Brazilian referee took revenge on the Soviets in a game of the only Olympic goal in World Cups

In May 1960, while preparing to host the 1962 World Cup, Chile was rocked by the largest earthquake ever recorded in history, measuring 9.5 degrees on the international scale. It is estimated that there were more than 5,000 deaths and that 25% of the population was left homeless.

Of the eight cities chosen to host the competition’s matches, four (Talca, Concepción, Talcahuano and Valdivia) were so severely affected that they had to be removed from the list.

There was a lot of discussion about the country’s ability to host the World Cup, as well as debates about the insistence on the idea of ​​hosting the tournament in the midst of the national tragedy. That was when the president of the South American Football Confederation, the Brazilian naturalized Chilean Carlos Dittborn, uttered the phrase that would eventually become the unofficial slogan of the competition: “Because we have nothing, we will do everything”.

It was in this scenario that Brazil won its second world title, led by Garrincha, Didi, Zagallo and Vavá. And Chile was also the scene of the only Olympic goal scored in a World Cup, in the match between Colombia and the Soviet Union, refereed by the Brazilian of Hungarian descent João Etzel Filho.

It was Sunday, June 3, when the stadium in Arica, one of the four cities that had the capacity to host the competition, alongside Santiago, Rancagua and Viña del Mar, hosted the game valid for the second round.

The Soviets were favorites. The Colombians were making their debut in a World Cup and, in their debut, they had been defeated by Uruguay. In addition, the Soviet Union had the legendary Lev Yashin, widely considered the best goalkeeper in the world at the time.

On the side of the South American team, the main name was on the bench. The team was led by Argentine Adolfo Pedernera, one of the icons of the historic River Plate team in the 1940s.

Faced with the technical difference in the squads, Colombia would end up cornered in the first half. With just 11 minutes, they were trailing 3-0. Two goals were scored by Ivanov; one, by Chislenko. Acero even decreased before the break, but Ponedelnik made the fourth of the Soviets at the beginning of the second half to stop, at least momentarily, the opponent’s animation.

At that point, it was difficult to envision a reaction from the Colombians. But in the middle of the second stage that started to change. In the 23rd minute, the team got a corner. Midfielder Marcos Coll appeared for the kick. He didn’t know it, but he was about to leave his name in the history of football.

The images from the time are not very clear, but videos on the FIFA website show how the shot went. He made the charge in a closed manner. The ball bounced in the small area and passed between a defender and Yashin’s right post. Olympic goal — goals of this type have been called that since the Argentine Onzari scored in this way in his team’s victory over Uruguay, Olympic champion and to this day known as the Olympic Celeste, in a friendly in 1924.

As Coll was hugged by his teammates, Yashin raged at the Soviet markers.

To date, no one has managed to repeat the feat in a World Cup. “For me, it was a joy that God gave me this goal. It’s been 50 years, and no other player has managed to repeat it. Certainly, the Olympic goal immortalized me”, declared the Colombian to the newspaper El Espectador, in 2012.

In Colombia, Coll became a national idol. In 2017, when he died of respiratory problems, the country’s then president, Juan Manuel Santos Calderón, described him as “the glory of football”.

The rarity of the feat is due to the apparent impossibility of the player hitting this type of kick, since he is on the same line as the posts when hitting the corner. Therefore, he has no way of seeing the target clearly.

For the ball to take the direction of the goal, it must rotate laterally and gain the Magnus effect, named after the German physicist Heinrich Gustav Magnus. He was the first to describe how the rotation of an object alters its trajectory.

“Because of the force caused by the Magnus effect, the ball will deviate from a regular trajectory, the one influenced only by air resistance and gravitational force. The orientation of this deviation depends on how the ball is spinning. way avoiding things that were in front of him”, explains professor Otaviano Helene, from the Department of Physics at USP (University of São Paulo), a specialist in sports physics.

The goal also surprised the Soviet Union in such a way that the team blacked out. Four minutes after Coll hit the net, Rada scored the third. With four minutes remaining, Klinger equalized.

Bewildered, the favorites did not know how to explain how they had missed the victory. But a surprising answer to that would emerge decades later. Brazilian referee João Etzel Filho said he deliberately favored the Colombians in that match.

In an interview published in the special edition of Placar celebrating “100 Years of Football in Brazil”, in 1994, the referee stated: “I drew that match”.

For him, it was like revenge. A descendant of Hungarians, Etzel Filho saw an uprising in his parents’ country against Soviet rule being massacred.

There is no record of crucial contested moves, but the judge had a reputation that makes the possibility plausible. In 1988, when he died of a heart attack at the age of 73, the Placar report cited precisely “his reputation for producing results”.

Sports journalist Silvio Lancellotti (1944-2022) used to call him the “monarch of draws”.

In the 1962 World Cup, the only game he refereed was precisely that 4-4 between Colombia and the Soviet Union.

It was the lone point of the Colombians, eliminated in the first phase, with farewell in defeat by 5 to 0 for Yugoslavia. The Soviets advanced and fell in the quarterfinals, 2-1 to hosts Chile.

This one is the fifth in a series of ten texts about important characters from the World Cups who, over time, have been forgotten. They are published on Thursdays.