1966 World Cup: Football comes home

The World Cup finally made its way to England in 1966.

As inventors of the game, England seldom suffered from a lack of confidence, and yet it no doubt perturbed the country that taught the rest of the world how to play soccer that it had failed miserably in its first four attempts to win the World Cup.

A BOLD PREDICTION

After losing to Brazil in the quarter-finals in 1962, manager Alf Ramsey took over the national team and predicted before a ball was even kicked that England would win the 1966 World Cup on home soil.

It was a bold prediction, especially because the selection of nations that qualified was so strong. Brazil's 1962 World Cup team was largely intact, Eusebio featured in Portugal's greatest side ever, the talented Italians were there and both West Germany and the Soviet Union fielded their best teams since the 1950s.

In the end, though, England prevailed and Ramsey's prophecy was fulfilled, but not without controversy.

Again, the competition's format saw the 16 teams divided into four groups with the top two advancing to the quarter-finals.

Playing all of its games at London's Wembley Stadium, England started off slow (a 0-0 draw with Uruguay) before defeating Mexico and France to win Group 1 ahead of the South Americans.

In Group 2, West Germany, led by an emerging young star in Franz Beckenbauer, opened with a 5-0 destruction of Switzerland in Sheffield and ended up topping the group. Argentina took second place ahead of Spain.

Pele, at the height of his career, scored in Brazil's opening 2-0 win over Bulgaria in Liverpool, but the 25-year-old superstar was carried off the field after being hacked mercilessly by the Bulgarians and sat out the next game, a shocking 3-1 loss to Hungary, who finished second in the group.

Pele returned for Brazil's final game, but he received similar rough treatment from Portugal and the great Eusebio scored twice to lead the Portuguese to a 3-1 win. With the win, Portugal won the group and the landscape of the tournament dramatically changed as Brazil, the two-time reigning world champions, were eliminated in the opening round.

A disillusioned Pele, still distraught over the brutal punishment dished out to him, vowed he would never to play in a World Cup again.

Brazil's premature exit, however, was hardly the most shocking development of the first round.

Over in Group 4, Italy needed only to draw lowly North Korea in Middlesbrough in its last game to qualify for the quarter-finals. Little was known about the Asian team before the tournament, but few expected them to provide much opposition to an Italian side featuring AC Milan star Gianni Rivera (a future European player of the year), Sandro Mazzola (son of Valentino Mazzola, the former Italian team captain) and Giacinto Facchetti (the Inter Milan icon).

And yet, it was North Korea who prevailed, Pak Doo Ik's name still a painful reminder to a generation of Italians to this very day, more than four decades after he scored the winning goal just before halftime. North Korea edged ahead of Italy into second place while the Soviets wrapped up first with a 2-1 win over Chile.

In the quarter-finals, the West Germans (4-0 winners over Uruguay) and the Soviet Union (2-1 over Hungary) continued their impressive march through the competition with hardly any bother.

Meanwhile, the match of the tournament took place at Liverpool's Goodison Park between North Korea and Portugal. Pak Seung-Zin scored in the opening minute and by the 22-minute mark North Korea led 3-0. Was North Korea, conquerors of the mighty Italians, set to author another spellbinding chapter in the history of World Cup upsets?

In a word, no. The sheer genius of Eusebio prevailed, his long and powerful limbs guiding him effortlessly past the Korean defenders as he banged in four goals to lead Portugal to a 5-3 victory.

Without question, the most heated game of the tournament took place at Wembley between England and Argentina. The bitter feud that raged for decades between these two nations - Maradona's "Hand of God" goal in 1986, Diego Simeone's trickery in getting David Beckham sent off in 1998 and Beckham exacting revenge four years later - can be directly traced back to this quarter-final matchup.

Argentina used its physical style of play to choke England's attack, its defenders committing niggling fouls on the English forwards whenever the chance presented itself. Nine minutes before halftime, German referee Rudolf Kreitlein, a constant target of abuse from Antonio Rattin, had enough of the Argentine captain's persistent protesting and expelled him from the game.

Rattin, however, would have none of it and refused to leave. It took ten minutes, and the presence of a Spanish-speaking official, to usher the combatable Rattin off the field and for play to resume. Geoff Hurst settled the tumultuous affair in the 78th minute with a goal for England.

After the game, Alf Ramsey hurried onto the field to prevent his players from swapping shirts, as per the custom in soccer, with the Argentines. "We don't swap shirts with animals," came the infamous response from Ramsey when asked by the press about the shirt snub.

England, with momentum on its side, put in its best performance of the tournament up to that point in dismissing Portugal 2-1 in the semifinals, Bobby Charlton scoring twice. Eusebio nicked a goal in the 82nd minute in a losing effort and added another in Portugal's victory in the third-place game to finish the tournament's top scorer with nine goals.

England's opponents in the final would be West Germany, 2-1 winners over the Soviets in the other semifinal.

