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Monday, May 21, 2018, 18:04
Uruguay 1930: 'If we win here, they'll kill us'
By Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Monday, May 21, 2018, 18:04 By Deutsche Presse-Agentur

Players of Uruguay pose for a team picture before the World Cup final match against Argentina in Montevideo, Uruguay, 30 July 1930. (DB STAFF / OFF / DPA)

MONTEVIDEO - Uruguay won the first World Cup final on July 30, 1930, but that game could have ended very differently. Who knows what the history of football might have been like if Argentina had won that match in Montevideo.

Some 82 minutes into the game, Uruguay were winning 3-2. Argentina striker Francisco "Pancho" Varallo got the ball, but his shot hit the top left corner of Uruguay’s goal.

A draw would have meant 30 minutes of extra time. If there was still no winner after that, another match would have been needed to establish the first world champion in history. However, that shot ended up crushing Argentine hopes on the pitch and the stands alike. Away supporters started to leave the Estadio Centenario en masse, in anticipation of defeat.

Argentina had imposed their superiority in the first half and were winning 2-1 at the break, but when they went into the changing room one of their players made a comment that showed some were already cracking under the huge pressure of the match.

“If we win here, they’ll kill us,” he said.

Varallo himself told dpa the anecdote in an interview at his home in La Plata, about 60 kilometres away from Buenos Aires, a few years before his death at age 100 on August 30, 2010.

"Nobody wanted to play... I couldn’t believe it!" said Varallo, who was barely 20 at the time to brace the rebelliousness and the pride that marked his whole career.

Picture taken 15 April 2004, of Argentinian ex soccer player, Francisco "Pancho" Varallo - the sole suvivor of the first football World Cup final, played in Uruguay back in 1930, and that Argentina lost to the locals 4-2, posing with a drawing depicting himself on the time he played for Boca Juniros, at his house in La Plata. (PABLO CUARTEROLO / AFP)

Despite his reaction in the changing room, Varallo did not manage to turn things around. Uruguay managed a comeback in the second half, and the match ended 4-2 to prevent the visitors from taking home the first World Cup.

"When I got back from Montevideo I screamed at Uruguayans in rage because we had lost. But it was us who lost that final," Varallo said.

His team-mate Alberto Chividini, who was a starter in the tournament’s first round of play, in Mexico, but did not play the final, admitted that the team was crestfallen in the definitive match.

"We shrank to an incredible degree. And of course the Uruguayans noticed the cowardice of their rivals and made the most of the occasion," Chividini told Argentine media.

For all the bitterness he felt after failing to win a World Cup at 20, Varallo always said he later grew fond of Uruguayans.

"I really love Uruguayans," the Argentine said.

Although he was active in Boca Juniors among other clubs, he expressed his admiration for Uruguayan player Enzo Francescoli, a former star of their arch-rivals River Plate.

That first World Cup final marked the growing rivalry between neighbors Uruguay and Argentina in the field of sport, and clashes between both are a classic of South American football.

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