, earned the right to keep the trophy for the first and so far, the only time, having won the World Cup three times. It was the first time in a Final, a goal had been scored with nine passes made in the lead up, the culmination of which was immortalised in photo and film for posterity.

The World Cup arrived in Mexico at a significant time in the country’s history. From the 1940s, the growth of Mexico’s economy was prodigious (often averaging 6 percent a year). Under the Partido Revolucionario Instituciona (PRI) which had held uninterrupted power since 1929, Mexico was transformed from an agricultural country into a predominantly urban and industrial society. By the time of the World Cup, it was the second largest economy in Latin America after Brazil. The pattern of intensive economic development that characterised the post-war decades began under the entrepreneurial administration of Miguel Alemán (1946-52) and continued under successive governments often oscillating in their approaches. López Mateos veered towards the left partly to defuse labour militancy and the relaunch of land reforms. Then, Gustavo Diaz Ordaz (1964-70) moved to the right again to reassert the control of the PRI over the electoral system.

Ordaz is remembered chiefly for his repression of the student left in 1968. As in many other countries, 1968 was a year of violent protests against established authority. It was also the year in which Mexico was due to host the Olympic Games; the first Latin American country, the first Spanish-speaking; and first developing country to do so. The government saw hosting the games as an important way to raise Mexico's profile internationally because of the tourist attendees and international television coverage of the event, which could attract international investors. Widespread protests however, occurred against the large amounts of public funding being expended to build Olympic facilities at a time when it was widely viewed there were other priorities for the country. Protestors also demanded greater political freedoms and an end to the increasing authoritarianism of the ruling regime.

A series of confrontations between students and troops culminated in a blood bath on 2 October at the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in Tlatelolco, a district of Mexico City,
just 10 days before the start of the Olympics. Mexican security forces including paramilitaries, the army, and the shadowy Federal Security Direction (known by its Spanish acronym, the DFS), then the so-called Secret Police, committed what became known as the Tlatelolco massacre, killing hundreds of unarmed civilians. The event caused unease across the globe and left the country tense and ill at ease, something the Mexican government tried to assuage as athletes and spectators arrived from around the world. The Tlatelolco massacre seriously tarnished the PRI’s revolutionary credibility, exposing the depth of frustration in the country, as well as the determination of the PRI to hold on to state power.

The World Cup then took place in the period that became known as the Mexican Dirty War (Guerra Sucia) during the period from 1968 to the late 1970s when government forces led by the DFS and backed by the CIA, carried out hundreds of disappearances, systematic torture, and probable extrajudicial executions. British journalist David Miller covered the World Cup, his fourth, for an English broadsheet. Mexico was his fourth World Cup assignment. An accomplished amateur player and sports enthusiast, he also authored an authoritative book on the tournament, written on behalf of the English Football Association. He found Mexico City, ‘a city of huge contrasts where opulence and poverty walked side by side, shabby suburbs lie just around the corner from the main boulevards, thrusting modern progress thinly obscures the forlorn stagnation and helpless, permanent degradation of many thousands of the people.’

Mexico City is the oldest city in North America and was founded in 1325. In 1970 the population was estimated at eight million. Miller said that while he was awed by the temples, the Museum of Anthropology, and the ruins of Tootihuacan, ‘it is spine-chilling to meet the taxi-driver or shopkeeper whose son is still missing, probably imprisoned, possibly shot, for taking part in the student demonstrations during the 1968 Olympics.’ For all its growing splendours he thought Mexico a police state and observed ‘there is constant evidence that individual liberty is an ideal rather than a reality.’ Yet to the outside world, Mexico spelled excitement and sun: it was one of the fastest developing countries, with a multitude of attractions for the tourist, including the playgrounds of the west coast, and with the successive staging of the Olympics and the World Cup, it could not have better publicity.

One of the stars of the tournament was Brazil’s Jair Ventura Filho (Jairzinho or “Little Jair”) who became the only player to have scored in every match in the finals, then or since. Nicknamed the “Hurricane” or “Furacão”, a name given him by the fans on the terraces of the legendary Maracanã Stadium in Rio during fierce local derbies, he was built like an Olympic sprinter and the quickest man in the Brazil squad over 50m. He had succeeded the legendary Garrincha at club side Botafogo, and then in the Brazilian side. He benefitted from the creative powers of Gérson in Brazil’s midfield, and from Tostão and Pelé up front, and also from Rivellino operating out wide. Together the quintet was chosen in the Team of the Tournament, the so-called World XI as selected by foreign observers in Mexico.

