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World in Motion
Italia ’90 was the best and worst of World Cups. It made a global star of England’s inspirational Paul Gascoigne and gave fresh confidence to English football but it was also the lowest- scoring of all World Cups, leading directly to the back-pass ban that transformed the sport.
World In Motion travels from Africa to South America, via Europe and the Middle East, to hear from the protagonists of Italia ’90 and find out why it is still seen as a special and transformative moment, not just in English eyes but in other countries far and wide.
It was a World Cup of firsts – from Cameroon’s quarter-final trail-blazers via the feats of newcomers like the Republic of Ireland and Costa Rica – but a tournament too which marked the last hurrah of the old footballing powers of the Eastern Bloc amid the collapse of the Iron Curtain.
It began with the biggest shock of any opening game, as nine-man Cameroon beat Argentina, and it ended with the worst final of all, as West Germany beat nine-man Argentina with a much-disputed penalty. In between it gave us a big spectacle, a winning soundtrack and some unforgettable storylines.
World In Motion speaks to players and coaches, referees and administrators, reporters and fans to gauge the full impact of football’s dramatic Italian summer – including meeting Roger Milla at his home in Cameroon and Totò Schillaci at his football school in Sicily.
In the process it rediscovers a time when the game stood on the brink of change, with the Premier League and Champions League on the horizon, yet the World Cup remained a thrilling voyage of discovery – a land of novelties, from Fair Play flags to fan embassies to that first-ever penalty shoot-out heartbreak for England ...
World In Motion travels from Africa to South America, via Europe and the Middle East, to hear from the protagonists of Italia ’90 and find out why it is still seen as a special and transformative moment, not just in English eyes but in other countries far and wide.
It was a World Cup of firsts – from Cameroon’s quarter-final trail-blazers via the feats of newcomers like the Republic of Ireland and Costa Rica – but a tournament too which marked the last hurrah of the old footballing powers of the Eastern Bloc amid the collapse of the Iron Curtain.
It began with the biggest shock of any opening game, as nine-man Cameroon beat Argentina, and it ended with the worst final of all, as West Germany beat nine-man Argentina with a much-disputed penalty. In between it gave us a big spectacle, a winning soundtrack and some unforgettable storylines.
World In Motion speaks to players and coaches, referees and administrators, reporters and fans to gauge the full impact of football’s dramatic Italian summer – including meeting Roger Milla at his home in Cameroon and Totò Schillaci at his football school in Sicily.
In the process it rediscovers a time when the game stood on the brink of change, with the Premier League and Champions League on the horizon, yet the World Cup remained a thrilling voyage of discovery – a land of novelties, from Fair Play flags to fan embassies to that first-ever penalty shoot-out heartbreak for England ...
- GenresFootballSportsNonfiction
250 pages, Hardcover
Published July 15, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
August 24, 2018
In 1995 Pete Davies wrote All Played Out which went on to become the definitive book on Italia 90… Until now that is. Simon Hart’s book World in Motion should be seen as both a companion and extension to all played out. Whereas Pete Davies captured the quintessential English experience of the tournament. Hart tells the story through a world-wide lens chronicling the experience of all the teams that captured fans imagination that summer. Cameroon, Yugoslavia, Romania, East Germany, Egypt and Ireland are among the highlights. All Played Out told us what Italian 90 meant in the immediate aftermath. With hindsight World in Motion examines its impact and the way in which it helped shape the world football landscape we know today.Many of the interviews were conducted around the time of the 2018 World Cup draw, so even the old stories feel fresh and new.
July 2, 2018
You could be forgiven for thinking that publishing a history of Italia’90 on the eve of a world cup was a cynical marketing ploy. But, you would be discounting the fact that “World in Motion” – the journalist Simon Hart’s account of the 1990 World Cup finals – is a joy from start-to-finish.
