Robert Chambers
Rise and fall of Soviet football
WHEN Soviet captain Igor Netto lifted the Henri Delaunay Trophy into the Paris sky, a nation starved of optimism for two bleak decades was now starting to believe in a brighter future. That was reinforced just a few months later as eyes turned to the heavens once more, hoping for a glimpse of Vostok 1 as cosmonaut Yuri Gargarin rocketed himself to immortality. Having conquered the cosmos, the spirit of the revolution found itself rekindled at the start of the 1960s, the embers somehow staying alight during the twin terrors of World War Two and a dictatorship driven by...
Robert Chambers
D10S: The boy from Fiorito
THE search for the first steps of a footballing phenomenon leads one to consider venturing to Villa Fiorito in Buenos Aires. However, it is an area, just south of the centre, that is only safely encountered in myth and legend. ‘I will not take you there,’ says an affable cab driver in the Argentine capital. ‘Not only for your safety, but for mine.’ Villa Fiorito thus has to be conjured up through the words and experience of Diego Maradona, who is its most famous son. His most powerful memory of the primal living conditions there was his reminiscence that he...
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