Mexico 86, the best world cup??

An excellent blog from Bradley King has underlined to me how much coverage of the beautiful game has changed a lot since I was a lad. I am only 35 years of age now but the volume of football on television is just staggering. The only games shown live when I was a young boy were the F.A. Cup Final and the England v Scotland international so as you can imagine we were pretty starved of coverage as youngsters. The exception to the rule was the FIFA World cup, wall to wall footie it was amazing to someone like me who loved the game. My first world cup was Mexico 86, maradona's hand of god, gary lineker with his wrist cast, mexico being pretty rubbish, spectacular long range goals from the soviet union and the germans getting to yet another final beating the fabulous french team on the way. It was an excellent world cup and I pretty much watched every game, I still remember watching the England v Poland match on my small black and white portable with the sound down, as you can imagine it was hard to stop myself screaming when Mr lineker scored his wonderful hat trick. The tournament progressed and probably the best game apart from the final itself was the quarter final between Brazil and France a magnificent game which ebbed and flowed before the game was decided on penalties, I vividly remember Zico missing a penalty in the 90 mins. I felt a certain sadness when the tournament was over and Argentina were crowned World champions I dont think I have witnessed a world cup since which has excited me as much as that one did. South Africa has a lot to live up to and heres hoping that as a spectacle it can live up to the magic of Mexico 86..