Costa Rica didn’t exactly break a gasket when qualifying for their first World Cup in 1990. They beat Panama 3-1 on aggregate and then received a walkover against Mexico after the Mexicans infringed age eligibility rules. <\/p>\n
Hey presto, Costa Rica were going to Italia ’90.<\/p>\n
We all know how it turned out. Juan Cayasso is an immortal, a player who means so much to people who weren’t even born when he scored his country’s first ever goal at a World Cup – against Scotland, of course.<\/p>\n
He’s probably the ultimate Scotland bogeyman, one of nine children, a player they called ‘el Nene’ – the Kid. He was the one who got the only goal at Stadio Luigi Ferraris on 11 June, 1990. Disaster for Scotland. Again.<\/p>\n
“Children stop me in the street to greet me and say, ‘you’re Cayasso, the one my dad told me scored a goal in 1990’.” He did and it was the reason why Scotland tumbled out of the tournament early.<\/p>\n
Cayasso said that his goal was written in the stars. “We were playing so bad I thought we had not much chance before going to the World Cup.” <\/p>\n
He reckoned without Scotland getting the wobbles once more.<\/p>\n
“I don’t know if I remember it because I always see it on video,” Cayasso said some years ago. “But I could never be prepared for that moment. <\/p>\n
“My team-mate Claudio Jara, knocked the ball to me \u2013 we call it a taquito here. I was close to him, I step back and when he does the taquito I read it. At first, I’m like, ‘oh\u2026’ I’m frightened. But then I have to react, it’s at my foot. <\/p>\n
“Jimmy (Leighton) is out. Then it hits his belly and goes over him. I turn around and look at the referee, and he’s going to the centre of the field.<\/p>\n
“First I’m frightened, then I don’t believe it, then, ‘yes, goal’. I had gone far away in that moment. My mind was all about Costa Rica. I wrote a book called ‘The Goal from Italia 90: Destiny, Luck or Chance’. It was so crazy.”<\/p>\n
Cayasso’s goal helped earn Costa Rica a place in the knockouts – they lost 4-1 to Czechoslovakia – and from the country’s president, a gift of a Toyota Corolla. All the team got one. <\/p>\n
It also won him a move to German football with Stuttgart Kickers. He won promotion to the Bundesliga with them. <\/p>\n
Cayasso won 49 caps, but one stands above all others. Unforgettable in two different countries but very different reasons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Costa Rica didn’t exactly break a gasket when qualifying for their first World Cup in 1990. They beat…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":620484,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-620483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620483\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/620484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}