ON THIS DAY

Sepp Blatter replaced João Havelange as President of FIFA. He beat Lennart Johansson of Swede n in a straight vote in Paris but there have been allegations that votes were being bought even then. You have to wonder how different world football would now be if Blatter had lost that vote 111-80 rather than defeating the Swede by that margin!

The opening match at the 1990 World Cup finals in Italy produced one of the shock results in the history of the competition and confirmed that success in the footballing world was no longer confined to European and South American sides. Reigning world champions Argentina were beaten 1-0 by Cameroon at the San Siro stadium in Milan despite the winners finishing the match with only nine players on the pitch. Cameroon became the first African nation south of the Sahara to win a match at a World Cup finals and then they went on to become the first African nation to reach the quarter finals where they suffered a narrow loss to England. By contrast the country Cameroon defeated in that opening match, Argentina, only progressed to the knock-out stages as the best third-place side in a group but then went on to reach the final again where they were beaten by West Germany.

England played an international under floodlights for the first time. At New York’s Yankee Stadium against USA. two goals apiece from Tom Finney and Nat Lofthouse helped England to a 6-3 victory.