The summer of 1978 was one of those World Cups where you had to watch Scotland as England had ballsed it up again and not got to the finals for the second time on the trot. Poland had knocked us out in 1974 and this time we’d failed to get there as Italy had a better goal difference in their qualifying group.
English people can watch Scotland and not give a shit whether they win or lose because we know we’re better than the Jocks. But when the Scots or Irish or Welsh watch England play they are desperate for England to lose. They hate us. It’s not like that with the English. We support other British nations when they are playing. If they win it’s ‘fine’; if they lose it’s ‘so what?’ It’s a bit like watching the tennis player Andy Murray; if he wins he’s British, if he loses he’s Scottish.
That meant that in 1978 in Argentina we were ‘supporting’ Scotland and Ally’s Tartan Army. The ‘army’ was named after their manager Ally MacLeod. When he’d taken over the side he’d told all the players, ‘I’m a winner,’ and he stated before setting off for the finals in Argentina that his side would come back ‘with at least a medal’. Asked what he would do after the World Cup, he replied, ‘Retain it.’ Oh dear.
So optimistic was the feeling among all those lovely Scots lads that they even released a song called ‘Ally’s Army’ which included the words, ‘We’ll really shake them up, when we win the World Cup, because Scotland is the greatest football team.’ It got to number six in the charts. The Scots even had an open-top bus tour before the tournament and 25,000 turned up at Hampden Park to watch as the players were driven around the stadium waving to the crowd. Prestwick Airport was besieged by fans eager to see them depart, and Scots from all over the world headed to New York and turned left to watch their side in Argentina. One critic said the nation was ‘gripped by collective madness’.
Nothing wrong with a bit of optimism, and in spite of all the bollocks they did have some quality players in Kenny Dalglish, Graeme Souness (both of whom had just won the European Cup with Liverpool), Martin Buchan, Joe Jordan, John Robertson and Archie Gemmill. So they were no mugs, but they seemed to ignore the fact that Brazil, Holland, West Germany and Argentina, to name but a few, were pretty useful too. So was Teofilo Juan Cubillas Arizaga of Peru.
The Scots were hot favourites to win their first match when they took on Peru but history has shown Scotland – who’ve never got past the first round of a World Cup final – are inevitably the team who get home before their postcards. Cubillas was the man who would hammer the first nails in their coffin.
I hadn’t heard of him before the game but Cubillas was already an established star in South America. He was born on 8 March 1949 near Puente Piedra, and is held in the same regard in Peru as Pele is in Brazil, Maradona in Argentina and Zidane in France. Known in Peru as ‘Nene’ (or baby, for his baby-faced appearance), he started his career at Alianza Lima at the age of 16, making his debut in 1966.
During his first stint at Alianza, he scored 116 goals in 175 games, was the Peruvian league’s top scorer in 1966 and 1970, Libertadores’ top scorer, and South American Footballer of the Year in 1972. All that is pretty impressive, especially as he was a midfielder, but it was to be a World Cup that made him a star, because in those days it was practically the only global platform they could perform on as very few South Americans came to Europe to make their name.
That 1970 World Cup tournament in Mexico is thought by many to be the best ever – if you leave out England’s 1966 win, that is. England were still strong, perhaps even better than the side of four years earlier. Germany under Beckenbauer were a force to be reckoned with, Italy had a host of stars and of course there was Brazil.
It was in this company that Cubillas made a name for himself while still a youngster. He scored four goals in the first round – one against Bulgaria, two against Morocco and one against West Germany – and helped Peru into the quarter-finals. There they had the misfortune to meet Pele and his pals in all their pomp. Brazil won 4–2 but Cubillas scored again and returned home a hero, complete with the tournament’s Young Player Bronze Boot. As the two young players ahead of him were Brazil’s Jairzinho and West Germany’s Gerd Muller, he’d certainly made his mark. He was even included in the All Star side.
