George Hamilton
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
So Jimmy McGee was in Buenos Aires and District Philip Green was in Cordoba.
Billy George was kind of based in Buenos Aires, but travelling a bit near the capital.
And I was in the far west in Mendoza.
So I had six matches in four weeks.
And who were the teams that I covered?
There was Poland, there was Iran, there was the Netherlands that I'd done in 76, there was Scotland, and there was Brazil.
I did Brazil at my very first World Cup.
Yeah, that was the goal that put them out.
They were on a hiding to nothing really because they had, as you say, blown it before that.
And it was going to take this remarkable result to kind of put them through.
But try as they might and score a goal like that as they did.
It just wasn't enough because the Netherlands came back and ended the dream.
But to have the opportunity to commentate on a goal like that, as you can imagine, is something else.
And Jimmy McGee had the same kind of thing happen in Argentina, England in 86, when Maradona got the ball around about the halfway line and beat one player, a different class, beat another player, a different class.
And by now he's about to shoot and he shoots and he scores, he's in a different class.
I mean, just wonderful, wonderful commentary.
Yeah, well, that was exactly the feeling because we all kind of bought into this idea that Scotland were going to be special at this World Cup and the fact that it had turned out that they weren't so special at all, that they were a collection of top players, but they weren't a team, basically, is what it was.
And going into this against the Netherlands, the surprise factor was that they did so well that they actually got to 3-1 up in that game and were nearly...
nearly believing that they could do it.
But something told you at the back of your mind, they're not, that this was just kind of going to be a wonderful swan song, that it was too good to be true.