graphite & putty eraser/30x20cm
The continuation of the World Cup ’74 project finally achieves some form of closure with this drawing, which concludes the first squad of players, those chosen to represent Argentina, at least, prior to the fact, by the publishers FKS & Panini, upon whose resources, in the form of their commemorative stamp/sticker albums ‘Wonderful World of Soccer Stars World Cup 1974’ & ‘München ‘74’ respectively, the project draws for its raw visual material. From the outset, & given that the project is based upon such ‘hauntological’ sources, the decision was taken to follow the format of the FKS album & compile regular 16-man squads of players to represent each of the 16 nations qualifying for the tournament, as explained in more depth here – back in the (relatively) real world, the official squads comprised a total of 22 members each.
As we’ve discovered along the course of the Project thus far, not all of the footballers chosen, predictively, by FKS & Panini to appear at the 1974 World Cup were subsequently selected by their countries, but the portrait subject that simultaneously emerges from & is subsumed within the formal arrangement of the grid of graphite-toned 5mm squares on this particular occasion, Hector Yazalde, did in fact make the cut & went on to feature in 3 matches at the tournament after being omitted from Argentina’s first, scoring twice in their 4 – 1 victory over group minnows Haiti.
Prior to the World Cup, Yazalde had enjoyed a successful season at club level, scoring a quite phenomenal 46 goals in 29 matches for Sporting Lisbon as they won the Portuguese championship, a tally that proved the best in top-level European soccer, earning him the ‘Golden Boot’ awarded annually for such feats.
The following season, Yazalde continued in similar vein, scoring another 30 goals for Sporting, which saw him second in Europe: all in all, he achieved a remarkable goal-a-game ratio in his time at the club, for whom he appeared & scored 104 times.
Sadly to discover, Yazalde passed away in 1997 at the age of 51, one of two members of the 1974 Argentina squad to have died to this date &, in a most uncanny coincidence with the lyrics of a Morrissey song, ‘Hector was…the first of the gang to die’: it beggars belief, of course, that old Moz could be writing & singing coded messages about the 1974 Argentina World Cup squad & the members of, but still it’s a(nother) link between the drawing & music that so pervades TOoT.
Having reached this point in the Project, it seems appropriate, somehow, to provide evidence of the original source material from which the relevant stickers are selected &, following digitization of these image-objects, the drawings are processed, thus here are a pair of photographic images of the relevant pages from the collectors’ albums, the FKS first &, to follow, the Panini.
No comments:
Post a Comment