June 8th and I'm going back 35 years to 1986 and the amazing life experience that was Denmark against Uruguay at the Estadio Neza 86 in Mexico.
The programme cover attached to today's article is the brochure for the entire tournament as there weren't programmes issued for the individual matches. I've also attached a copy of my ticket. Strangely ticket stubs seem to be more valuable than programmes these days, I suppose because so many people discard them whereas they might preserve a programme. Today the programme's worth about £10 and I have the English language edition too which I'll share with you in a future article.
I will remember this day forever. Mexico was my first ever World Cup and we'd moved down from watching three matches in Monterrey to Mexico City in the hope of taking in another couple of games. Neza was a distant suburb of Mexico City and we caught a metro train from the City centre to the end of the line which took about an hour and cost the princely sum of one peso (less than four pence at today's conversion rate but I think it was much less at that time). When we arrived, blinking into the bright sunlight, my pal "Big Stu" Phillips (RIP) and I learned that we were still a couple of miles away from the stadium which was on the campus of the Technological University of Nezahualcóyotl. Lets call it Neza Uni shall we?
We had no concerns about getting to the stadium that day. Unbelievably there were a number of locals owning pick up trucks who wanted the kudos of transporting their foreign guests to the stadium. We climbed aboard the flat bed of the truck with the most enthusiastic driver and off we went. A couple of hundred metres down the road our driver stopped outside a shop, ran in and emerged a few minutes later with a four pack of ice cold beers which he presented to us before heading off once more. The route to the stadium was lined with people of all ages, all seemingly dressed in their Sunday best and all obviously waiting to see somebody. After about a mile it dawned on us that they were waiting to see... us and other foreigners like us! We began waving to cheers from the adoring crowd!
Eventually we arrived at the stadium and we were instantly inundated by school children with requests for autographs. I noticed in one or two autograph books that they had been signed by Scots at a previous game at the stadium with names such as "Big Willie" and "Master Bates". These kids were delighted to get our autographs and were astonished to see Danes in Viking helmets with horns. It was my fifteen minutes of fame. I concluded later that the locals hadn't seen foreigners before other than on TV. Sadly, even though we bought our tickets at the stadium for one US dollar each, at those prices they were way beyond the pockets of most ordinary Mexicans and the games were played out in front of half empty stadia.
Think about it. Have you ever seen a match which is regarded as the finest performance by your team ever? If you follow your team every week for years and years then maybe you did. That match we saw in Neza is still regarded by plenty of Danes as their team's finest ever moment. "We're red, We're white, We're Danish Dynamite" sang the Danes. And they were.
Denmark's first was scored by Preben Elkjaer and this was swiftly followed by the dismissal of Uruguay's Miguel Bossio for two bookable offences within a matter of minutes. Soren Lerby got Denmark's second but they should have already had a couple more at that point and it was something of a surprise that Uruguay were still in it when Enzo Francescoli dispatched a penalty for Uruguay on the stroke of half time. One interesting point about that penalty was that there was no penalty spot. What we had instead was a "penalty ring" - a circle surrounding the place where the penalty spot should have been. I don't recall seeing one before or since and I'd suspect that FIFA would say that they're not legal but nobody seemed too bothered about it.
Michael Laudrup scored a magnificent dribbling solo goal in the 52nd minute to put the Danes 3-1 ahead and the game beyond the Uruguayans. Laudrup was also the creator of the next Danish goal with a lovely move that was finished off by Elkjaer. We didn't have long to wait for Elkjaer's hattrick which came with ten minutes remaining, running from the halfway line one-on-one with the Uruguayan keeper before slotting home. 88 minutes and we still weren't done as a young bearded Jesper Olsen got Denmark's sixth goal to round off the scoring. Incredible! If you watch the video you'll see that the Danes could quite realistically have scored double figures that day such was their brilliance and it was so good to see Uruguay's cynical tactics being blown apart. Surely this was Denmark's finest ever performance?
The postscript to the game. Denmark won their group by winning all three matches from West Germany who had to content themselves with second place. Annoyingly, although finishing third, Uruguay advanced as one of the third placed teams with a better record (two draws and a defeat!) and Alex Ferguson's Scotland finished dead last and returned home. Surprisingly, Denmark, now many people's favourites to win the World Cup were blown away by Spain 5-1 in the Round of 16 whilst Uruguay succumbed to Argentina who would go on to lift the trophy. But on this day at least, Denmark were the kings of the world.
CRB Match No. 444
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