All Time World Cup

By Andrew Neill 
 
The FIFA World Cup Finals is arguably the greatest show on earth! But imagine a tournament where countries could pick their all time best players?
Surely England would be unstoppable if they still had Lineker up front and Moore at the back? What about Scotland? Wouldn’t they have at least have gotten through the qualifiers with Law and Dalglish in attack?
But just who would be selected for an England all-time team? Just as importantly, how would they fare against the all-time teams from the rest of the world?
Which is the greatest footballing nation on Earth? One easy measure is how many successful teams has a country produced. Well, Brazil have won five World Cups, Italy four and Germany three, while Spain’s Real Madrid have won the most European Cups and that’s that. But that is to oversimplify the debate. Smaller nations (population-wise) like Northern Ireland are perfectly capable of producing world class individuals, but rarely enough of them at the same time to create a really successful team. Over the years many great players at club level have been isolated in mediocre national teams. Stephane Guivarc’h won the World Cup while George Best never even qualified, but few would debate who was the better player. Brazil and Argentina have both produced vast quantities of fine players but that doesn’t necessarily mean that their all-time first eleven would be better than the best eleven of a smaller, less prolific country.
So, which country has produced the finest talents down the years? Could Baresi and Maldini snuff out Pelé and Romário? Who would come out on top between Beckenbauer and Matthäus’ German machine and a Dutch Cruyff-Van Basten dream team?
Well, the time has come to find out once and for all, as we reveal the line-ups, the match reports and the results of the all-time GREATEST WORLD CUP!
 
THE FORMAT
First things first: How many teams would be involved? With a couple of tweaks here and there, the World Cup has had three formats over the years: Until the 1980s only 16 teams qualified –too few if trying to reflect all the greatest players ever. More recently that rose to 32 teams, but that ran the risk of allowing too many weak teams. Therefore, it was decided that the All-Time World Cup would comprise 24 teams, split into six groups, as was used from 1982 to 1994. This was not a universally popular format, as is meant four ‘best losers’ qualifying along with the top two in each group. But it could be argued that that format kept every team in the hunt for all three of their games, and would prevent a deserving team being knocked out by getting drawn against two giants.
 
PLAYER ELIGIBILITY AND THE FOOTBALLING MAP
These days which country a footballer plays for is fairly straightforward, and once he has played for one country, he can’t play for another. But the rules on eligibility have fluctuated a lot over the years. Until the 1960s it was fairly common for players to switch allegiance mid-career, often for tenuous ancestral reasons. Thus Luis Monti could be a World Cup runner up with Argentina in 1930 and a World Cup winner with Italy four years later. Ladislao Kubala actually played for Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Spain in his illustrious career.
For the All-Time World Cup, the ruling was to simply back-date the current rules, and so players were tied to the country they first played a full international for. So, Puskás was Hungarian, not Spanish, and Monti and Raimundo Orsi were Argentinian, not Italian.
On another note, very few players who are still active today have been selected. The levels of achievement needed to be worthy of this tournament can take a whole career to accumulate, and the press always tend to over-hype whoever the present-day stars happen to be. The benefit of a little perspective helps sort the wheat from the chaff. There were exceptions though, such as Robbie Keane and Raul, who are already their country’s all-time top scorers and could therefore hardly be omitted.  
There is a further consideration however: What about players whose actual nations changed or no longer exist? For example, Robert Prosinecki scored at Italia ‘90 for Yugoslavia, and at France ‘98 for Croatia, while Matthias Sammer ‘moved’ from East Germany to a united Germany. The fall of the Eastern bloc radically altered the map of Europe, and therefore European football.
A decision needed to be made on whether to include present-day, independent teams, or the historical, unified sides.
Without wishing to offend the fiercely proud citizens of countries such as Croatia and the Ukraine, it was decided that due to the overall nostalgic feel of the tournament, the teams would play in the configurations in which they had spent most of their footballing history. That meant a divided Ireland but one team each for Germany, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and the U.S.S.R. I have however endeavoured to reflect the backgrounds of the players in each squad list. For example (Slo) or (Cze) next to each player in the Czechoslovakia squad to denote whether they are Slovakian or Czech.
 
