Notes and links - 21st June 2026
"On the pitch, much was amateurish: penalty spots were painted in the wrong place, some games finished ahead of time, and the identity of some of the goalscorers remains unknown. Argentina’s captain, Manuel Ferreira, left halfway through to sit his law exams, and the US midfielder Andy Auld was temporarily blinded when a physio spilled a bottle of chloroform while treating his split lip. Some teams played in an assortment of colours, and Juan Evaristo, Argentina’s right-half, in a beret. The threshold for disciplinary action would encourage those who think the game has gone soft: Plácido Galindo of Peru became the first player in World Cup history to be sent off, for breaking the Romanian Adalbert Steiner’s leg. One match had an attendance of 300, the lowest to date, though by the time Trump’s border agents and ICE are done that record might be in peril. The Uruguay-Argentina final was already the 111th rioplatense derby. The teams couldn’t agree on the match ball, so the first half was played with one favoured by Argentina (made in Scotland) and the second with one favoured by Uruguay (made in England). The Belgian referee, John Langenus (who, Wilson somehow resists adding, had failed his first refereeing exam when unable to answer the question ‘What is the correct procedure if the ball strikes a low-flying plane?’), was so concerned for his own safety that he arranged a final-whistle escape route to a ship moored in Montevideo harbour. The Argentina captain, Luis Monti, nearly didn’t play after a death threat and was a shadow of himself (Monti was ordinarily so brutal that a later manager wrote a letter of apology to an opponent). Uruguay won 4-2, and its embassy in Buenos Aires was attacked."
Simon Skinner reviews The Power and The Glory
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