Editorial (May 21, 2018) — When Peru takes on Denmark at the Mordovia Arena in Saransk, Russia on June 16, it will officially end a 36-year World Cup absence for the South Americans. That frustrating drought was the longest of the nine nations from the continent who’ve played in the tournament (Venezuela still has yet to qualify).

La Blanquirroja is hoping that the 2018 edition of this competition goes better than their last appearance in 1982. Though they only lost one of their three group matches, it came in rather ignominious fashion: a 5-1 drubbing at the hands of Poland that condemned them to last place in Group 1.

Next month’s opener against the Danes will take place exactly a week short of the 36-year anniversary of that unfortunate result. Back then, on June 23 in La Coruña, Spain, a 33-year-old attacker played 50 minutes before being subbed off in what would be his final appearance for the national team. But what he accomplished in the 14 years prior cemented his legacy in the annals of Peruvian soccer.

That man is Teofilo Cubillas.

Teofilo Cubillas: The Man Who Spearheaded Peruvian Soccer’s Most Successful Era

Born in Lima on March 8, 1949, Cubillas stood out at an early age. He made his debut with hometown club Alianza at 16 years old and actually led the Peruvian top flight in scoring that year. It didn’t take long for him to receive a call-up to the national team, the first of which came in July of 1968. He came on as a second-half sub in a 4-0 loss to Brazil, a team which would continue to prove a tough nut to crack for Cubillas and the Peruvians in subsequent years.

1970 FIFA World Cup: Cubillas’ Coming Out Party

After a successful qualifying campaign that saw Peru go unbeaten against Argentina, the team made its first World Cup appearance since the inaugural tournament back in 1930, joining Brazil and Uruguay out of CONMEBOL. How they’d fare in Mexico was uncertain in a group that also contained Morocco, Bulgaria and formidable West Germany. Their first test of the tournament came in Leon against a Bulgarian side boasting its own dynamic attacking presence in striker Georgi Asparuhov.

To say things got off to a rocky start would be underestimating the situation. A 12th-minute goal from Dinko Dermendjiev followed by another five minutes after halftime by Hristo Bonev had Peru in a 2-0 hole. But the comeback was officially on a minute after Bonev’s tally when Alberto Gallardo, ironically the player Cubillas replaced during his international debut nearly two years earlier, halved Bulgaria’s advantage. Then came the equalizer from captain Hector Chumpitaz in the 56th minute followed by the first example of Cubillas’ clinical finishing on the global soccer stage in the 73rd.

Opening match jitters suddenly morphed into beaming confidence against Morocco in match number two. Buoyed by a two-goal performance from Cubillas, Peru dominated 3-0 to assure themselves of a spot in the quarterfinals. Though they inevitably fell to West Germany in the group stage finale and later to eventual champions Brazil in the quarters, Cubillas found the net in each of those games.

All in all, he finished as the tournament’s third-leading goal scorer with five. The only two players who registered more played for the only two teams that bested Peru that year, West Germany’s Gerd Müller and Brazil’s Jairzinho. What’s particularly noteworthy is that Cubillas’ goal total was one more than the legendary Pele mustered in Mexico. And there’s certainly no shame in one’s tournament coming to an end at the hands of a team many consider to be the best national side of all-time.

1975 Copa America: Cubillas Helps Capture Continental Glory

When it comes to championships at both international and continental level, South America essentially has a big three: Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. The numbers speak for themselves. They are the only nations from the continent to have won the World Cup and have also taken a whopping 37 of the 45 Copa Americas played up to this point. Regarding the latter, Peru’s lone title prior to 1975 came in 1939. But not only was that tournament on home soil. It was somewhat watered down with Argentina and Brazil not participating.

1975 was different. Prior to that year, the tournament was known as the South American Championship. It marked the first of three straight Copa Americas that didn’t have a single host nation but rather had games played all over the continent. Peru was looking to erase the sting of narrowly missing out on the 1974 World Cup, losing 2-1 to Chile in a one-game playoff. And for Cubillas, there had to have been an added motivation of finally triumphing over Brazil, a team he was 0-4 against since making his national team debut.

He and his teammates got their shot in the semifinals after both teams went undefeated en route to winning their respective groups. A two-legged affair, Peru faced a hostile environment to start with leg one taking place in Belo Horizonte. But Enrique Casaretto silenced the 75,000 in attendance at Estádio Mineirão when he put the visitors up 1-0 in the 19th minute. Brazil got one back courtesy of Roberto Batata slightly after halftime and the match hung in the balance with 10 minutes left in regulation.