The great strength of “World in Motion” is the incredible amount of research that the author Simon Hart has carried out. Not merely content to rethread the well-excavated ground of Gazza’s tears and Jack’s Army, Hart travels to Cameroon, Costa Rica, Romania and Egypt to talk to the key protagonists of Italia’90. He gets great interviews from the legendary Italian goalpoacher Toto Schillaci, the Argentine keeper Sergio Goycochea, and the goalscoring sensation of the tournament, Cameroon’s Roger Milla. In the latter case, Milla (who hilariously insists on being addressed throughout his interview as “his excellence”) reveals that he wasn’t even meant to be in the final squad for the World Cup and was essentially imposed on the Cameroon team on the orders of the country’s President.
Even where Hart is writing about aspects of Italia’90 that might be most familiar to British and Irish audiences (i.e. England and the Republic of Ireland’s progress in the tournament), he manages to unearth some fantastic anecdotes. So, during the recording of the aforementioned “World in Motion” by New Order and the England squad, we see New Order’s record label boss Tony Wilson arriving in the studio with some peculiar packages: bags of cocaine for the band, and brown envelopes full of cash for the footballers. Elsewhere, we have the Ireland manager Jack Charlton threatening Kevin Sheedy that he wouldn’t select him for a crunch game with England unless Sheedy let him win a game of cards they were playing pre-game on the coach.
It would be easy to view the 1990 World Cup through rose-tinted spectacles, concentrate on the golden memories and to overlook the fact that the tournament was so blighted by thuggish fouling, timewasting and monotonous, overly-defensive tactics that “Italia’90” came to be a byword for cynicism in football. In relation to the 1990 World Cup, Scotland’s then-coach Andy Roxburgh is quoted as saying “The general impression was one of negativity and ugliness. Thankfully, Simon Hart at no stage shirks the issue of how wretched so many of the games were during the competition, with the tournament so afflicted with cheating, cynical fouling and timewasting that in the aftermath of the World Cup FIFA were moved to change many of the key laws of the sport (e.g. the backpass to the goalkeeper, the tackle from behind).
The undoubted masters of skulduggery at Italia’90 were Diego Maradona’s Argentina. They provide many of the most compelling passages of “World in Motion” and prompt Simon Hart’s perfect description of them as “a team who did not so much cross the line of legality to win games, as leap over it with two feet raised and both sets of studs showing”. Despite how horribly cynical as they were, this book gave me a sneaking respect for that Argentina side, as a half-crocked Maradona dragged a team he described as “the motley crew, the injured, the persecuted” to the final of the competition, sticking two fingers up at the football establishment in the process.
The political backdrop of 1990 – in particular, the collapse of communism – is interwoven into the narrative of “World in Motion. Hart is superb on how the crumbling of communist regimes across Eastern Europe had a hugely detrimental effect on the standard of football in those countries. Hugely talented nations like Romania would endure a sad decline in the decades after Italia’90, their once vital domestic football scenes left to rot as their best stars used their new post-communist freedom to get lucrative contracts abroad. And for the highly-fancied Yugoslavia team, the self-styled “Brazilians of Europe”, Italia’90 would be their sad swansong, as their nation riven by ethnic tension dissolved into the horrifying conflicts of the 1990s.
“World in Motion” isn’t just an exercise in nostalgia, but is a wistful and at times poignant look back at what is (in footballing terms at the very least) a different world. From reading Simon Hart’s wonderful account of Italia ’90, you get a sense of what a global event was like to experience before the onset of globalisation, before the football world was homogenised and received such blanket coverage that we could no longer be taken by surprise by a Schillaci or a Cameroon. “World in Motion” is an absolute must for any reader with even slightest interest in quality football writing.
