to us?
It would break your heart.
In fact, Nazare remembers the Republic striker Mickey Walsh, whom he knew from Portuguese football, going to him after the match and saying, ‘the hearts of the Irish people are
crying’. Actually, Walsh called him a cheat. Then Liam Brady asked Walsh what the Portuguese word for thief was and confronted him with that.
Eoin Hand, who gave his personal copy of the video to Howard, recalls saying to Nazare: ‘You’re a disgrace. You’ve been paid off. You’ve robbed us.’
So, 21 years later, Nazare accepted Howard’s invitation to look again at the video, to watch it on the television in his own apartment and to explain what he did to us that night.
At first Nazare is adamant that Stapleton was offside and that it was the linesman who made the decision. Then something else occurs to him. ‘I remember now that I had blown the whistle
before Stapleton touched the ball. So technically, you see, I did not disallow the goal, there was no goal to disallow.’
The two men look at the tape again, now joined by Nazare’s daughter Elsa and her husband, Antonio. Ireland have a free-kick on the edge of the penalty box. Brady is standing over the ball,
Stapleton loitering around the penalty spot. Just before Brady chips the ball into the box, Stapleton makes a run for the near post, beats the goalkeeper to the ball and side-foots it into the net.
He is a mile onside. The whistle is blown after the goal is scored.
Nazare, as though disbelieving what he is seeing, asks to see it again.
He looks at it a third time, his eyes now six inches from the screen.
Clearly the linesman does not signal at all until a good three seconds after Nazare himself disallowed the goal, at which point he guiltily raises the flag.
‘I think I made a mistake when I told you it was offside’, Nazare concedes, but now he claims he had given an indirect free-kick and that the goal was disallowed because Brady scored
direct.
Except it is clear that the ball changes direction on its way into the net, due to Stapleton hitting it.
Awkwardly for Nazare, his own daughter tells him that he couldn’t be right about that — though her husband Antonio is sticking with the old man, Antonio being in the business of
selling slow-motion technology to TV companies and thus an expert on this sort of thing.
Eventually they find a smaller TV in another room, but now it is even clearer that Brady did not score direct.
Then Nazare remembers something else. He reacts as if he can’t believe he had forgotten this — ‘the ball hits off me,’ he declares. ‘It hits off my back and goes
into the goal.’
So now he’s saying that the ball changes direction because it hits him, not Stapleton. In fact, when the kick is taken, he is running backwards towards the six-yard box and collides with
the centre-half Walter Meeuws.
Howard believes it is doubtful that Nazare even saw the goal, and his most charitable suggestion is that he may have instinctively disallowed it because he had hampered Walter Meeuws.
By now the four of them, in the apartment in Lisbon, are choreographing the scene and Nazare is still working on his defence: ‘I’m in the penalty box, where I shouldn’t
be,’ he says. ‘Frank pushes me and he turns me. And when I turn, the ball hits off my back and it goes into the goal. I remember now.’
Ah, it would break your heart.
Perhaps it was this crushing sense of disappointment, of our old friend failure, that ultimately bred the success which Paul Howard now enjoys as Ross O’Carroll-Kelly, one of the most
celebrated creations in the history of Irish publishing.
Nonetheless, if perchance your heart wasn’t totally broken by that meeting with Raul Nazare, I am told by my friend Dion Fanning, now a leading sportswriter, that he was nine years old
when that match was played and that he has a clear recollection of angrily tearing a picture of the by-now-infamous Nazare out of a Sunday paper and
It would break your heart.
In fact, Nazare remembers the Republic striker Mickey Walsh, whom he knew from Portuguese football, going to him after the match and saying, ‘the hearts of the Irish people are
crying’. Actually, Walsh called him a cheat. Then Liam Brady asked Walsh what the Portuguese word for thief was and confronted him with that.
Eoin Hand, who gave his personal copy of the video to Howard, recalls saying to Nazare: ‘You’re a disgrace. You’ve been paid off. You’ve robbed us.’
So, 21 years later, Nazare accepted Howard’s invitation to look again at the video, to watch it on the television in his own apartment and to explain what he did to us that night.
At first Nazare is adamant that Stapleton was offside and that it was the linesman who made the decision. Then something else occurs to him. ‘I remember now that I had blown the whistle
before Stapleton touched the ball. So technically, you see, I did not disallow the goal, there was no goal to disallow.’
The two men look at the tape again, now joined by Nazare’s daughter Elsa and her husband, Antonio. Ireland have a free-kick on the edge of the penalty box. Brady is standing over the ball,
Stapleton loitering around the penalty spot. Just before Brady chips the ball into the box, Stapleton makes a run for the near post, beats the goalkeeper to the ball and side-foots it into the net.
He is a mile onside. The whistle is blown after the goal is scored.
Nazare, as though disbelieving what he is seeing, asks to see it again.
He looks at it a third time, his eyes now six inches from the screen.
Clearly the linesman does not signal at all until a good three seconds after Nazare himself disallowed the goal, at which point he guiltily raises the flag.
‘I think I made a mistake when I told you it was offside’, Nazare concedes, but now he claims he had given an indirect free-kick and that the goal was disallowed because Brady scored
direct.
Except it is clear that the ball changes direction on its way into the net, due to Stapleton hitting it.
Awkwardly for Nazare, his own daughter tells him that he couldn’t be right about that — though her husband Antonio is sticking with the old man, Antonio being in the business of
selling slow-motion technology to TV companies and thus an expert on this sort of thing.
Eventually they find a smaller TV in another room, but now it is even clearer that Brady did not score direct.
Then Nazare remembers something else. He reacts as if he can’t believe he had forgotten this — ‘the ball hits off me,’ he declares. ‘It hits off my back and goes
into the goal.’
So now he’s saying that the ball changes direction because it hits him, not Stapleton. In fact, when the kick is taken, he is running backwards towards the six-yard box and collides with
the centre-half Walter Meeuws.
Howard believes it is doubtful that Nazare even saw the goal, and his most charitable suggestion is that he may have instinctively disallowed it because he had hampered Walter Meeuws.
By now the four of them, in the apartment in Lisbon, are choreographing the scene and Nazare is still working on his defence: ‘I’m in the penalty box, where I shouldn’t
be,’ he says. ‘Frank pushes me and he turns me. And when I turn, the ball hits off my back and it goes into the goal. I remember now.’
Ah, it would break your heart.
Perhaps it was this crushing sense of disappointment, of our old friend failure, that ultimately bred the success which Paul Howard now enjoys as Ross O’Carroll-Kelly, one of the most
celebrated creations in the history of Irish publishing.
Nonetheless, if perchance your heart wasn’t totally broken by that meeting with Raul Nazare, I am told by my friend Dion Fanning, now a leading sportswriter, that he was nine years old
when that match was played and that he has a clear recollection of angrily tearing a picture of the by-now-infamous Nazare out of a Sunday paper and
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