When soccer was a sultry.

El Molinón looked like the best dates. Like when Sporting de Gijón was the central protagonist of Spanish football at the end of the 1970s. Or as shown in the film Start Again, by José Luis Garci. Some 40,000 people had gone that June 25, 1982 to witness a football party. They were almost all Spaniards eager for the World Cup. But there were also Austrians and Germans to see their teams at the close of group 2. And even expectant Algerians, because their historic chance of overcoming the first phase depended on that outcome. But the supposed party of suspense turned into the closest thing to shame. Almost the only result that classified the two Europeans happened: Germany won 1-0. And those people - almost all of those people - expressed their annoyance and disappointment during and after the game. "

The day before, at the Carlos Tartiere in Oviedo, Algeria had played a memorable first half against Chile: they scored three goals in 28 minutes. In the end, the African team - in their first participation in a World Cup - won 3-2. So, the accounts of the three with chances began. Germany needed to win yes or yes. Austria needed to not lose by more than two goals. Algeria was classified by any other scenario of results.

The decisive encounter lasted just ten minutes, until the huge Horst Hrubesh put his right thigh to a cross and set up the only goal of the game. Since then, the development has been a succession of rudeness. They passed the ball, they lent it to them, they didn't kick at the goal. One obvious after another. It was, ultimately, a kind of non-aggression pact between neighbors. The handful of Algerians who were watching the actions had had enough. And to the wind they began to show bills and waved them. And they also threw some onto the playing field. They screamed their helplessness. It was his way of expressing that there was an arrangement on the playing field.

The German and Austrian media did not escape this truth: since then that party began to be called The Shame of Gijón (Schande von Gijón). During the meeting, the radio and television commentators could not believe it. In the middle of the World Cup, before the eyes of the world, both teams offered a historic role. The German journalist Eberhard Stanjek from the ARD (Consortium of Public Broadcasting Institutions of the Federal Republic of Germany, at a time when the Wall was dividing Berlin and the country in two) decided not to continue commenting on the meeting. Silence was his response to embarrassment. He was not the only one.

Germany won the group on goal difference and ended up runners-up after losing to Italy in the final. Austria was second in the zone and agreed to the second phase, where they were eliminated by France. Algeria was left out -after two victories and one defeat-, but they earned all the love of the Spanish and the world of football. That performance was glory without a happy ending. On June 16, in the same Molinón of the traumatic outcome, Algeria had played their first match in a World Cup. And then he built the biggest triumph in his history and one of the most incredible surprises of the maximum event: with audacious football, without inhibitions, he beat Germany 2-1, with goals from Rabah Madjer (also the author of a goal of cue in the Champions Cup final for Porto in 1987) and Lakhdar Belloumi. In that team, among others,

The leadership of the Algerian Federation made a formal protest before the FIFA authorities. They asked that the match be annulled and that those selected who benefited from the outcome be sanctioned. There was no case. The answer was strictly tied to the regulation and not to its spirit: "They did not transgress any rule." However, the match left a mark on the way to the World Cups: from then on, the matches of the last date of the group stage are played at the same time. So that that scandal does not repeat itself.

Hans Peter Briegel played in that Germany. The same one that the Mexican writer Juan Villoro once defined as follows: "Here comes Hans Peter Briegel, which in German means 'National Railways of Germany'". Yes, it looked like a train. Briegel, a brave defender, was encouraged to suggest -25 years later- what all the other protagonists are still hiding: that 1-0 was an agreement. In that 2007, the world corroborated that Algeria should continue listening to applause in Spain 1982.

Source images: EPE.