Ricky Villa and the Falklands In 1982, the Spurs legend had a dilemma: club or country?
Ricky Villa was Tottenham’s hero en route to FA Cup final success in 1981, but the Falklands War forced him to watch their 1982 showpiece as a tormented bystander. Yet, caught between feuding nations, he emerged an adored icon
Decked in blue and white, they chanted his name on the Tube, and on all the buses to the stadium. They chanted it down Wembley Way. They chanted it from the terraces. “There’s only one Ricky Villa,” they yelled. A year earlier, Spurs’ languid Argentine had scored an FA Cup final goal for the ages; a mazy, slow- motion dribble through Manchester City’s retreating defence, accompanied for the viewing millions at home by John Motson’s incomparable strangled coo: “And still Ricky Villa…”
With 14 minutes to go, the 1981 centenary final had been won by Villa’s audacious effort; his second of the match crowning a thrilling, see- sawing, five- goal replay. Ossie’s Dream – the cup final ditty from Tottenham fans Chas & Dave, penned in honour of Villa’s compatriot Osvaldo Ardiles – had been realised.
Fast- forward to May 22, 1982. Spurs, back at Wembley to defend their trophy – in their own centenary campaign – are warming up to face Queens Park Rangers.
Chas & Dave have provided the soundtrack once more, although this time with the rather more prosaically titled Tottenham Tottenham.
But there’s no Ricky Villa. Well, there is, but he isn’t in the starting line- up, and he isn’t on the bench. In fact, he isn’t at the ground, and Ossie Ardiles isn’t even in the country.
“We’re the boys from Keithy’s army and we’re marching off to war,” the Lilywhites’ men had warbled 12 months earlier for Top of the Pops cameras, shifting uncomfortably from side to side in that odd, wooden manner footballers had back then when confronted with melody. “We’re sending our soldiers to Wembley, under General Burkinshaw…”
It was an unfortunate – if highly prescient – lyric with the benefit of a year’s hindsight. For Tottenham’s Argentine amigos, Ossie’s dream had since turned into the stuff of nightmares. Where England’s football grounds had once been a theatre of dreams for this pair of exotic ambassadors, those who now considered Villa and Ardiles the enemy were staging their own theatre of hate.
GREAT BRITAIN GOES TO W AR… AGAIN
Seven weeks before the 1982 FA Cup Final, on April 2, Argentina’s military junta – running the country since ousting president Isabel Peron in 1976 – invaded the Falkland Islands, intent on repatriating the 1,800 or so inhabitants of the British- governed South Atlantic territories. Just 24 hours later, Great Britain and Argentina were at war.
It was typical of the mercurial fortunes that had dogged Villa since his arrival in England. Even his selection for the ’ 81 final replay had been in doubt after an iffy showing first time around, with his droopy- shouldered early exit – in the days of only one substitute – noted by
Guardian writer David Lacey. “The big- bearded Argentine had plodded his crestfallen path to the dressing room after being substituted with nearly half an hour of normal time remaining,” he reported as Garry Brooke took Villa’s place.
Until his iconic goal, Villa had been perceived as the makeweight in a ground- breaking and
headline- making deal that landed Tottenham two of Argentina’s World Cup- winning squad members in July 1978. A watershed moment in itself, it meant English football authorities were now not only bound to observe 1957’ s Treaty of Rome – permitting free movement within the European Community – but also an extension allowing two non- Europeans to join any team. Until then, a ban on foreign players in English football had been in place for nearly half a century. Tottenham, newly promoted following a surprise relegation in 1977, had pulled off quite a coup – and one that changed the game in England forever.
By May 1982, and now a key cog of a team that had finished fourth in the First Division, reached FA and League Cup finals and lost narrowly to Barcelona in the European Cup Winners’ Cup semi- finals, Villa should have been praising himself for his efforts. Instead, he faced the spotlight’s harsh, unforgiving glare as a non- political footballer being used as a political pawn.
His close confidante Ardiles – to this day Villa is often jokingly asked, “Where’s Ossie?” – was long gone. He had joined Argentina’s pre- World Cup training camp straight after Spurs’ 2- 0 FA Cup semi- final victory against Leicester at Villa Park, during which he was booed by Foxes supporters as tensions in the Atlantic mounted. “It was one of the worst moments of my life, watching two countries that I love fighting each other,” the maestro later told Fourfourtwo.
It was a no- win situation – and Villa was left to tackle it all on his own. To take part in English football’s showpiece fixture, shake hands with royalty and observe the national anthem would mark him out as a traitor in his homeland. Besides, how would English audiences treat him? What was he to really believe in terms of propaganda back home? A phone interview with Bernardo Neustadt – a prominent, pro- war Argentine TV and radio broadcaster – would, he thought, give him the chance to say his piece.
“I gave Neustadt my honest assessment of the situation,” explained Villa. “I said that I didn’t agree with any war because the loss of many lives is a tragedy, and that I hoped things could soon be resolved in other, more civilised ways.”
However, the 29- year- old’s views didn’t go down too well. “He wanted me to bad- mouth the English, declare my approval of the war and effectively pledge my allegiance to the military government,” added Villa. “Because he didn’t like what I said, he just cut me off, finishing by saying, ‘ If you ever come back to Argentina, we will forgive you’. Neustadt was implying that I was some kind of traitor – I’ll never forget that.”
If the midfielder feared being shot at from both sides, the treatment he was receiving in England – and from Tottenham in particular – could barely have offered a starker contrast. Villa’s second daughter Martina, born on May 11, was put in a separate hospital room, “as a precautionary measure in case anyone did anything crazy”, while cards and messages of support arrived by the armload.