The heart of the Brazilian game plan in Mexico were tactics designed to create space for the frontmen, especially Jairzinho but also Pelé, who thanks to rigorous training was in his best physical shape for some time. Jairzinho scored two goals in the last quarter-of-an-hour in Brazil’s opening match of the tournament against Czechoslovakia, one of the highly fancied European sides at the finals. Brazil won 4-1, after going behind early on in the match, but may have profited from their opponent’s lack of heat acclimatisation in their preparation or lack of it. Despite weeks spent at altitude in the Pyrenees before the tournament, the heat of Mexico was another matter entirely and training was limited to just 30 minutes twice a day. He also scored the only goal in the match between present and past champions when Brazil defeated England in the heat of Guadalajara, thumping home a deft pass from Pelé, in a match considered outstanding in the history of the World Cup. He scored the second goal and his fourth so far in the last of Brazil’s group matches, which resulted in the first substitution of a goalkeeper at a World Cup when Romania’s Necula Raducanu replaced Steve Adamache.

In the knockout stages he scored Brazil’s last goal against a valiant Peru, Brazil again scoring four times. In the semi-final against Uruguay, Brazil’s nemesis from the 1950 World Cup, Jairzinho finally managed to elude Mujica, who had managed mostly to stitch himself to the flying winger’s shirt, to score Brazil’s second goal of the match. In the Final against Italy, Jairzinho’s role was to draw his man-marker, Inter Milan’s Facchetti, inside to provide space for the flying Carlos Alberto on the flank. After a relatively quiet first half, one of the reasons for which being the hold Facchetti, the largest and fastest full back he had encountered, had on Jairzinho, Brazil came to life in the second half scoring three times. Five minutes after Gérson had scored Brazil’s second goal to take the lead in the match for the second time, Brazil’s playmaker-in-chief laid on another of his laser-like passes to find Pelé in the penalty area. The great man calmly headed the ball into the path of the onrushing Jairzinho who ran the ball in with his shins to make World Cup history. In total he scored seven goals at the finals, a feat outperformed by others, but no one has ever scored in every round of the World Cup finals ever again.

Colour television was what characterised the World Cup in 1970 and made it stand out from what went before. Because it was televised live in colour and around the world, Mexico 1970 was immortalised as a spectacle. Writer Garry Jenkins said the Brazilians; ‘arrived a year after the moon landing was broadcast. They were the second great event of the new, telecultural age, their games transmitted from Central America via satellite from outer space.’ The World Cup had first been televised in 1954 in black and white. Footage of later tournaments survived, and some has been painstakingly restored and colourised these days done on a computer using a digital version of the original, all of which helped make the World Cup the most widely viewed and followed sporting event in the world. Mexico also helped set the scene for global sport to come. It was in Mexico where global sport arrived live and in colour on the world stage in two of the world’s biggest sporting carnivals, held just two years apart. No sooner had one finished then the other seemingly, arrived. The summer Olympics in Mexico two years earlier were the first summer games to be fully televised live and in colour.

The World Cup Final was played in the magnificent Azteca Stadium, the first stadium in North America to host a final. Those watching from the side lines and perched high up in the cathedral-like Azteca on 21 June 1970 witnessed Brazil becoming the first country to win the World Cup three times. A total of ten matches were played at the Azteca during the 1970 tournament including all Mexico’s matches and the semi-final between West Germany and Italy, often called “The Game of the Century”. The Azteca was designed for big games on the world stage and since 1970 has been regarded as one of the greatest stadiums in the world. The Final at the Azteca made for me the everlasting image that World Cups should be carnival like spectacles played before vast crowds by the best players in bright sunshine – a celebration of the world game. For me and for many others the 1970 final is the game every other World Cup is measured by.

A host of architects entered a competition to design a stadium that the President of the Mexican Football Federation, Guillermo Cando, wanted to be even more magical than the Maracanã. Pedro Ramírez Vázquez and Rafael Mijares Alcérreca were the architects eventually chosen. Vázquez was known for his creative use of concrete and was responsible for the construction of some of Mexico's most emblematic buildings. He was also a member of the International Olympic Committee and was president of organising committee of the Mexico City Olympics in 1968 and the World Cup in 1970. He had originally developed a system to construct schools in rural areas, thousands of them in Mexico and abroad, a system later used by UNICEF. Later he turned his hand to furniture design. Alcérreca, as well as being an architect, was also a painter of some repute.

Together with Cando they went stadium scouting across Europe looking at the continent’s football icons including Wembley in London, the San Siro in Milan, the Camp Nou in Barcelona, and the Santiago Bernabeu in Madrid. Back in Mexico they finalised their design which seemed to me to include components of all these great sporting icons. The foundations were laid in 1961 and became then the largest building project in Mexico and cost USD11 million (USD77 million today), which seemed rather cheap by comparison with other less grand venues these days costing much more. The whole structure itself was built on volcanic rock, 180,000 tonnes of which had to be blasted from an area covering 64 square kilometres, a project involving dozens of engineers and hundreds of labourers. Actual construction work began in 1962 and went on for five years. Rumour had it the stadium was built on the machinations of family favours and insider deals. The first match played there was an international club game in May 1966, but the roof was still to be finished. Later all the football matches at the 1968 Olympics were held there, an introduction for what was to come two years later at the World Cup.