The great strength of “World in Motion” is the incredible amount of research that the author Simon Hart has carried out. Not merely content to rethread the well-excavated ground of Gazza’s tears and Jack’s Army, Hart travels to Cameroon, Costa Rica, Romania and Egypt to talk to the key protagonists of Italia’90. He gets great interviews from the legendary Italian goalpoacher Toto Schillaci, the Argentine keeper Sergio Goycochea, and the goalscoring sensation of the tournament, Cameroon’s Roger Milla. In the latter case, Milla (who hilariously insists on being addressed throughout his interview as “his excellence”) reveals that he wasn’t even meant to be in the final squad for the World Cup and was essentially imposed on the Cameroon team on the orders of the country’s President.
Even where Hart is writing about aspects of Italia’90 that might be most familiar to British and Irish audiences (i.e. England and the Republic of Ireland’s progress in the tournament), he manages to unearth some fantastic anecdotes. So, during the recording of the aforementioned “World in Motion” by New Order and the England squad, we see New Order’s record label boss Tony Wilson arriving in the studio with some peculiar packages: bags of cocaine for the band, and brown envelopes full of cash for the footballers. Elsewhere, we have the Ireland manager Jack Charlton threatening Kevin Sheedy that he wouldn’t select him for a crunch game with England unless Sheedy let him win a game of cards they were playing pre-game on the coach.
It would be easy to view the 1990 World Cup through rose-tinted spectacles, concentrate on the golden memories and to overlook the fact that the tournament was so blighted by thuggish fouling, timewasting and monotonous, overly-defensive tactics that “Italia’90” came to be a byword for cynicism in football. In relation to the 1990 World Cup, Scotland’s then-coach Andy Roxburgh is quoted as saying “The general impression was one of negativity and ugliness. Thankfully, Simon Hart at no stage shirks the issue of how wretched so many of the games were during the competition, with the tournament so afflicted with cheating, cynical fouling and timewasting that in the aftermath of the World Cup FIFA were moved to change many of the key laws of the sport (e.g. the backpass to the goalkeeper, the tackle from behind).
The undoubted masters of skulduggery at Italia’90 were Diego Maradona’s Argentina. They provide many of the most compelling passages of “World in Motion” and prompt Simon Hart’s perfect description of them as “a team who did not so much cross the line of legality to win games, as leap over it with two feet raised and both sets of studs showing”. Despite how horribly cynical as they were, this book gave me a sneaking respect for that Argentina side, as a half-crocked Maradona dragged a team he described as “the motley crew, the injured, the persecuted” to the final of the competition, sticking two fingers up at the football establishment in the process.
The political backdrop of 1990 – in particular, the collapse of communism – is interwoven into the narrative of “World in Motion. Hart is superb on how the crumbling of communist regimes across Eastern Europe had a hugely detrimental effect on the standard of football in those countries. Hugely talented nations like Romania would endure a sad decline in the decades after Italia’90, their once vital domestic football scenes left to rot as their best stars used their new post-communist freedom to get lucrative contracts abroad. And for the highly-fancied Yugoslavia team, the self-styled “Brazilians of Europe”, Italia’90 would be their sad swansong, as their nation riven by ethnic tension dissolved into the horrifying conflicts of the 1990s.
“World in Motion” isn’t just an exercise in nostalgia, but is a wistful and at times poignant look back at what is (in footballing terms at the very least) a different world. From reading Simon Hart’s wonderful account of Italia ’90, you get a sense of what a global event was like to experience before the onset of globalisation, before the football world was homogenised and received such blanket coverage that we could no longer be taken by surprise by a Schillaci or a Cameroon. “World in Motion” is an absolute must for any reader with even slightest interest in quality football writing.
January 17, 2020
Recently, while procrastinating on the internet, reminiscing over Italia ’90, I came across an excerpt of this book and it got my juices flowing enough that I ordered a copy for my Kindle and got stuck right in. I was instantly glad that I did; I can’t remember reading a more enjoyable book. Simon Hart has absolutely smashed it with his effort.