North London butcher and Spurs fan John Scanlon told reporters, “It would be better if they let the lads play in peace,” before adding the proviso, “but someone has to show these dictators that you can’t redraw the map of the world by force – Britain is right to defend the Falklanders.”
SINKING SHIPS AND SUNKEN HEARTS
Cup final week soon rolled around. The night before Spurs faced QPR at Wembley, Villa and manager Keith Burkinshaw agreed that the midfielder should sit it out.
“It was his decision more than it was mine,” Burkinshaw stressed to the Associated Press. “I can understand the way he feels. Obviously he’s disappointed. He’s a football man and wanted to play at Wembley, but sometimes world events overtake us.”
Villa remembered the discussion similarly. “Tottenham received letters from relations of those killed in the conflict, and with the war at the forefront of everyone’s thoughts, it was such a sensitive issue,” he reflected in 2010 autobiography And Still Ricky Villa. “The FA Cup final is a truly English occasion. For me to have participated while my country was at war with England would have been wrong – I didn’t want to play in those circumstances.”
On the day of the final, HMS Ardent became the second British warship scuppered in the Atlantic. The 22 lives lost took the number of casualties up to 46 in the space of 48 hours. Villa stayed at home and watched the game on television, accompanied by a club security guard who periodically peered through the curtains at the gaggle of press stood outside. Over at Wembley, there were no goals after 90 minutes but a pair in extra time – Glenn Hoddle’s deflected 20- yarder cancelled out by Terry Fenwick’s header from a long throw – meaning the teams had to meet under the Twin Towers again in midweek.
This time Villa turned up, sitting just behind Burkinshaw in a club suit as Spurs beat QPR 1- 0 thanks to Hoddle’s sixth- minute penalty.
As Villa took his seat, he could hear the fans singing his name. “Coming at such a difficult time as it did, it was a gesture that genuinely moved me,” he revealed. “It was a strange, emotional evening. A year earlier I had been the hero, the toast of Wembley. Now I was part of the team, but as I watched from the sidelines, I had no control over the match. I was full of uncertainty. Had I played my last game for Tottenham?”
As it turned out, no. Once the season had ended, Villa returned to Argentina for a few weeks and was staggered by the disparity of reportage he encountered there. His fellow countrymen were adamant that he had been ‘ brainwashed’ and convinced that they were winning the war, with talk of British casualties in their hundreds.
“I can’t emphasise enough the madness of the situation in Argentina during this period,” recalled Villa. “I remember in [ his hometown] Roque Perez, there was a collection to raise money for the war effort. People donated cash, jewellery – even brand new motorbikes. It was crazy.”
On June 14, 74 days after fighting began, Argentina waved a white flag. “One day they thought they were winning, the next they all realised it had been a big charade,” said Villa.
He went back to Tottenham to pick up the pieces, clear in his conscience that he had tried to do the right thing. Ironically, his old mate Ardiles – who had adjusted to English life more readily having studied the language before signing – joined Paris Saint- Germain on loan after the World Cup rather than play in England. He eventually returned to White Hart Lane in 1983, the year democracy also returned to Argentina.
“I had a very bad time in Paris,” Ardiles told
FFT. “My mind was not right; I was shocked by everything that had happened during the war. After six months, I came back to Spurs – Keith Burkinshaw told me there wouldn’t be any problems... and he was right.”
However, it said much for Villa’s strength of character that it was the easy- going farmer’s boy from the sticks – still genuinely surprised and thrilled that he made it as a futbolista in the first place – who’d had the stomach for the hardest yards. Commencing duty again the following campaign, in 1982- 83, he soon detected a degree of resentment – especially on the road where boos and insults rang out – but it was something he could understand.
“People lost loved ones in the war,” he said, “so I reasoned that if they wanted to boo me, that was perfectly acceptable.”
Yet such incidents were often countered by shows of support – something Villa felt would have been unlikely in his own country. North London had always been the safest of havens and a place he was made to feel loved.
“Throughout it all, Tottenham handled the situation brilliantly,” he stated. “Nothing was too much for them to make us feel at ease. Can you imagine if an Englishman had been playing in Argentina at that time? It would have been impossible to survive.”
That campaign was to prove Villa’s last in England, aged 31. “Five years after striding through the front gates of White Hart Lane amid a flurry of publicity, I slipped out the back door virtually unnoticed,” he observed. Villa spent a brief spell with Fort Lauderdale Strikers in 1983, then hopped from Deportivo Cali in Colombia to Buenos Aires’ Defensa y Justicia, where he ended his career.
A champion of justice and fair play who later served as a local councillor in Argentina after finally hanging up his boots at 37, Villa – now 67 – remains a regular visitor to Spurs. When the club left White Hart Lane in 2017, and when the rebuilt stadium opened two years later, both he and Ardiles were there, reminiscing about the good old days ‘ in the cup for Tottingham’.
It’s more than 40 years since he moved to Tottenham; a stranger in a strange land; the accidental tourist who became a trailblazing foreigner and unwitting cause célèbre.
Fittingly, given the slaloming, shimmying moment of Wembley brilliance with which he earned a place in FA Cup folklore, he emerged from the buffeting winds of war with dignity and decency.
And still Ricky Villa.
“PEOPLE LOST LOVED ONES IN THE WAR. IF THEY WANTED TO BOO ME, IT WAS ACCEPTABLE”