THE FINAL

On July 30, an entire nation stood still as England and West Germany clashed before a crowd of 97,000 spectators crammed into Wembley Stadium in what turned out to be the most dramatic World Cup final ever.

With the open wounds of World War II still fresh, it was the Germans who struck first in the knife-edged affair. Ray Wilson's headed clearance dropped to the feet of Helmut Haller who drove a shot past English goalkeeper Gordon Banks in the 12th minute.

Six minutes later England captain Bobby Moore made an immaculate long pass into the penalty area to Geoff Hurst who headed the ball in. 1-1.

The teams traded scoring chances for the rest of the half but it wasn't until the 78th minute that the next goal arrived. Alan Ball, who ran the German defence ragged with his probing runs, delivered a corner kick into the box. Hurst's shot was blocked but Martin Peters collected the ball and fired home. 2-1 for England.

England should have sealed it with four minutes left in regulation but Roger Hunt made his pass to Charlton too quickly, allowing the German defender to get in proper position and England squandered a glorious 3-on-1 scoring chance.

England paid for that mistake, the Germans equalizing in the 89th minute when Wolfgang Weber stabbed the ball past Banks following a goalmouth scramble off a free kick.

So, extra time then. Both teams were exhausted and players were sprawled out on the perfectly manicured grass field. Ramsey, that master motivator, famously told his charges that the Germans were "finished."

Alan Ball took charge and sped down the right wing in the 98th minute and centered a pass for Hurst in the penalty area. What followed was one of the most famous - and controversial - passages in sports history.

Hurst belted a furious right-footed shot that blazed past German goalkeeper Hans Tilkowski, hit the underside of the crossbar and bounced down on the goal-line. The trailing Roger Hunt immediately raised his hands in celebration, so confident it was a goal. The man whose opinion mattered most, Swiss referee Gottfried Dienst, was not.

A flock of protesting German players surrounded Dienst, who then marched to the sidelines towards linesman Tofik Bakhramov of Azerbaijan (history erroneously remembers him simply as "the Russian linesman") to confer whether or not the entire ball crossed the goal-line.

As 400 million television viewers worldwide waited for the decision, Bakhramov, without hesitation, pointed his flag towards the centre circle on the field, signalling a goal. It was 3-2 for England as the tense Wembley crowd erupted into cathartic, delirious rapture.

Bakhramov's ruling stands as one of the seminal and defining moments in World Cup history.

Even to this day, spirited debate continues (particularly in Germany) as to whether the goal - which, upon further review over the years showed that the entire ball, in fact, did not cross the line - should have been allowed. No goal in the history of sports has been more disputed than Hurst's.

Now down 3-2, the Germans threw players forward in numbers, desperately searching for an equalizer, but were left exposed at the back. Moore played another long pass for Hurst who completed his hat trick in the final minute of extra time as fans began to pour onto the field.

Finally, England, inventors of the game, were world champions.

After the climactic final, BBC's Kenneth Wolstenholme aptly described the scene as Moore led his team to the royal box to receive the Jules Rimet trophy from Queen Elizabeth II.

"It's only eight inches high, solid gold, and it means that England are the world champions," said Wolstenholme as Moore held the trophy aloft while the Wembley crowd looked on.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

• The 1966 World Cup was the first to be won by the host nation since Italy triumphed on home soil in 1934. Only four other countries have won the World Cup at home: Uruguay (1930), West Germany (1974), Argentina (1978) and France (1998).
• Geoff Hurst was a bit of surprise selection for the England team. Although a talented centre-forward, most journalists and fans at the time thought Ramsey should have picked Peter Osgood instead of Hurst for the team. All's well that end's well.
• After the final, the majority of newspaper and television reports referred to Tofik Bakhramov as the 'Russian linesman', as Azerbaijan was still part of the Soviet Union at the time. The nickname stuck to the point where his real name became all but forgotten over the ensuing decades in the recounting of the famous Hurst goal.
• Brazil's 3-1 defeat to Hungary in the first round was its first loss at the World Cup since 1954. Brazil went undefeated in a World Cup record 13 consecutive games (11 wins, 2 draws) from 1958-66.
• Brazil became the first reigning World champion not to advance beyond the first round. France, champions in 1998, joined Brazil when the same fate befell them at the 2002 World Cup.
• No less than 16 African nations pulled out of the qualifying round before it kicked off. They were protesting FIFA's ruling that the winners of the African qualifiers had to face the winners of either the Asia or the Oceania zone in order to advance to the World Cup.
• West Germany's Helmut Schon coached his nation in a World Cup record 25 games from 1966-78.
• When Italy returned home from its shocking defeat at the hands of North Korea, its transport bus at the airport was pelted with fruit and rotten tomatoes by angry Italian fans.
• The 1966 World Cup established a new overall attendance mark of 1,614,677 spectators. The old mark of 1,337,000 was set at the 1950 tournament in Brazil.