Unsung Heroes in World Cups: Rob Rensenbrink | 1978 Argentina

The 1978 FIFA World Cup was staged in Argentina. It was the last time that just 16 countries competed in a World Cup. This tournament marks another dark chapter in the history of the World Cups, as it became the perfect occasion of sportswashing and propaganda for the oppressive right-wing military junta that came to power in Argentina under the leadership of George Videla. The regime tried to root out political opposition in a ruthlessly clinical way. A navy training school that became a detention camp for the detractors of the regime was full of prisoners, locked up in inhumanely small cells, who could hear the cheers from the flagship football stadium of the land, Estadio Monumental. When Argentina won, they were tortured and forced to celebrate as some of their countrymen cheered the victories of the country and the regime within their earshot.

In this series, which will run through all twenty-two FIFA World Cup tournaments, we will try to tell the story of a player who had some important role to play in the tournament but hardly features among the first few names that jump out once you hear the tournament being mentioned. Today, in the eleventh iteration of the series, we will look at the Netherlands’ Rob Resenbrink.

FIFA retained the format of a second group phase, following the first, with the two group winners from the second phase playing the final. In a World Cup most often remembered for the heroics of Mario Kempes and Teofilo Cubillas, the displays of the runner-up Dutch side often fly under the radar, and its reception varies significantly from that of the 1974 FIFA World Cup runner-up Dutch side, despite many of the personnel remaining the same. Some might even argue that the 1978 Dutch team were almost as good a unit as their esteemed predecessors, and they literally came as close as a few millimetres from winning the trophy. Even though Rob Resenbrink, the best performer on the Dutch side, sometimes features in conversations about this World Cup, his mention is often an afterthought. However, to me, Resenbrink’s campaign is one of the most memorable by a Dutch player in World Cups. To me, 1978 is as much Kempes’s World Cup as Rensenbrink’s. And again, it was a gap of a few millimetres that determined whose name we will remember the whole tournament by.

Rob Rensenbrink was a ferocious talent. His left foot was graced with magic, and his close control and quick movements meant he was a dangerous dribbler. An intelligent passer, he also had a vicious shot and could wiggle his way out of the tightest of spaces with the ball at his feet to deliver the killer blow, earning him the epithet “the snake-man”. Fascinating to watch, terrifying to play against, Rensenbrink’s peak was comparable to that of the very best in his time.

Both Ajax and Feyenoord had an abundance of options on the left side of the attack, and therefore, when Rensenbrink, playing for an amateur club in the top-flight, blossomed into a formidable force in Dutch football, the two giants let him slip through. They regretted and Rensenbrink, angered, never played for a Dutch club ever again. Spending his illustrious peak in the Belgian league, away from the spotlights he deserved.

Rob Rensenbrink, who was treated at best coldly and at worst with outright suspicion from a squad full of Feyenoord and Ajax players, played a pivotal role partnering Cruyff on the left side of the Dutch attack. He was only half-fit for the final, having sustained an injury from a harsh tackle against Brazil, but Rinus Michels still decided to start him. But he had to be subbed off at half-time after an anonymous showing. The Dutch lost. Rensenbrink was elected to the tournament team and returned for the next staging to deliver even better results.

After Cruyff’s retirement, Rensenbrink was afforded greater freedom and authority, and he scored a hat-trick against Iran in the Netherlands’ first game of the 1978 FIFA World Cup campaign. Two of those goals were penalties, bookending a sharp-headed goal from a corner kick. While the Dutch side drew 0-0 against one of the neutrals’ favourites, Peru, Rensenbrink, duly partnered by the likes of Rep, Neskeens and van de Kerkhof brothers, was at the heart of his team’s creative endeavours. The third group game against Scotland was an alarming wake-up call. Despite leading via a penalty scored by Rensenbrink, goals from Kenny Dalglish and Archie Gemmill, starring in a generational Scotland team, the Netherlands lost the third group game and only squeaked into the second round via goal difference. To qualify, the Netherlands had to ensure that the Scottish side won by a margin of only one goal, which they achieved as Johnny Rep scored a long-range goal to reduce the deficit to one.

Sterner tests awaited the Netherlands in the second group phase, and the side led by Ernst Happel rose to the occasion. Rensenbrink ran the show in the first game of the second group phase as he schooled the Austrian defence, creating and assisting as many as three goals alongside scoring another penalty. His spatial awareness and quick thinking were fundamental to the performance, which boosted Dutch spirits with their first really commanding display of the tournament. Austria was dispatched 5-1 despite the flaws in the Netherlands’ defence.

