The Story of Argentina in The World Cup Part 5

We are continuing in our story, talking about the history of Argentina in the World Cup. After winning the championship in 1986 in Mexico, Argentina, led by Maradona, traveled to Italy, where the 1990 World Cup was held.

World Cup 1990

The 1990 FIFA World Cup is the 14th tournament in the history of the FIFA World Cup, which was held in Italy from June 8 to July 8, 1990, and this tournament made Italy the second country to organize this global event twice, after Mexico.

The United Arab Emirates, Costa Rica, and the Republic of Ireland participated in this tournament for the first time, in addition to the presence of the United States of America for the first time after an absence of forty years, while the Egyptian team returned after an absence of 56 years.

The tournament system remained the same as in the previous tournament in 1986, where 24 teams qualified for the finals, and the teams were divided into six groups.

Argentina is placed in Group B along with Cameroon, the Soviet Union, and Romania.

Argentina opened its first-round matches at the famous San Siro stadium in Milan against Cameroon, in front of more than 70,000 spectators who filled the match stadium.

Cameroonian player Francois Oumam Biek shocked the whole world when he opened the scoring for the "Untamed Lions" in the first minute of the match, and despite the many attempts of Argentina led by Maradona and Canigia, Cameroon managed to maintain the result and detonate a huge surprise by defeating the defending champion.

At the San Paolo stadium of Naples, the Argentina national team regained its balance by defeating the Soviet Union, with goals by Pedro Trolio and Jorge Burruchaga, in a match that witnessed a great reception from the Naples fans for their legend Diego Armando Maradona, the star of Napoli at the time.

At the same stadium, Argentina ended their first-round matches with a 1-1 draw with Romania, Pedro Monzon scored first for Argentina, before Romanian Gabi Balint equalized the result in the 68th minute.

Argentina finished third in the group behind Cameroon and Romania and qualified for the second round as one of the best third-placed teams.

In the second round, at the Delle Alpi stadium in Turin, the Argentine team faced its Brazilian counterpart.

After almost absolute Brazilian control of the match and missing many opportunities, the legend Maradona set off a counterattack and dribbled three Brazilian players before passing the ball to his colleague Canigia, who dribbled goalkeeper Taffarel and scored the game's only goal in the 80th minute.

After the end of the match, Maradona ran around the stadium several times back and forth to celebrate the victory over the traditional rival, so that the Brazilian press came out the next day, wondering about the secret of this energy available to Maradona after 90 hard minutes, alluding to Maradona's use of doping.