World Cup Football

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Italy, 1990

Qualifiers

• At the qualifier between Nigeria and Angola in 1989, a crowd of 80,000 attended the match in the 60,000-capacity stadium in Lagos on 12 August 1989. Tragically, 13 fans and a Nigerian player were affected by the stifling conditions and died.

• Mexico was banned from participating in the 1990 World Cup as it had deliberately fielded three overaged players in a FIFA international youth tournament.

Tournament

• In the 1990 Semi-Final between Italy and Argentina, absent-minded referee referee Michael Vautrot from France added 8 minutes of injury time to the first half of extra-time as he forgot about the time. Fortunately no goal was scored during the 40 minutes of extra-time. Argentina won 4-3 on penalty shoot-out.