World Cup Memories: France '98

For some reason, I remember more about France '98 than I do with any other World Cup, I think it has something to do with being in college, and having all the time in the world for the games.

The game in which England got knocked out managed to capture two emotional extremes, and that was before half-time. First, the low, Beckham's moment of idiocy:



Then the high. It's fitting that the second best world cup goal ever came only second to a goal scored in another Argentina-England game. Thankfully, this time, we were the punishers...or rather, Michael was. He wasn't even a starter, being one of the youngest forwards to be capped for England. He came on to score against Romania in the group stages, and two games later, he gave my generation our piece of history:



I still get shivers every time I watch that goal, *every* *time*. The rest of the drama was in extra time, where Sol had a headed goal ruled out for an obscure infraction, Michael had another run and shoot that went wide, and the penalties, the damn penalties.

When I think of France '98, other than England, the other memories that spring to mind are: French forwards, Kluivert's miss, and Denilson's stepovers.

That the French won was surprising considering they had the most useless strike-force in my memory. Henry was a young winger (it was Wenger who put him up front), Ginola was frozen out, and what they had left amounted to nothing, to the amusement of everyone but the Geordies. Guivarc'h was the example here, the forward that Newcastle bought before the World Cup sunk to the lowest form of his life that nothing could resuscitate. As it happened, they had the midfield of dreams that still makes me salivate when I think of it (Viera, Petite, Karembeu, Djorkaeff, and Zidane). Even their defence was scoring goals, and Lilian Thuram had probably the best goal celebration of the tournament:



The Dutch should have won everything in France '98. We remember that Brazil were outplayed in the final, but I thought they were outplayed in the semis too. Holland vs France should have made for a more entertaining final given Ronaldo's "absence", and I think the French wouldn't have been able to handle Bergkamp and Kluivert. As it happened, despite Kluivert's headed goal that tied the game, the one image I have in my mind is Kluivert's headed miss, when he was wiiiide open, and to this day, I don't forget the look on Kluivert's face.

There were three players of that time, who, for me, were a step above everybody else when it came to flowing with the ball in the midst of a game: Zidane, Ronaldo and Patrick Kluivert. Of those three, Kluivert was the one who never reached the pinnacle.

Dennis Bergkamp left his own indelible mark too (take note of the great cross-field pass):



Denilson, an upcoming star, subbed in to the final in the second half, must have performed the most useless series of step-overs I've seen in my life, he did about 7 or 8 of them whilst standing still in the French box, and it was so ineffective, it was comical, everybody just stood there and watched him. I can't find videos of this moment unfortunately.

And Ronaldo? He had his day, he had to wait for it.