The access Hart has to the faces of Italia ’90 is astounding. Seemingly every name that resonates from that World Cup, plus a whole load more that don’t but should, was interviewed for the book. He traversed the planet tracking them down: one minute he is sitting in Sergio Goycochea’s restaurant in Buenos Aires eating a steak with the owner, the next he’s in Cameroon legend Roger Milla’s living room in Yaoundé, the next he’s in Toto Schillaci’s club house in Palermo discussing hair transplants with the tournament’s most iconic player. When he’s not with them face to face, he’s chatting with them on Whatsapp or Skype. On top of that, he has seemingly read every single one of their autobiographies, every interview they’ve ever given to every obscure magazine, no matter the language, and every book with even a mention of one of them in it. The level of research is mindblowing.
The result of all of this painstaking work is a book full of fascinating and often hilarious insight, straight from the mouths of those directly involved.
The book is broken down into three sections: First Round, Knockout and Final.
Each chapter focuses on a particular team or match – only one group, Group E: Belgium, Spain, South Korea, Uruguay, isn’t covered in minute detail – and reads like a collection of short essays, detailing the subplot to each country’s participation, a bit of history and the stories told by the protagonists. It shouldn’t be forgotten that 1990 was a fascinating time for the world off the pitch as much as it was on it; a number of the participating countries would no longer exist come the next World Cup in 1994. Even eventual champions West Germany were playing their last tournament together before unifying with their brothers from the east.
Hart’s book takes us on a nostalgic journey, all the way from the monumental shock of the opening match in Milan, as defending champions Argentina, led by Diego Maradona, were humbled by the underdogs of Cameroon, a result that reverberated around the world and would be remembered forever, not least of all for a certain tackle that would go down in history as one of the greatest (if not the greatest) ever made. Right up to the final a month later in Rome, in which Argentina’s national anthem was whistled from start to finish by the whole stadium, mostly Italians, and Diego Maradona, with the whole world watching, not once but twice right to the camera venomously mouthed the words “Hijos de puta,” sons of bitches.
Italia ’90 : pure, unadulterated theatre.
World in Motion is excellently written; Hart’s prose often beautifully evocative, brimming with sentences like the following:
“Yet, Maradona was Maradona. His speed and strength may have been diminished by the kicks and the cortisone and the cocaine, but he remained the wasp in the room; opponents lived with the nagging fear of his capacity to unleash a sudden sting.”
Above all, what makes this book the special read that it is are the offerings of the players, which at times are intentionally hilarious, and at other times unintentionally so. Take legendary Colombian goalkeeper Rene Higuita’s response to being asked about that infamous moment against Cameroon in their second round tie, in which he seemed to forget that he was a goalkeeper and not a footballer, only to get mugged by Roger Milla in comical fashion, costing the Colombians elimination from the tournament:
“If it were today, Barcelona would sign me and I’d be playing there. It’s what they need in football now – goalkeepers who come out and play. There are different ways of protecting your goal – some play between their posts, some inside their eighteen-yard box, others outside. I was a complete goalkeeper. Today I’d be in a team like Barcelona.”
Speaking of Roger Milla, his assertions to Simon Hart are no less modest. On that goal against Higuita: “You can’t get that intelligence from going to school.”
On his two goals against Romania: “These were the goals of a centre forward, a great centre forward, because not just any centre forward can do what I did in that match.”
And on his second goal in particular against Romania: “Nobody in the world had seen anything like it – a player playing himself in on his own. It deserves consideration. If I wasn’t black they’d talk more about that goal. No other player in the world has done that. Even Pelé, the King himself, said that nobody had done what I did there.”
OK Roger, turn it down, mate.
The funniest stories in the book mostly come from the Republic of Ireland camp, and are often recounted by Tony Cascarino, the man who famously racked up 88 caps for Ireland without having any connection to the country whatsoever.
Ireland manager Jack Charlton’s motivational speech the night before they took on Italy in the quarter final: “Right lads, we’re going to have dinner at seven thirty, and after dinner, you’re going to have a couple of kegs of Guinness delivered, and you’re going to have a pint or two. You’ll sleep well tonight. You’re playing Italy in their own backyard, you’re going to get beat, so have a couple of pints.”