To look at, the Azteca is an awe-inspiring almost vertical architecture with three distinctive bands around the middle of the seating covered in advertising hoardings making it instantly recognisable in photos. The stadium complex is 14kms from the city centre and now accessible by road and rail. The pitch is 9.5m below ground level and surrounded by a moat. There is a service road to the pitch. Players and officials emerge from below and enter the arena from the side. The stadium sits about 2200m above sea level. The top of the stadium is even higher. At altitude at the Azteca, the Mexican national team a distinct home advantage. In over 54 years since construction, El Tri as the national side is called, has lost only two World Cup qualifiers there. The stadium’s original capacity was over 107,000 later enlarged to almost 115,000 for when Mexico hosted the World Cup for the second time in 1986, becoming in the process, the first country to host the finals, twice. At that second World Cup it witnessed Maradona’s “Hand of God” goal followed by his miracle goal against England where he ran through their defence. The first goal was described by an English commentator as “doubtful if not to say illegal” while the second goal was “worth two anyway.” It will also be included as a venue for the 2026 World Cup to be hosted across three countries.

The 1970 World Cup used the most iconic ball in football history with the introduction of the distinctive black and white Telstar by Adidas. Nothing had looked like it before. For decades prior footballs were bland and monochrome. Often, they were bleached white or sometimes retained a natural brown in its various shades, that sometimes got darker when wet and much heavier. These were made of polygons and sometimes other shapes with rounded edges or combinations of both. The Telstar meanwhile looked light years ahead of the ball at the 1966 World Cup in England four years earlier where an orange ball produced by Slazenger was used and before that a number of companies had produced balls for the World Cup.

The Telstar was the first World Cup ball to use the now-familiar truncated icosahedron (which goes back to Archimedes) for its design, consisting of 12 black pentagonal and 20 white hexagonal panels. It was said that the Telstar looked like a football from years into the future and it was. In keeping with the emergence of the satellite age, Adidas named the ball for the Telstar satellite, the world's first active communications satellite and the first to send live television signals, telephone calls, and fax images through space, which inaugurated an age of instant worldwide communications via satellite. Launched in 1962, the satellite looked like R2D2 from Star Wars. The Telstar was roughly spherical and dotted with solar panels. It came with a polyurethane coating called Durlast that provided waterproofing as well as protection from damage such as scuffs and tears.

The ball was based on the work of a Dane Eigil Nielsen, a former goalkeeper and now considered the father of the modern football. The 32-panel configuration was first introduced in 1962 by Select Sport, Neilsen’s own company which still manufactures sports balls. The great advantage of the distinctive two-tone design (and with gold writing) was to aid visibility on black and white television broadcasts (colour television was still rare worldwide during this time), which was also well established before the Telstar. As more games were available to watch on television, fans had greater difficulty following the ball, so the Telstar found instant fame. The Telstar not only allowed spectators and viewers to follow the ball better, but to appreciate how it moved, especially on television with replays which were also a first in Mexico. You could suddenly tell how a player used the ball; whether it was flighted with back-spin or struck with the side of the foot so it would bend through the air.

Remarkably Adidas only sent 20 Telstar balls to Mexico for the whole tournament despite there being 32 matches to be played spread over five venues. The German company, for whatever reason, believed that just 20 balls would be needed for the biggest international tournament in the world of football. Due to a lack of balls for games, alternatives were needed. England’s quarterfinal match versus West Germany saw the teams play with a brown ball. Italy’s semi-final against the Germans saw an all-white ball used in the first half. The ball used in the Final was picked up after the match by Italy’s Angelo Domenghini, only for Brazil’s Paulo Cézar, who didn’t play in the game, to “slap” it out of his hand, and run off. The on-field incident almost caused a fist fight between the two later at the official post-match banquet. The eventual fate of the ball was unknown but there were rumours of some businessman in Rio.

The Telstar was so well received, Adidas sold 600,000 balls following the World Cup. To this day, Adidas remains the official ball of the World Cup. The original design for the 1970 tournament proved so popular its colour scheme became the norm, with every World Cup ball until 1998 featured in black and white, and other multi-coloured versions of it used at World Cups ever since. The official ball at the 2018 World Cup in Russia was also named Telstar 18 its design a throwback to the original albeit with an embedded chip to mark the road from satellite to the digital age. Although footballs have been designed using a variety of colourways and stitching since, no football has ever captured the game to the same scale and imagery like the Adidas Telstar.