That’s when Cubillas exhibited to the world another exceptional element of his game: executing jaw-dropping set piece goals. In the 82nd minute, this happened.

Casaretto added an insurance goal for his brace as Cubillas and Peru finally exorcised their Brazilian demons by a 3-1 scoreline. It was just the team’s second win over Brazil all-time and their first since 1953. Though the return leg in Lima resulted in a loss, the team did indeed clinch its spot in the final when all was said and done. There, Peru knocked off Colombia to claim its second and most recent Copa America trophy. Though Cubillas finished with just two goals, his play throughout the tournament earned him best player honors.

1978 FIFA World Cup: Set Piece Magic Hat

Peru qualified for the 1978 edition of the World Cup in rather emphatic fashion, routing Bolivia 5-0 in a game where Cubillas scored twice. 11 months later, they were in Cordoba, Argentina for their group stage opener against Scotland. Much like what transpired eight years earlier, Peru initially fell behind with Joe Jordan’s 14th-minute strike putting the Scots ahead. But Cesar Cueto equalized right before halftime, giving Peru momentum. They received even more in the second half when goalkeeper Ramon Quiroga saved a Don Masson penalty kick.

That’s when Cubillas helped ignite the Peruvian 4-2-4 formation with his powerful right foot. The first example came in the 71st minute when he unleashed a rocket of a shot from 25 yards out which beat Alan Rough to his right and made it 2-1. But that was only the beginning. Six minutes later came one of the most eye-popping goals in the history of the tournament. With Peru getting a free kick just outside the box after a Stuart Kennedy foul, Cubillas stepped up and blasted the ball with his instep. The resulting display of artistic beauty on the pitch will forever live in World Cup lore.

Next up for Cubillas and La Blanquirroja was The Netherlands, favorites to not only win the group but the tournament as a whole. After all, the 1970s was the decade that the Dutch brought “total football” to the world. It nearly resulted in a World Cup title four years earlier when they fell 2-1 to West Germany in a game they initially led. But Peru held the Oranje scoreless, a result made all the more impressive considering their 3-0 win over Iran four days earlier. In that game, striker Rob Rensenbrink netted a hat-trick. He wouldn’t be the last to victimize the Iranians in such a way.

It was Cubillas’ turn to do the same in the group finale. Almost immediately, Iran found themselves behind the eight ball when Jose Velásquez put Peru up two minutes in. Then they committed two fouls in the box three minutes apart late in the first half. Cubillas buried both spot kicks and added another in the 79th minute via a deft finish past Nasser Hejazi for his hat-trick. Combined with Scotland upsetting the Netherlands, the result meant that Peru came out winners of Group 4.

That year, the format for the second round was another group stage in which the winners and runners-up from the four first-round groups were drawn into two groups of four. The two teams who finished tops would play in the final while the two-second place teams would contest the third-place match. Unfortunately for Peru, not much went right. They lost all three games, didn’t manage a single goal, and got annihilated 6-0 by the host nation and eventual winners Argentina in the final match.

But Cubillas’ impact on the tournament was readily apparent. Eight years after netting five goals at the World Cup, he did so once more. It tied him with Rensenbrink for second in the golden boot race behind Mario Kempes who finished with six for Argentina. At the time, Cubillas was the only player in history to score at least five goals in two World Cups. Germany’s Miroslav Klose and Thomas Müller have since accomplished the feat.

1982 FIFA World Cup: The Last Hurrah

1982 marked the only time in Peruvian soccer history that the side appeared in two straight World Cups. And they came to Spain in June of that year as an aging team in the twilight of its glory years. Fully nine of the 22 players in the squad were on the wrong end of 30, including Cubillas who was 33. They also faced the harrowing prospect of having to take on Italy and Poland in the group stage, two teams with high expectations heading into the tournament.

Things got off to a promising yet uneventful start in A Coruña when Peru drew 0-0 with World Cup debutants Cameroon. Cubillas played 57 minutes but was largely ineffective before coming off for Guillermo La Rosa. The scene shifted to Vigo three days later when Peru dueled with the eventual champion Italians. The Azzurri took the lead 18 minutes in when Bruno Conti unleashed a curling shot from the top of the arc that the veteran keeper Quiroga had no chance of getting to despite an athletic lunge to his left. But Peru defended well the rest of the game and were rewarded in the 83rd minute when captain Ruben Diaz’s shot deflected off an Italian player and trickled into the net.

