Schumacher’s ugly attack left an indelible stain on German game

If Luis Suarez is the bete noire of Brazil 2014 then Harald Schumacher was the villain of the piece in Espana 1982 – providing the ugly bookmark to a remarkable semi-final clash which Michel Platini described as ‘my most beautiful game’.

Try telling that to Patrick Battiston.

The European neighbours reconvene for just the second time since in the finals in Rio today, with the entente cordiale which has marked the near-neighbours’ political relations for many decades brutally disrupted one night in Andalusia.

It was a fixture which proved a watershed moment in both nation’s football history. For France, it was the galvanising event which led to Les Bleus, in the words of Gerard Houllier, starting to be truly loved by a nation traditionally obsessed with cycling and rugby.

For their opponents, then in the guise of West Germany, there was victory, but a hollow one in a tournament in which they suffered a dual stain.

The first was their part in the Anschluss of Gijon with Austria which knocked out Algeria in the group stages; then came Schumacher’s chilling actions which painted a distorted stereotype of German international football which has largely stuck since: pragmatic, efficient, win at all costs, no heart, no soul.

What many consider to be the finest match in World Cup history had the lot. Six goals, a dramatic comeback and penalty shoot-out, agony and ecstasy and sublime football from messrs Platini, Tigani, Giresse, Tresor, Littbarski and Rummenigge. Plus an X-rated scene.

The savage actions of Schumacher in racing out of goal to inflict a savage kung-fu kick on Battiston, which represented assault as opposed to a legitimate football challenge, resulted in the hospitalisation of the Frenchman in a moment which stunned football.

Battiston was knocked unconscious and was stretchered off, minus two teeth and with three cracked ribs and damaged vertabrae.

Dutch referee Charles Corver did not even blow for a foul following the incident, with Platini later saying that he initially thought his team-mate was dead.

The images of Schumacher celebrating by raising a triumphant arm in the air after Horst Hrubesch slotted home the winning penalty in the shoot-out, the monumental game having ended locked at 3-3 after extra-time, left a bitter taste in the mouths of not just those of a Gallic persuasion, but supporters everywhere.

German players were given the silent treatment on their return to the west with manager Jupp Derwall’s assertion that his team deserved credit for their strength of character in rallying from a 3-1 deficit to triumph cutting no ice.

Schumacher subsequently apologised, but it did not carry much weight after his chilling post-match utterance to the news Battiston had lost several teeth: “If that’s all that’s wrong with him, I’ll pay him the crowns.”.

In a French newspaper following the World Cup, Schumacher actually beat Adolf Hitler into second place in a poll asking readers for the least popular German.

While that incident was toxic, the football was intoxicating, with France cancelling out Pierre Littbarski’s early opener to lead 3-1 through goals from Platini (penalty), Marius Tresor and Alain Giresse, only for their rivals to level through goals from substitute Karl-Heinz Rummenigge and Klaus Fischer’s bicycle kick.

The penalty shoot-out denoument ended with Maxime Bossis denied by Schumacher, leaving it to Hrubesch to book West Germany’s passage to the final.

Some game, some controversy. Let us just hope the talk is of purely football later today and nothing else.