Commercialism off the field also arrived at Mexico for the first time in any way. Mexico was where FIFA marketing got rolling, not always a good thing you could say and sometimes at the expense of the game. Before 1970 official products were rare and produced next-to-no revenue. João Havelange, FIFA’s president for 24 years once remarked the organisation had $20 in the bank when he started the job and $4 billion when he stepped down. Mexico’s 1970 expanded reach via live television meant companies had a chance to sell their wares worldwide, penetrating territories they could only have dreamed of to that point. Licensing deals from an ever-widening range of products have contributed to FIFA's increased income since 1970. For example, FIFA generated USD4.8 billion in revenue from the 2014 World Cup in Brazil and a further USD6.1 billion from Russia 2018. The FIFA video game series alone has sold over 282 million copies since its debut in 1993, making it one of the most popular franchises in the world.

Shoe brands and sportwear were other avenues involving multinationals for commercialism that have ballooned since Mexico 1970. Adolf (Adi) began the Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory in his mother’s house in 1924 where he was later joined by his brother Rudolf (Rudi) making running shoes with spikes which he then convinced Jesse Owens to wear at the 1936 Olympics, but it was Rudi who in 1952 developed a football boot with screw-in studs. The brothers acrimoniously split in 1949 and never spoke to each other again. Adi formed Adidas and Rudi created rivals Puma, both headquartered in the small Bavarian town of Herzogenaurach known as the town of the “bent necks” because everyone either works for one or other of the rival manufacturers and the first thing you do when you see someone is look at what brand shoes they’re wearing. The rival factories are on either side of the Aurach River, a barrier described as being akin to the Berlin Wall, the town’s two football clubs are each sponsored by one of the companies and when they died the brothers were buried in cemeteries at opposite ends of the town, separated in death as in life.

In Mexico 1970, Puma won the business battle. Four of the World Cup winning Brazil team wore Puma: Brito, Félix, Gérson, and Pelé, the world’s most famous player - the rest of the side wore Adidas. The rumour was the two rival German companies declared a truce over Pelé, leaving him to choose his own brand of boots. The logic behind this was that both companies would eventually bankrupt themselves in a bidding war, thereby making the entire “sneaker war” a negative-sum game. He chose the brand of the single stripe which turned out to be very lucrative. Pursuant to a sponsorship deal, Pelé asked the referee to stop the game before the opening whistle so that he could tie his shoes, knowing all the cameras were focused on his boots for which he reportedly earned USD120,000 (USD800,000 today) in just a few seconds. This paid lace-up managed to technically circumnavigate the agreement but infuriated Adidas nonetheless. Unsurprisingly, the “sneaker war” was kicked up a notch shortly after. Puma for many years attracted individual stars at many World Cups including Eusebio in 1966, Pelé in 1970, Cryuff in 1974, Kempes in 1978, and Maradona in 1986. Adidas always sponsors the German national team but disputes over payments have led to players threatening to “black-out” the famous three stripes, or have demanded wearing their own footwear, more prevalent now with the ascendance of Nike.

The German sports manufacturers’ star role on the pitch with Pelé’s Puma boots and the Telstar was mirrored by Panini's collectible sticker album off it. Panini was founded in Italy in 1961, also by two brothers, and produces comics, magazines, and stickers. Today the company turnover is USD875 million. In 1970 it partnered with FIFA to stoke excitement for the World Cup with its sticker album -- the first of its kind for the World Cup. Fans around the world immediately took to it, prompting comparisons to the tradition of collecting baseball cards in the USA decades prior. The cards in 1970 were in black and white but Panini America painted all the player’s photos colour so they could be collected

Since then, collecting and trading stickers and cards has become part of the World Cup experience, especially for the younger generation, which has since morphed into video games. Although Panini has adapted to today's trends with the development of a virtual album distributed via their official app, the company has managed to top sales of its original creation with each passing World Cup. The collectible craze spawned by the albums encouraged other companies to create merchandise for ensuing tournaments. Over the years, the official product market has expanded to include toys, video games, posters, apparel, mascot figurines, trophy replicas, and even less conventional items like a branded foosball table and has extended to the UEFA Champions League la Liga, Serie A, and other leagues but it all came from the 1970 World Cup.

Mexico marked the dawn of a new and exciting era with global coverage guaranteed. In the Final, it was said the game was a battle for football’s soul; the free expression of Brazil’s samba football versus the organisational coldness of Italy’s defensive system, the catenaccio. Some said on the pitch a golden sporting age faded, never to be reborn as by the next World cup the freewheeling fantasy football had gone to be replaced by a pragmatic European style. But while the football style may have gone so much that was introduced during the tournament has endured and love it or loathe it, much of it is here to stay.