By virtue of Poland’s 0-0 tie with Cameroon, Peru found themselves tied for first in the group heading into the group finale. That match was an ironic one in that the Poles themselves were in the midst of a golden age. Eight years earlier, they won six of seven games at the World Cup including a 1-0 triumph over Brazil to take third place. Much like Cubillas, players such as Grzegorz Lato and Andrzej Szarmach were in their 30s and in search of one last shot at glory.

But first came the task of actually scoring with Poland’s first two group games both ending goalless. Not much changed after the first half of their third with Poland and Peru tied 0-0 at halftime. But when Cubillas came off five minutes into the second stanza, the Peruvian ship began taking on water. It began when Wlodzimierz Smolarek put the Poles up 1-0 in the 55th minute. By the 76th minute, Poland had four more including what would be Lato’s final World Cup goal. Though the man who replaced Cubillas against Cameroon, La Rosa, got one back late, the damage was done. Peru’s World Cup was over. And so was its most successful soccer era along with the international career of the talismanic force who spearheaded it.

Purveyor of Joy in the Wake of Tragedy

Time and time again, we witness how sports can provide healing in the aftermath of turbulent events. It’s no different now than it was in earlier times. And on multiple occasions, Cubillas helped bring a measure of happiness to his nation after unfortunate tragedies.

The first example came during his World Cup debut. Just three days prior, a massive 7.9 magnitude earthquake rocked Peru with the epicenter roughly 22 miles off the coast in the Pacific Ocean. In addition to the catastrophic damage from the quake itself, the temblor destabilized part of Mount Huascarán, a 22,000+ foot peak in the Peruvian Andes. This caused what’s considered to be the deadliest avalanche in history when a torrent of snow, ice, mud, and rock traveling as fast as 200 miles per hour buried the towns of Yungay and Ranrahirca. Over 20,000 people perished in the avalanche while the disaster as a whole claimed nearly 70,000 lives.

Cubillas and his teammates certainly played with heavy hearts as a result. But they also hoped to provide some temporary joy as a nation coped with unspeakable devastation. Their comeback win over Bulgaria bolstered by Cubillas’ majestic strike served as a shining example. It was its own unique triumph of the human spirit, even if millions back home were in the midst of much greater struggles en route to such a resolution. But overall, Peru’s journey to the final eight which featured Cubillas scoring in every single game gave a nation reeling from the worst natural disaster in its history something to be proud of.

Much like his time with the national team, Cubillas also enjoyed a prolific club career. He eventually made the move from Alianza to Europe, playing for Swiss club FC Basel and later in Portugal with Porto where he scored 48 goals over 85 appearances. He even played in the old North American Soccer League where he was the Fort Lauderdale Strikers’ all-time leading goal-scorer. But he always felt an innate connection with his hometown club and late in his career, he responded when they needed him most.

On December 8, 1987, a plane carrying Alianza players back home after a 1-0 road win over Deportivo Pucallpa crashed into the Pacific Ocean while trying to land. Of the 44 people on board, only the pilot survived. Much like the Chapecoense disaster 29 years later, it was a tragedy that sent shockwaves throughout the soccer world. It required a complete rebuild of the roster. And Cubillas, who was 38 and living in Miami at the time, decided to come out of retirement to play for the club who gave him his start all those years ago. He did so while not taking a salary of any kind. Even way past his prime, he proved he had some attacking prowess left in him, netting three goals and maintaining his reputation as a provider of happiness to those enduring tough times.

The Kid’s a Legend

Now 69 years old, Cubillas’ nickname of El Nene (the kid) may not necessarily ring true anymore. But the contributions he gave to his national team at the world’s greatest sporting event will live on with unending youth in perpetuity. He’s currently one of just 13 players to score 10 or more goals at the World Cup. The only ones with more than his final total of 10 are a who’s who of the most famous names to ever play the game.

Miroslav Klose – Germany – 16

Ronaldo – Brazil – 15

Gerd Müller – Germany – 14

Just Fontaine – France – 13

Pelé – Brazil – 12

Sándor Kocsis – Hungary – 11

Jürgen Klinsmann – Germany – 11

This summer, Peruvian soccer makes its triumphant return to the biggest stage in the game for the first time since Cubillas walked off a field in the north of Spain 36 years ago. Players such as Jefferson Farfán, Andre Carrillo, and Raúl Ruidíaz among others will get a chance to mimic his exploits. Regardless of what happens, one thing is certain. Cubillas’ status as an iconic figure in the history of the World Cup is irrefutable and unquestioned.

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