In 1973, he moved to Europe, but not to one of the glamour Spanish or Italian sides – he went to Basel in Switzerland. Although he scored seven goals in 14 games, he’d never lived abroad before and found it difficult to settle. So he moved to Porto in Portugal where the climate and the culture were a bit more like home and where he scored 65 goals in 108 games. He also starred in the Peru side that won the inaugural Copa America trophy for Central and South American sides for the only time in their history. In 1977, he returned to Peru for a second stint with Alianza Lima and scored 42 goals in 56 appearances. Remember when you look at this goal tally that he was a midfield player, not a striker.
And so to 1978. Nowadays you get all the European and South American football on the box here, so you get to know the star players. Back in those days the South Americans were unknown to us apart from their appearances in the World Cup, so unless your name was Pele, Maradona or Jairzinho you were a complete unknown. Perhaps Scotland hadn’t done their homework all that well on the 29-year-old before the kick-off on a lovely evening in Cordoba on 3 June 1978.
I was so excited. There were very few live games on back in the 1970s. You’d have the Cup Final, the Home Internationals, perhaps a very few England internationals and that was it. This was a bonus. It was summer, there was no other football on, and here was the World Cup beamed live into my living room. To watch a live game from the other side of the world was unbelievable. What 13-year-old football-mad kid wouldn’t want to watch it? The time difference meant it was a really late kick-off by UK time but my dad had told me I could stay up and watch it.
I still wanted Scotland to win rather than Peru. I knew who the players were – they were British after all – and I had a passing interest in seeing how well they would do in the tournament. Peru? They were just one of the minnows of South American football and the country was only known for llamas, Incas and Paddington Bear (who was from ‘deepest, darkest Peru’, remember?).
I sat down to watch it and expected Scotland to give them a hammering, to win by three or four goals. Sure enough, after 14 minutes, Joe Jordan gave them the lead. But this was Scotland. It was bound to end in tears, as it always does. The Peruvians looked really comfortable on the ball and none more so than Cubillas. He wore the number ten shirt – which meant he must be their best player – and he even looked like Pele. A lot of people referred to him as ‘the poor man’s Pele’. You can take that one of two ways, I guess. Me, I consider it a compliment.
I’ve mentioned some of the players in that Scottish squad, but one I haven’t got round to was their curly-haired goalkeeper Alan ‘Home Perm’ Rough. In fact, a more accurate comparison would be with Deirdre of Coronation Street, as they both had the sort of twisted, corkscrew barnet that lives terrifyingly on in the memory.
Rough played for Partick Thistle and was the latest in the line of, shall we say, memorable Scottish goalkeepers. Anyway, the Scots had got off to a great start when Joe Jordan gave them that lead. But as all those Jocks in the 38,000 crowd started singing and dancing they might not have noticed that the Peruvians were stroking the ball around like a team who really knew what they were doing. Every time they ran at the Scots’ defence they looked like causing problems.
David Coleman, who was commentating on the match for the BBC, said ominously, ‘Peru have got real ability in attack,’ and alongside him Bobby Charlton added, ‘They have been threatening to score every time they come near the box.’
Sure enough, Cubillas flicked a lovely little pass in the penalty area to Cueto who equalised just before half-time.
It wouldn’t be Scotland without a hard-luck story, would it? Although Peru were playing them off the park by this time, the Jocks could have gone ahead in the second half but Don Masson had his penalty saved by the Peru goalkeeper.
Then Cubillas really strode on to centre stage. In the 72nd minute, the Scots allowed him too much space just outside the area and he pulled back that right foot of his and the next thing poor old ‘Deirdre’ knew was that he was picking the ball out of the net. That was pretty sensational, but there was even better to come – from a Peruvian point of view, that is.
The South Americans were given a free-kick on the edge of the penalty area just to the left of the box. ‘The Peruvians are pretty useful from these dead-ball positions,’ dear old David Coleman told us. Visionary, Dave.