Another story, also told by Cascarino, covers the time Jack Charlton’s predecessor as manager Eoin Hand accepted a bet from a football journalist that he (the journalist) could beat Ireland defender Mick McCarthy in a race. Hand forced the player to take part, telling him he had no choice as he had 50 quid riding on the outcome. You will have to read the book if you want to know who won, but in Cascarino’s words, the victor “won by an ant’s cock.”
Meanwhile, in the England camp, the players were entertaining themselves at manager Bobby Robson’s expense. Gary Lineker tells one cringeworthy story, about the pre-match meeting before the semi-final against Germany:
“He (Bobby Robson) was always a bit late, and whilst he was late, I put on this board ‘Even money he mentions the war.’ Then I put the sheet back down, and Bobby comes in, and we’re all sitting there, and he goes, ‘We beat them in the war.’ It was his first words and there was this uproar in the whole room.”
Robson wasn’t the only one mentioning the war, as the back page of British tabloid Today had a mocked up image of Germany manager Franz Beckenbauer flying a WW1 plane. It brings me no sadness to note that Today ceased to exist in 1995.
When asked by Hart if the topic ever came up in the German changing room, a bemused Thomas Berthold, German defender, tells him, “No, never ever. It’s too far away for us. My grandfather was in the war but not myself.”
On a personal level, the chapters I found the most fascinating were those focusing on the Eastern European teams, Czechoslovakia, Romania, the USSR and Yugoslavia, as while these players were trying to navigate their way through World Cup qualification and then the tournament itself, back home their countries were falling to bits.
Maybe the most amazing story in the book concerns the Czechoslovakian forward Ivo Knoflíček who, fed up with conditions in his country but not allowed to leave, fled illegally after being promised that he would be granted refugee status in England, where he would be signed by Derby County, then owned by Robert Maxwell. I’m not going to give any spoilers, but the adventure that unfolds is highly captivating, and you can only feel for the man whose hair, still today according to Simon Hart, is “a magnificently intact 1980s mullet.”
Meanwhile, the Yugoslavia team came into the World Cup on the back of having their national anthem whistled and booed by, what were supposed to be, their own fans in Zagreb, during their final warm-up match against the Netherlands. Later that evening, the Croatian crowd filled the air with chants of “Holland, Holland.”
This came hot on the heals of the Yugoslavian league match between Dinamo Zagreb and Crvena Zvezda (Red Star Belgrade), in Zagreb, in which violence between the two sets of supporters is said by many to have been the spark that ignited the Yugoslav wars which would engulf the now ex-country of Yugoslavia between 1991 and 1995. It was during that day’s fighting that Croatian player Zvonimir Boban, then just 20 years old, flying kicked a policeman, breaking his jaw, and received a six-month ban from football for his efforts, meaning he would miss Italia ’90.
Reading the numerous differing points of view on this period in the history of the Yugoslav national team, and the country itself, for me, made the chapter on Yugoslavia the most interesting one in the book.
I’ll finish this review of World In Motion with what I found to be the most telling detail in the book. Argentina manager Carlos Bilardo refusing to deny handing Brazil playmaker Branco a bottle of water laced with date rape drug Rohypnol just before half-time in their second round encounter. He doesn’t admit it either.
This really is an excellent, entertaining book. Thank you to Simon Hart for writing it.
The access Hart has to the faces of Italia ’90 is astounding. Seemingly every name that resonates from that World Cup, plus a whole load more that don’t but should, was interviewed for the book. He traversed the planet tracking them down: one minute he is sitting in Sergio Goycochea’s restaurant in Buenos Aires eating a steak with the owner, the next he’s in Cameroon legend Roger Milla’s living room in Yaoundé, the next he’s in Toto Schillaci’s club house in Palermo discussing hair transplants with the tournament’s most iconic player. When he’s not with them face to face, he’s chatting with them on Whatsapp or Skype. On top of that, he has seemingly read every single one of their autobiographies, every interview they’ve ever given to every obscure magazine, no matter the language, and every book with even a mention of one of them in it. The level of research is mindblowing.