The next two matches were against traditional heavyweights of the game in West Germany and Italy. Even though the former was the reigning champion and the latter would win the tournament four years later, the German and Italian sides in the 1978 FIFA World Cup were far from convincing. In their second game of the second group phase, the Dutch faced off against West Germany in a rematch of the 1974 World Cup final in Munich. The Dutch had to pay for their poor defending as West Germany took an early lead, but the Netherlands equalised before the half-hour mark, and were clearly feeling settled for a draw when, midway through the second half, Dieter Müller scored a brilliant goal to restore the German lead. The Dutch attack had enough in them to score a second equaliser about ten minutes from time, and even though the referee erroneously sent off Dick Nanninga in the 88th minute, the Dutch held on.

Knowing that the goal difference was emphatically on their side, the Netherlands only needed a draw against Italy to qualify for the final. Italy, which needed a win to secure a place in the final, started with greater conviction and drive, securing, by the twentieth minute, a lead that it retained as half-time approached. Brandts, the Dutch defender who was culpable for the own-goal his side had conceded, scored with a thunderous shot from outside the box to restore the balance. The Netherlands would not look back. They secured the win with another, even better and from even farther away, a long-ranger from Haan. Rensenbrink had played the full ninety minutes in each of the Netherlands’ matches in the tournament, and, despite not featuring in the score-sheet often in the later stages, was playing a talismanic role in the Dutch attack. It was always an impossible task to take up the mantle left by one of the all-time greats in Johann Cruyff, but Rob Rensenbrink, to Dutch delight, won over the doubters and masterfully led his side’s attack. By this stage, he had scored five goals in the tournament, more than anyone else. And this time, he was fully fit as he approached a second crack at the World Cup final.

Despite such a great World Cup showing, Rensenbrink’s most mentioned moment in the World Cup was a moment of failure by the finest of margins. In one of the most hostile environments imaginable, the Dutch side entered the pitch in Estadio Monumental surrounded by a raucous crowd of 80,000, whose loud cheers were certainly reaching the helpless ears of the prisoners in the naval school. Argentina, already being aided with some contentious refereeing calls and a controversy surrounding the possibility of match-fixing in the second group stage, had already ensured that a more amenable referee was to conduct the game in the final and now they kept the Dutch side waiting in the cauldron, appearing fifteen minutes late into the ground and straightaway sparked off a controversy around the plaster cast in Rene van de Kerkhof’s hand. After some heated argument that saw the captains of both sides threatening to abandon the game, it was decided that the cast would be covered up with thick bandages. The compromise was agreed upon.

Against an unnerved Netherlands, Argentina started brightly. The game was marked by cynical fouls from both sides, which the referee seemed uninterested in stopping. Kempes scored his fifth goal in the tournament to put his side ahead in the 38th minute.

Rensenbrink had a chance to equalise, but his diving close-range shot was expertly saved by Fillol. As the second half proceeded, the Netherlands slowly took over the initiative. They finally breached the Argentine defence with a Nanninga finish in the 82nd minute, as a hush fell over Estadio Monumental. Rensenbrink, putting in another stellar performance at the heart of the Dutch attack, got another chance in the injury time.

Deep into the stoppage time, the entire host nation held their collective breath as Rensenbrink, unmarked, mastered a shot from an acute angle at close range with the goal virtually unguarded. But to his horror and the host’s relief, the ball hit the post and bounced away. As already alluded, there was but a few millimetres of gap between Rensenbrink’s pompous reception as the golden boot and golden ball winner hero of the Netherlands’s glorious first World Cup triumph and his consignment to the man best remembered for not converting the chance that could bring home his country’s elusive first World Cup triumph.

Kempes scored one and assisted one goal in the extra time against a Dutch side that clearly lost its spirit. In a mark of protest against the regime and its impact on the tournament as a whole, the Dutch side refused to participate in the post-match ceremonies. Rensenbrink, having achieved the distinction of being twice elected in the World Cup’s team of the tournament, had to depart as a tragic hero again. He knew this was his final chance. He will have another good season for Anderlecht, but the snake-man’s terrific peak, that the world was witness to in the 1978 FIFA World Cup, was soon over. In a country with a rich history of developing talent, it is noteworthy that no other Dutch player, before or since, has made as many goal contributions as Rob Rensenbrink in FIFA World Cups.