Remembering Antonio Rattin

The Argentina captain came to be defined by his sending off in the World Cup in 1966 but he was a much better player and more complex character than the bogeyman image allows

The great Argentinian left-back Silvio Marzolini once told me that Bobby Charlton had told him that Antonio Rattín was such a bogeyman in England that parents would tell their children that if they didn’t behave, Rattin would come for them. I assume this isn’t true (although if anybody’s parents did say that to them, by all means get in touch) and I haven’t been able to work out whether the story came about because Marzolini misunderstood something or because Charlton exaggerated. But the broader point, perhaps, is that it might have been true. Rattin, tall and saturnine, was easily to cast as a bogeyman.

Rattin died on Saturday at the age of 89, on the day England and Argentina played in World Cup quarter-finals 60 years after a World Cup quarter-final between England and Argentina in which Rattin was sent off and responded with such bewilderment that it led to the invention of red and yellow cards. For most English people, the only image we have of him is him sitting defiantly on the red carpet in front of the royal box, then slowly walking round the pitch towards the tunnel. As a kid, the Falklands and the Hand of God having created a certain image of Argentina in my mind, Rattin seemed the embodiment of something quite dark and disturbing.

I interviewed Rattin twice. The first time was supposed to be about tactical development and the second time about the great Boca Juniors side of the sixties, but in both he wanted to talk about 1966 and how convinced he was it was all fixed. Maybe it was just because he assumed that was what an English journalist wanted to talk about, but the sense was that what happened at Wembley that day defined him.

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The Power and the Glory, my history of the World Cup, is now out in paperback. Buy it here or here.

Issue Sixty-One of The Blizzard is available here, featuring Brazil, Argentina, Belgium’s first international coach, a photo-essay from Uzbekistan, memories of Scotland in 1998, a look at Curaçao and Cape Verde and an investigation into what went wrong for Serbia-Montenegro in 2006.

On It Was What It Was, the football history podcast, we continue our series on England and the 1966 World Cup. Listen here.

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On Libero, we continue our coverage from the World Cup. Listen here.

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But you don’t have to have spoken to see how odd the whole affair was, to recognise the complex layers of emotion. Go back and watch the video. Rattin, already cautioned, went through the back of Geoff Hurst and shot an anxious glance at the punctilious West German referee Rudi Kreitlein. Soon after, England were awarded a free-kick just outside the box. The wall took a while to retreat and Kreitlein was clearly irritated by Argentina holding the ball. But eventually the free-kick was taken, laid off to Charlton who shot wide.

Then, as the goalkeeper Antonio Roma took the goal-kick, Kreitlein ordered Rattin off. It’s still never been explained why. Kreitlein had no Spanish and Rattin no German or English. He later explained that the look on Rattin’s face had been enough. And perhaps if a captain questions everything there comes a point at which action has to be taken. But what provoked Kreitlein to take that action at that moment has never been explained.

Rattin was disbelieving. He pleaded for an interpreter, which he always insisted he had been told he was entitled to. That may sound bizarre, but it does explain his actions, his confusion, his sense of being cheated. Other Argentinian players reacted angrily; Rattin looked incredulous. Eventually, truculently, he left. As he walked round the pitch, he was pelted with beer and Aeros. He paused at the corner, and took the flag in his right hand, rubbing the Union Jack design between thumb and forefinger: “Is this your country now?” he seemed to be saying. “Is this your famous fair play?” The tunnel in those days was not, as it would be later, in the corner on the royal box side, but level with the edge of the penalty area on the opposite side. When Rattin got there, he found it blocked by the Shetland pony mascot of the marching band and had to shove it out of the way.

He’d forgotten the detail of the pony by the time I spoke to him, but not the Aeros. Many players have a similar story of eating food that’s been thrown at them, but he seemed genuinely fascinated by the notion of aerated chocolate, which had not at that point arrived in Argentina.

Rattin may have been painted as a bogeyman, but he was always a more sensitive figure than the popular image suggested. His hero when he was growing up was the great River Plate holding midfielder Pipo Rossi. “One Saturday,” Rattin said, “the day I made my debut for Boca’s fifth team, I was on the train, on the back seat, and at Beccar station he gets in the same carriage. As soon as I saw him, I stood up and approached, not to talk to him, but to be closer to him. I sat behind him. We reached Retiro station and we both changed for the Subte. He left at Avenida de Mayo, I continued to Lanús, where the game was being played, the first time I’d ever wear the Boca jersey in my life. But it was great, because I could see him, check how tall he was, look at how he walked, everything.”

The idea of the great hard man of Argentinian football being too intimidated to speak to his idol is counterintuitive, but there was a vulnerability to him. He hated leaving home, and would get his wife and children to record messages for him on tapes so he could play them to himself before he went to bed each night.

The second time I spoke to him was at the Boca former players club at la Bombonera; Marzolini was also there and insisted on joining us, offering a fascinating insight into the squad dynamic. The left-back was good-looking and charismatic, the first Argentinian player to earn an advertising contract (for espadrilles) and was very good at poking fun at Rattin. You could see the tribulations of leadership, the seriousness with which he had to take himself, and you could see how certain other favoured players had enjoyed puncturing that.

But in 1966, Rattin was in a difficult position. After the squad had left for a pre-tournament tour pf Itay, there had been a coup at home, which unsettled everybody. He didn’t get on with the manager Juan Carlos Lorenzo and organisation was dreadful. Rattin was so on edge he ended up punching the reserve midfielder José Pastoriza. The chaos continued in England: the team bus got lost on a trip to train at Lilleshall and when they got there it turned out the kit had been left back at the hotel, so the players had to wear whatever they could scavenge from lost property.

What happened against England was in keeping with the tenor of the whole tournament for Argentina, whose delegates had arrived late for the meeting to allocate referees for the quarter-finals. Had they arrived in time, there would surely never have been a West German appointed to the England game while an Englishman did the West Germany’s quarter-final against Uruguay. There was a sense of mutual suspicion that spilled over and, even then, the real flashpoint appears to have been a direct result of the Argentinian delegation misinforming Rattin.

And it came to define him. Nobody should be in any doubt that he was a very tough player who was quite prepared to put in big tackles and make fouls when he needed to. But he was also extremely good on the ball and a great leader, who won four league titles with Boca Juniors and reached the 1963 Libertadores final where they lost a two-legged classic to Pelé’s Santos. Feared as he may have been, he had a human side. And he was a great player who deserves to be remembered for far more than that long, slow, sad walk at Wembley.