The result of all of this painstaking work is a book full of fascinating and often hilarious insight, straight from the mouths of those directly involved.
The book is broken down into three sections: First Round, Knockout and Final.
Each chapter focuses on a particular team or match – only one group, Group E: Belgium, Spain, South Korea, Uruguay, isn’t covered in minute detail – and reads like a collection of short essays, detailing the subplot to each country’s participation, a bit of history and the stories told by the protagonists. It shouldn’t be forgotten that 1990 was a fascinating time for the world off the pitch as much as it was on it; a number of the participating countries would no longer exist come the next World Cup in 1994. Even eventual champions West Germany were playing their last tournament together before unifying with their brothers from the east.
Hart’s book takes us on a nostalgic journey, all the way from the monumental shock of the opening match in Milan, as defending champions Argentina, led by Diego Maradona, were humbled by the underdogs of Cameroon, a result that reverberated around the world and would be remembered forever, not least of all for a certain tackle that would go down in history as one of the greatest (if not the greatest) ever made. Right up to the final a month later in Rome, in which Argentina’s national anthem was whistled from start to finish by the whole stadium, mostly Italians, and Diego Maradona, with the whole world watching, not once but twice right to the camera venomously mouthed the words “Hijos de puta,” sons of bitches.
Italia ’90 : pure, unadulterated theatre.
World in Motion is excellently written; Hart’s prose often beautifully evocative, brimming with sentences like the following:
“Yet, Maradona was Maradona. His speed and strength may have been diminished by the kicks and the cortisone and the cocaine, but he remained the wasp in the room; opponents lived with the nagging fear of his capacity to unleash a sudden sting.”
Above all, what makes this book the special read that it is are the offerings of the players, which at times are intentionally hilarious, and at other times unintentionally so. Take legendary Colombian goalkeeper Rene Higuita’s response to being asked about that infamous moment against Cameroon in their second round tie, in which he seemed to forget that he was a goalkeeper and not a footballer, only to get mugged by Roger Milla in comical fashion, costing the Colombians elimination from the tournament:
“If it were today, Barcelona would sign me and I’d be playing there. It’s what they need in football now – goalkeepers who come out and play. There are different ways of protecting your goal – some play between their posts, some inside their eighteen-yard box, others outside. I was a complete goalkeeper. Today I’d be in a team like Barcelona.”
Speaking of Roger Milla, his assertions to Simon Hart are no less modest. On that goal against Higuita: “You can’t get that intelligence from going to school.”
On his two goals against Romania: “These were the goals of a centre forward, a great centre forward, because not just any centre forward can do what I did in that match.”
And on his second goal in particular against Romania: “Nobody in the world had seen anything like it – a player playing himself in on his own. It deserves consideration. If I wasn’t black they’d talk more about that goal. No other player in the world has done that. Even Pelé, the King himself, said that nobody had done what I did there.”
OK Roger, turn it down, mate.
The funniest stories in the book mostly come from the Republic of Ireland camp, and are often recounted by Tony Cascarino, the man who famously racked up 88 caps for Ireland without having any connection to the country whatsoever.
Ireland manager Jack Charlton’s motivational speech the night before they took on Italy in the quarter final: “Right lads, we’re going to have dinner at seven thirty, and after dinner, you’re going to have a couple of kegs of Guinness delivered, and you’re going to have a pint or two. You’ll sleep well tonight. You’re playing Italy in their own backyard, you’re going to get beat, so have a couple of pints.”
Another story, also told by Cascarino, covers the time Jack Charlton’s predecessor as manager Eoin Hand accepted a bet from a football journalist that he (the journalist) could beat Ireland defender Mick McCarthy in a race. Hand forced the player to take part, telling him he had no choice as he had 50 quid riding on the outcome. You will have to read the book if you want to know who won, but in Cascarino’s words, the victor “won by an ant’s cock.”