THE QUALIFYING TOURNAMENT
In Europe, all the so-called big guns – Germany, Italy, Holland, France, England - made it safely through the qualifiers, although Spain had a scare when losing away to perennial bogey-team Northern Ireland, before redressing the balance in Madrid. Northern Ireland had three true greats in Pat Jennings, Danny Blanchflower and George Best, but lacked quality elsewhere in the team at this level, in particular a centre back and a goal scorer. Best weaved plenty of magic but would once again miss out on the biggest stage.
Wales could tell a similar tale. Neville Southall, Billy Meredith, John Charles, Ryan Giggs and Ian Rush have all been hailed in their time as the best players around in their positions, but the team had no strength in depth, especially in midfield, and in the end missed out to Czechoslovakia.
Scotland qualified relatively comfortably in the end ahead of the workmanlike Norway, apart from going behind in their opening game away to the Faroe Islands. Bobble-hatted keeper Jens Knudsen performed heroics before late goals from Danny McGrain and Gary McAllister spared the Scots’ blushes.
In a shootout between fierce local rivals, Gheorghe Hagi’s Romania edged past Hristo Stoichkov’s Bulgaria. Both of the inspirational captains scored stupendous free-kicks, but later both got sent off for a typically hot-headed punch-up. Without their respective talismans, it was Romania who showed the greater strength in depth, Lăcătuş scoring the winner. To the surprise of many, while the south-eastern rivals focused on each other, the Republic of Ireland picked up enough points from the group to nick second spot in the group ahead of Bulgaria on goal difference and qualify for a play-off against the runners-up from the Rest Of The World section.
Elsewhere, an ominously impressive Poland featuring Boniek, Lato and Deyna saw off Stephane Chapuisat’s Switzerland, and both Belgium (Van Himst, Ceulemans, Scifo) and Denmark (Schmeichel and the Laudrups) showed too much experience for Greece and Turkey, despite Turkey’s prolific front line of Hakan Şükür and Tanju Çolak. Also through were the efficient Swedes, the mercurial Portuguese, Puskás’ Magical Magyars, the Soviet Union and the Austrian ‘Wunderteam’ of Mattias Sindelar.
In the Americas, The USA’s organisation and fitness were not enough to overcome the skills of Mexico, led by Hugo Sanchez of Real Madrid fame.
Further south, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay had too much class in depth to be denied, but most of the other nations had their own stars: Chile, with defence marshalled by 1970s great Elias Figueroa and attack revolving around Zamorano and Salas; Peru, sumptuous going forward with Teofilo Cubillas and Hector Chumpitaz strong at the back, but prone to collapse when things went against them; Carlos ‘El Pibe’ Valderrama’s Colombia flattered to deceive, passing the ball around beautifully but never seeming sure what striker Tino Asprilla or goalie Rene Higuita would do next. Paraguay had a star keeper in the outspoken José Luis Chilavert and a strong defence, but were unable to provide striker Romero with enough support from midfield.
The rest of the world were left battling for a single definite place, plus a play-off against European opposition (Ireland) for another berth. At first glance that seems extremely harsh on the talents from Africa and Asia. However, although great individuals have always emerged from those regions, they often ended up playing for other countries (such as Mozambique’s Eusébio, poached by Portugal), and the local national teams have only developed into forces to be reckoned with relatively recently. This shortened version of what constitutes ‘All-time’ counted against the African and Asian squads.
Many of the nations had a handful of stars worthy of an honourable mention though. In Africa, Egypt’s Hossam Hassan, Shoubier and Abu Zeid, Cameroon’s Milla and Nkono, Nigeria’s Keshi and Okocha, Morocco’s Krimao and Khairi, Algeria’s Belloumi and Madjer and Ghana’s Yeboah and Abedi Pelé. In Asia, South Korea’s Cha Bum Kun and Hong Myung Bo, Japan’s Hidetoshi Nakata and Kazu Miura, Saudi Arabia’s Sami Al Jaber and Majed Mohammed, Iran’s Ali Daei and Australia’s Harry Kewell and Craig Johnston.
A ‘Rest Of The World’ team would have been fairly formidable, but in truth the individual countries could not muster teams to compete at the level of the All-Time World Cup. That is one of the key elements of this tournament: Each team needs to be a realistic team i.e. not six up front and three attacking midfielders. Every side needed a ball winner in midfield and a proper defence.
After a marathon qualifying tournament, Cameroon topped the final group and qualified ahead of Nigeria, Egypt and South Korea. Nigeria then faced the Republic of Ireland in a play-off, and had them on the ropes, only to fall to a sucker punch when Roy Keane won the ball in his own area and with a long pass sent speedy winger Kevin Sheedy away to beat Peter Rufai for the clinching goal and the final spot at the finals tournament.
 
THE BUILD-UP TO KICK OFF
 
THE VENUE
It would have been an unfair advantage to one team to make them the host country. Rather than hold the tournament in a non-qualifying country like the United States, the matches will be shared out amongst those who have been World Cup hosts (The rigours of global travel would be discounted for the sake of this event). To round out the required dozen stadia, Hampden Park in Glasgow was included in recognition that Scotland hosted the first ever international match. In the first round at least, no-one would be playing at home.

GROUP A:
GROUP D:
London -Wembley
Rome -Olimpico
Paris -Stade de France
Madrid -Bernabeu
Berne -Wankdorf
Glasgow –Hampden Park
 
 
GROUP B:
GROUP E:
Montevideo - Centenario
Yokohama -International
Buenos Aires –River Plate
Johannesburg –Soccer City
Santiago -Nacional
Seoul –Sang-Am
 
 
GROUP C:
GROUP F:
Munich -Olympiastadion
Mexico City -Azteca
Berlin -Olympiastadion
Rio de Janeiro -Maracana
Stockholm -Rasunda
Pasadena –Rose Bowl
 
 

The opening ceremony and first match would be at Paris’ Stade de France, with the final five weeks later at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City.
 
SEEDINGS & THE DRAW
The first six countries to have won the World Cup (Uruguay, Italy, Brazil, Germany, England and Argentina) were top seeds. The next pot contained the only other winners, France, plus double runners-up Czechoslovakia, Holland and Hungary, along with finalists Sweden and double European Champions Spain. The remaining twelve teams were randomly allocated:
Brazil,           Sweden,        Scotland,       Denmark
Germany,      Hungary,       Austria,         Mexico
Italy,            Spain,           U.S.S.R.,       Republic Of Ireland
Argentina,      Holland,         Belgium,     Cameroon
Uruguay,       France,         Yugoslavia,    Portugal
England,        Czech’slovakia, Poland,      Romania
 

Therefore the tournament would kick off with Brazil versus Scotland in Paris.