In this Group 2 clash , already heightened tensions between the two football teams were exacerbated by the description of Santiago in crude terms by two Italian journalists , Antonio Ghirelli and Corrado Pizzinelli ; they had written that Santiago was a backwater dump where " the phones do n't work , taxis are as rare as faithful husbands , a cable to Europe costs an arm and a leg and a letter takes five days to turn up " , and its population as prone to " malnutrition , illiteracy , alcoholism and poverty . Chile is a small , proud and poor country : it has agreed to organise this World Cup in the same way as Mussolini agreed to send our air force to bomb London ( they did n't arrive ) . The capital city has 700 hotel beds . Entire neighbourhoods are given over to open prostitution . This country and its people are proudly miserable and backwards . " Chilean newspapers fired back , describing Italians in general as fascists , mafiosos , oversexed , and , because some of Inter Milan 's players had recently been involved in a doping scandal , drug addicts . The journalists involved were forced to flee the country , while an Argentinian scribe mistaken for an Italian in a Santiago bar was beaten up and hospitalised . Chile 's organisation of and preparation for the tournament had been severely disrupted by the 1960 Valdivia earthquake , the strongest earthquake ever recorded in human history . Articles in the Italian papers '' La Nazione '' and '' Corriere della Sera '' were saying that allowing Chile to host the World Cup was " pure madness " ; this was used and magnified by local newspapers to inflame the Chilean population . The British newspaper the '' Daily Express '' wrote " The tournament shows every sign of developing into a violent bloodbath . Reports read like battlefront despatches . Italy vs Germany was described as ' wrestling and warfare ' "
1960 Valdivia earthquake
1960 Valdivia earthquake
Battle of Santiago (1962 FIFA World Cup)