Meanwhile, in the England camp, the players were entertaining themselves at manager Bobby Robson’s expense. Gary Lineker tells one cringeworthy story, about the pre-match meeting before the semi-final against Germany:
“He (Bobby Robson) was always a bit late, and whilst he was late, I put on this board ‘Even money he mentions the war.’ Then I put the sheet back down, and Bobby comes in, and we’re all sitting there, and he goes, ‘We beat them in the war.’ It was his first words and there was this uproar in the whole room.”
Robson wasn’t the only one mentioning the war, as the back page of British tabloid Today had a mocked up image of Germany manager Franz Beckenbauer flying a WW1 plane. It brings me no sadness to note that Today ceased to exist in 1995.
When asked by Hart if the topic ever came up in the German changing room, a bemused Thomas Berthold, German defender, tells him, “No, never ever. It’s too far away for us. My grandfather was in the war but not myself.”
On a personal level, the chapters I found the most fascinating were those focusing on the Eastern European teams, Czechoslovakia, Romania, the USSR and Yugoslavia, as while these players were trying to navigate their way through World Cup qualification and then the tournament itself, back home their countries were falling to bits.
Maybe the most amazing story in the book concerns the Czechoslovakian forward Ivo Knoflíček who, fed up with conditions in his country but not allowed to leave, fled illegally after being promised that he would be granted refugee status in England, where he would be signed by Derby County, then owned by Robert Maxwell. I’m not going to give any spoilers, but the adventure that unfolds is highly captivating, and you can only feel for the man whose hair, still today according to Simon Hart, is “a magnificently intact 1980s mullet.”
Meanwhile, the Yugoslavia team came into the World Cup on the back of having their national anthem whistled and booed by, what were supposed to be, their own fans in Zagreb, during their final warm-up match against the Netherlands. Later that evening, the Croatian crowd filled the air with chants of “Holland, Holland.”
This came hot on the heals of the Yugoslavian league match between Dinamo Zagreb and Crvena Zvezda (Red Star Belgrade), in Zagreb, in which violence between the two sets of supporters is said by many to have been the spark that ignited the Yugoslav wars which would engulf the now ex-country of Yugoslavia between 1991 and 1995. It was during that day’s fighting that Croatian player Zvonimir Boban, then just 20 years old, flying kicked a policeman, breaking his jaw, and received a six-month ban from football for his efforts, meaning he would miss Italia ’90.
Reading the numerous differing points of view on this period in the history of the Yugoslav national team, and the country itself, for me, made the chapter on Yugoslavia the most interesting one in the book.
I’ll finish this review of World In Motion with what I found to be the most telling detail in the book. Argentina manager Carlos Bilardo refusing to deny handing Brazil playmaker Branco a bottle of water laced with date rape drug Rohypnol just before half-time in their second round encounter. He doesn’t admit it either.
This really is an excellent, entertaining book. Thank you to Simon Hart for writing it.
June 1, 2018
Excited to read this after seeing an online review and also having just finished “Angels With Dirty Faces’ by Jon Wilson; both have seriously warmed me up for #WC2018.
A superb read - dreaded reading the penultimate chapter, 'Tears in Turin' but it was very well handled indeed and I enjoyed the scene describing the two coaches in the car park after the semi. Further cemented by views about the disgraceful behaviour by Jack Warner in the USA qualification story but alas drew some positives about Blatter.
Fair to say the trajectory of World Cups since 1970, let alone 1990, has been progressively downward in some respects but for me it still stirs the loins and this is a great read.
Couple of suggestions for a reprint:
1. Index please?
2. Teams, dates, attendances in an appendix - got fed-up of having to keep going back to Wikipedia.
A superb read - dreaded reading the penultimate chapter, 'Tears in Turin' but it was very well handled indeed and I enjoyed the scene describing the two coaches in the car park after the semi. Further cemented by views about the disgraceful behaviour by Jack Warner in the USA qualification story but alas drew some positives about Blatter.
