Grand Finale Today
LEAD: After a grand month of play, along with hooligans, penalty kicks, Italian flags and young men's faces painted in their national colors, the 1990 World Cup ends Sunday with a championship match in which West Germany is favored to defeat the team it lost to in the 1986 final, Argentina.
After a grand month of play, along with hooligans, penalty kicks, Italian flags and young men's faces painted in their national colors, the 1990 World Cup ends Sunday with a championship match in which West Germany is favored to defeat the team it lost to in the 1986 final, Argentina.
While this is not the final envisioned by millions of Italians, whose passion for their team turned to anguish and tears in the semifinals, it brings together the world's most successful national teams of the last 16 years. Since 1974, one or both of them has been in every World Cup final. West Germany played in the previous two and three of four; Argentina in two of the last three.
Yet just as Italy and its worshippers anticipated a final with more local flavor, so too did many others, who watched in amazement as the defending champions flirted with elimination every step of the way on their dizzy odyssey through the tournament. In retrospect, it seems apparent that the more the Argentines suffered, the better they played.
A Host of Distractions
The distractions included an opening-day loss to Cameroon; a suggestion by President Carlos Saul Menem of Argentina that the lineup be changed; five subsequent lineup changes by Carlos Bilardo, the coach; a broken leg suffered by the goalkeeper, Nery Pumpido, in the second game; a third-place finish in the group after the first round; a recurring ankle injury to Diego Maradona, and the vituperative reaction of many Italians toward Argentina for ending their dream with penalty kicks last Tuesday night.
For the championship game, which will be televised in New York on TNT and Channel 41 starting at 2 P.M., Argentina must play without four regulars, who have been ruled ineligible for disciplinary reasons.
That should give West Germany a significant advantage, unless the mercurial Maradona lives up to his reputation as the world's best player and carries his team to what would surely be considered a major upset and the game of his life. It is not inconceivable.
In the Spotlight
With the possible exception of Salvatore Schillaci, the striker who scored winning goals in five games for Italy, no player has commanded more attention with his actions than the 29-year-old stocky Argentine, the star of the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, where he scored five goals.
While Maradona's tangible accomplishments in this tournament include only the centering pass that set up Claudio Caniggia's goal that defeated Brazil, 1-0, in the round of 16, and the penalty kick that sealed the victory over Italy, his mere presence has been the critical factor in Argentina's advance. No matter the level of his game, Maradona has been impossible to ignore. The fact he was the most fouled player in the tournament speaks volumes.
Even away from play he has drawn unusual attention to himself, from admonishing officials for a disciplinary system that would allow his team to play so short-handed in the final to scuffling with the police, as he did on Friday, during an incident involving his brother.
New Game Plan
Mercifully for the West Germans, they have to contend with him only on the field, albeit better than they did four years ago, when Jorge Burruchaga's goal off a pass from Maradona in the 84th minute won the game, 3-2. As a result, the West Germans intend to alter their previous tactics of intense concentration at the expense of allowing other players more room to maneuver.
'We won't do that again,' Franz Beckenbauer, West Germany's coach, said after a recent practice. 'We'll shadow Maradona, but we won't forget the others.'
The others have been a constantly changing pattern this time, and it changes again without Ricardo Giusti, who received a red card in the victory over Italy, and three others: Julio Olarticoechea, Sergio Batista and Maradona's favorite target, Caniggia, who received a second yellow card in the same game.
While Beckenbauer expressed concern over their eventual replacements, citing their eagerness to excel, Bilardo has been forced to juggle the part of his lineup that has been most suspect, the midfield. As five goals in six games suggest, Argentina's offense has not performed well. The West Germans have scored 14 times.
The West Germans have experienced no such turbulence, only occasional discomfort, like playing to a draw with Colombia in the first round, a sluggish second half in the quarterfinal victory over Czechoslovakia and the usual trepidations of surviving penalty kicks to beat England in the semifinals.
Otherwise, Beckenbauer has had only to channel his players' energy and confidence in the right direction.
'West Germany is the stronger team, and we intend to prove it,' he said. 'All my players are fit and ready to play.'
Still, the presence of Diego Armando Maradona, who has acknowledged this will be his final World Cup, seems to skew the most reasonable of equations.
WORLD CUP '90