The Scots got their wall of blue shirts all lined up nicely as Cubillas ran up to the ball virtually dead straight, not at an angle. Then he bent his shot with the outside of his right foot and it went into the net high to the right of the goalkeeper. It wasn’t actually Rough’s fault – he even got his fingertips to it. It was a great goal and not one of the famous Scottish goalkeeper howlers. I guess Rough didn’t come up against shooting like that very often against teams like Hamilton Academicals and St Johnstone. In fairness to him, it would have beaten a keeper from any club in the world. He must have thought, That’s not allowed – I set my wall up for someone bending it with the instep, not the outside of their foot.
I had never seen anyone take a free-kick with the outside of their foot before. The next day I was out in the back garden in my Gola Nova trainers with an orange stripe, an orange Wembley Trophy ball – I was quite ginga-biased – and our springer spaniel Duke in goal. Duke was as alert as ‘Deirdre’ and had a better barnet as well – all his curls were natural. I didn’t actually break my toes, but I smashed them a few times trying to kick a dead ball like Cubillas had.
Given that this was my first glimpse of Cubillas, why do I choose him as one of my all-time favourites? The answer is that my judgement is based on the impact that players have on you. It seemed so exotic to watch a game from the other side of the world and settle down to watch Dalglish, Gemmill and Masson – and then someone you’ve never heard of emerges who does something completely different.
Cubillas wasn’t just a dead-ball player. His all-round game was superb, his passing and reading of the game was faultless and he was very graceful on the ball. I’ve always maintained that the number ten seem to be the best player in the team and he was another example of that.
The Scotland captain that day, Bruce Rioch, still remembers him, as well he might. ‘Your man Cubillas hit that wonderful free-kick,’ he said in one interview. ‘It was a devastating result and we all felt it. I still get a wee shiver when I hear Cubillas’s name. He was a fantastic player and he was the man who put us to the sword that day.’
‘Deirdre’ remembers it even better! ‘Ultimately, Argentina 78 was only billed as a disaster because we had done so well in the qualifying process and had a team full of really top-drawer stars,’ he said on one anniversary of the match. ‘But right from the start we suffered a major blow, when Gordon McQueen, who was our key central defender, was injured and failed to make it. Then, of course, we met a Peru side that no one had heard of in our first group match and, well, they blew us away.
‘With guys like Teofilo Cubillas, and his ability to bend free-kicks with the outside of his boot, they had players who had skills we just didn’t have in Britain. In fact, 30 years down the line, that free-kick he put past me is still giving me nightmares!’
Things went from bad to worse for the poor old Jocks. First their winger Willie Johnston failed the after-match drugs test. Medication for hay fever was the cause, the Scots said, but he was still sent home in disgrace never to play for his country again. Then came a truly terrible result. In their next game the Scots could only draw 1–1 with Iran. That meant they had to beat Holland by a hatful to qualify for the next stage. They managed to win 3–2 and Gemmill scored a memorable goal, but it was too little too late, so off they went for their customary early trip home. I shed no tears for them. Surely it was obvious they weren’t going to win the World Cup, especially as they’d been beaten by the fifth-best team in South America?
Peru actually topped their group – Cubillas scoring a hat-trick in their victory over Iran – but lost all three games in the next group. Their final game is one of the most controversial in World Cup history. Under the tournament structure Argentina needed to beat Peru by a large margin to have a better goal difference than Brazil and make it into the final. Surprise, surprise, that’s exactly what they did, putting six of the best past Peru’s Argentina-born goalkeeper. There were also murmurings of visits to Peru’s dressing room by Argentinean government officials.
Peru made it to the 1982 World Cup finals in Spain but, although Cubillas played in all their three games, he was past his best by then. He retired from international football soon after and ended his career playing in the States – as everyone seemed to in the 1970s and 1980s – but his total of ten goals in the World Cup final stages still puts him seventh in the tournament’s all-time scorers.
And it isn’t just me who rates him, by the way. In 2004, Cubillas made it into the FIFA List of 100 Greatest Players of All Time. The man who compiled the list? A certain former footballer by the name of Pele.