Fair to say the trajectory of World Cups since 1970, let alone 1990, has been progressively downward in some respects but for me it still stirs the loins and this is a great read.
Couple of suggestions for a reprint:
1. Index please?
2. Teams, dates, attendances in an appendix - got fed-up of having to keep going back to Wikipedia.
June 10, 2018
Absolutely fascinating and comprehensive look into Italia 90. The level of detail in this book is testament to the sheer amount of research Simon Hart has conducted for writing this. Exceptional piece of writing.
June 15, 2018
The 1990 World Cup was by far my favourite having not been alive for 1966.
I was 21 and one of the lads who liked beer and footy and this presented a fantastic combo. It helped of course that England were involved in three epic games sadly ending in a heartbreaking penalty defeat to the Germans again.
So I was really looking forward to reading this book and reliving those halcyon days. BUT I was disappointed to be honest. It was too much about the history of each team and the players who played a famous or infamous part and not enough about the actual game.
I enjoyed it but not nearly as much as I thought I would.
I was 21 and one of the lads who liked beer and footy and this presented a fantastic combo. It helped of course that England were involved in three epic games sadly ending in a heartbreaking penalty defeat to the Germans again.
So I was really looking forward to reading this book and reliving those halcyon days. BUT I was disappointed to be honest. It was too much about the history of each team and the players who played a famous or infamous part and not enough about the actual game.
I enjoyed it but not nearly as much as I thought I would.
January 12, 2020
Great insight into the best World Cup tournament ever! Some of the stories offer a great idea into the political landscape facing each country that qualified. A number of the stories do get quite drawn out but overall an enjoyable read!
February 13, 2022
The tournament that changed football forever. An excellent telling in full detail of the qualifications and the tournament in full with the heroics of players from some smaller nations and football being the universal language that brings people together from all around the world.
March 25, 2025
Well researched and well written book about Italia 90 and other world cups. Brought back memories as I went to the tournament and saw the England matches against Holland, Egypt, Belgium and Cameroon. A great football book for fans of all ages not just those around in 1990.
December 11, 2020
I was looking for nostalgia but got something trickier – and better. Hart’s book is essentially structured as a series of interlocking long reads. The best thing about it is how he delves into untold stories of countries like Yugoslavia, the UAE, Czechslovakia and the US, though even when he’s recounting the more familiar tales of Cameroon and Italy, his wealth of retrospective interviews offer new insights. If his writing isn’t of the same quality as his research, and now and then the focus and pacing seems determined by who the author has managed to get time with, the amount of knowledge that lies behind the text is staggering. Every scandal or rumour you’ve heard about, from spiked drinks to match-fixing, is astutely appraised, just as every nation’s campaign is contextualised in terms of both its football and the wider socio-political picture. The material about how Italia ’90 changed football isn’t as instinctively interesting to me as the stories of the matches, and their protagonists, but there is at least plenty of the latter
June 17, 2020
Incredible and well researched book. I actually put off buying this book for quite a while as I thought it would be too similar to Pete Davies' book "All played out". However that book was very much from an England team perspective, and this book is from an overall tournament perspective.
This tournament more than any other seems to have sparked an introduction to football and invokes nostalgia (myself included). As someone interested in recent history (Germany reunification, Balkans conflict, break up of Eastern Europe), this puts into context the part that this World Cup played for those teams. Plus some also very interesting chapters on the Cameroon and USA teams.
Highly recommended!!
This tournament more than any other seems to have sparked an introduction to football and invokes nostalgia (myself included). As someone interested in recent history (Germany reunification, Balkans conflict, break up of Eastern Europe), this puts into context the part that this World Cup played for those teams. Plus some also very interesting chapters on the Cameroon and USA teams.
Highly recommended!!
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